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

[Herlock Sholmes]

We're just talking past one another. All the evidence doesn't point that way. And I don't think you're the one who can be helped.

All the evidence, taken as a whole, points in only one direction, Scott.

I also don't want or need to be helped. If you don't know by now why RJ, John Wheat and myself seem "pretty adamant" (your words) that Mike and Anne wrote it, you haven't been paying attention.

[caz]

The imaginary conversation you've set out between Earl and Barrett entirely misses the point that an undated journal or an unwritten journal (whatever that means) could ALSO have been an 1891 diary, as long as the diarist had written at least one dated entry during 1891.

Keith Skinner tells us that "nearly" all the pages of the 1891 diary were blank so there must have been some writing somewhere in it, which one would naturally assume consists of diary entries. It would only have needed someone to have written an entry for a day in 1891 which would mean that any book or journal (of whatever description) would then have become an 1891 diary. I'm not sure you understand this. You don't seem to know what a diary is. You seem to have a fixed notion of an appointments diary. But people write diaries in all sorts of things. Indeed, your entire argument is based on James Maybrick having written his personal diary in an old photograph album. So it's really odd that you seem to be able to hold these two contradictory notions in your head at the same time about what a diary must look like.

This one was addressed to Ike, but it misses one rather crucial point: Mike had asked for an "unused" or "partly used" diary dating from 1880-90. We know exactly what he got, and what Anne paid through the nose for, regardless of what he had been led to expect by Martin Earl's 'full' description, and regardless of its intended purpose.

So how would Mike be expecting anyone to date an entirely 'unused' diary, if one were to become available, unless it came with a printed date or dates?

The one located, for the year 1891, met the definition of a 'partly used diary', with nearly all its pages unused, so in theory it could have had no printed dates, as long as at least one of the used pages had contained a diary entry dated by hand. But that would have been a pretty loose definition of a 'diary' if it was just a book that had barely been used as one. Fine for a forger, perhaps, if they only needed to tear out the odd used page here and there, but would anyone have defined it, let alone described it, as an 1891 diary in that case? How is 'a string of images of old diaries which are dated only by the dates of their handwritten entries' relevant, if Mike was told that nearly all the pages of the 1891 diary were "unused" or "blank" and he simply assumed these were all undated? He still needed to know how this diary showed its actual age and where.

Another point that seems to be missed is that Jack the Ripper would have been writing his diary using paper manufactured before 1888, regardless of whether Mike knew at the time that the diary would identify him as a real person who had died in May 1889. Lessons learned from Konrad Kujau's downfall should have warned any forger in 1992 that there could be another '1955' moment in paper manufacture around the next corner, just waiting to strike anyone using any book containing paper that could not have been manufactured a day earlier than, say, 1890. Requesting anything later than 1887, and accepting one for 1891, for the purpose of faking Jack's diary, would have been asking for trouble unless anyone thinks Mike was some sort of expert in this field. Back in a world that isn't flat, a better argument would be that he was some sort of c word instead, and just lucky to have dodged the paper bullet.

An infinitely more likely explanation is that Mike didn't need the paper to date from before 1888, when the ripper murders began, or he'd have made that his minimum requirement. Seeing just the 1889 date after the last entry in the scrapbook, he'd have been guessing when phoning Bookfinders whether the first entry was meant to have been written earlier the same year, or possibly several years earlier, in which case his request for a diary from 1880-90 might at least have made some sense to him if he wanted to know if something comparable and genuinely from that decade could have been obtained and used by a prankster in 1992.

[Scott Nelson]

All the evidence, taken as a whole, points in only one direction, Scott.

But you just said in post #1114 "Because the evidence isn't available, Scott.

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

So what evidence were you talking about?

I guess it just matters whose evidence one wants to believe. Or if it's even "evidence."

[caz]

This is the sequence of events:

1. Mike is told about the availability of an 1891 diary over the telephone.

2. Mike agrees to purchase the 1891 diary.

3. Mike is sent the 1891 diary.

4. Anne, on Mike's behalf, pays for the 1891 diary.

As at no.2, Mike has not seen the diary. So "Prior to purchasing it, Mike hadn't seen it".

When he purchases it, he still hasn't seen it.

He only sees it after he purchases it. By that time, for a period of 30 days, he can only not pay for it if it was misdescribed to him (which it probably wasn't, but, even if it was, he never raised that as an issue). By no. 4, the 30 day period is over so he has to pay for it whether it's been misdescribed or not. Anne helps him out.

I truly cannot make it simpler than this.

Er, no. Agreeing to purchase something over the phone is not the same as actually purchasing it. I'm pretty sure Mike Barrett of all people would have appreciated the difference even if you don't or if Martin Earl considered it a done deal. It was probably not even a binding contract to complete the purchase if Mike's spoken agreement over the phone was not recorded. If Anne hadn't honoured an agreement by Mike to purchase it - you know, with actual money - it would not have been a purchase, but a case of Mike receiving goods under false pretences, which is not a world away from receiving suspected stolen property. Maybe you think Mike was not the sort of chap to go back on any spoken, or gentleman's agreement, and risk the consequences.

The reason Mike didn't raise it as an issue with Martin Earl would be simple enough if the 1891 diary was never intended to be used for faking Maybrick's and he would still have asked to see it regardless of how it was described. If he stuck it in a drawer with the invoice and forgot all about it when arrangements were being made for him to take the scrapbook to London and nothing else mattered, then yes, I can see why Anne was so cross about having to bail him out when she learned about the overdue payment for an 1891 diary he didn't need, which he had 'agreed' to purchase unseen.

[Lombro2]

Thanks, Caz. I always wondered what Mike was thinking when he asked for a 1880-1890 Diary.

I thought it was because he didn't want to give it away to the sellers that he was trying to forge a Ripper Diary or had a real Ripper Diary in hand already. Both are dumb ideas, even for Michael.

If he wanted to hide his intent, he would have just asked for a Victorian Diary and then asked what year it was made.

Instead he asked for a specific decade. That was, in all likelihood, because he didn't know how far back the entries went. Most Diaries last a few years to a decade or more. He could have penned any respective part of the Diary into any diary from any year of that decade.

And he added 1890 and accepted 1891. Why?

Because he had no clue when James Maybrick died even at that late stage in the game. Or completely forgot after reading Tales Of Liverpool, his supposed primary inspiration and source book. You’d think that book would mention he died in 1889 since it had two chapters on his death.

[caz]

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?

Yes. What do you not understand by Anne's admission to Keith that she thought the red herring - sorry, the red diary affair - began "pre-Doreen"?

That would have helped him and let him know that although her cheque stub was dated 18th May, she thought Mike's attempt to obtain this genuine Victorian diary had dated back to before 13th April, when Doreen was sufficiently impressed by what she saw to set the publishing wheels in motion. I can't see how "pre-Doreen" could reasonably be interpreted to mean after that date, or why Anne would have used those words if that is what she wanted to imply.

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.

That's absolutely fine with me, Herlock. The less they both knew about it, the more Anne knew she didn't know, when giving Keith the means to find out everything there was to know.

Assuming Mike knew at the time who he was going to call, and what he was going to ask for, it doesn't matter to me how little he knew about the procedure, or how many people might become directly involved in the search, or how widely his request might be broadcast, but it ought to have mattered to anyone attempting to source the raw materials for faking Jack the Ripper's diary. Forewarned is forearmed, but if it is pretty much a certainty that Anne knew considerably less than Mike could have told her, or ever did tell her, about who he contacted and what he had actually asked for, she was arguably in more danger from what she didn't know about it, if she had helped Mike to turn a photo album, bought from an auction sale, into Maybrick's diary, after the red diary had to be rejected for being 'very small'. Even Mike must have realised the folly of revealing to Alan Gray that it had 365 printed dates in it for the year 1891.

A call to 'M Earl', when Anne was able to retrieve the cheque with the name of the payee, was bound to reveal details that she didn't know in 1995, but if Mike had had forgery in mind she'd have known it, and would have been enabling Keith to uncover potentially incriminating evidence. Her best bet in that case would have been to call Mr Earl herself to ascertain all the facts. Assuming she didn't do that, she may have considered the tiny 1891 diary, with all its 1891 dates, to be proof positive, if anyone should need it, that it had not been purchased to fake Maybrick's diary, so she was more than happy to hand it over along with the means to investigate further. Had she destroyed it, Mike's description of it as merely being 'very small' might have been left in limbo, with no physical evidence to challenge his claim that it had been purchased for forgery purposes.

[erobitha]

Separating "perceived intent" from "actual intent" is what is at the heart of the small red diary debate.

The fact is an advert was placed by Mike for a Victorian diary around the same time Mike phoned Doreen the first time. This is a proven fact. The advert has strange wording, which includes a request for 20 blank pages. This is a fact. So the advert can easily give the impression of the perceived intent of someone trying to source a Victorian diary once they have a mark on the hook. I don't think it's unreasonable to draw that conclusion, but beyond the fact that the dates match with the initial phone call and the wording of the advert includes a request for 20 blank pages, the rest is simply subjective opinion. Mike is no longer around to shed any light.

My question is, why would Anne openly assist Keith in trying to source the cheque book stub for the payment of the diary if she was in on it? Surely that's letting the fox into the hen house, isn't it? She is either so calculating and manipulative that anything is possible, or she genuinely believed she had nothing to hide or fear from Mike's strange advert.

My opinion about Anne is a personal one, for which, like others on this thread, I have little evidence. However, I think she is not telling us the complete truth on matters concerning the diary, but I am not quite sure exactly which bits. I think with this particular diary, she genuinely did not see it as the smoking gun some on this post think it is. As I don't either, it would be great if she would talk to be honest.

[Herlock Sholmes]

This one was addressed to Ike, but it misses one rather crucial point: Mike had asked for an "unused" or "partly used" diary dating from 1880-90. We know exactly what he got, and what Anne paid through the nose for, regardless of what he had been led to expect by Martin Earl's 'full' description, and regardless of its intended purpose.

So how would Mike be expecting anyone to date an entirely 'unused' diary, if one were to become available, unless it came with a printed date or dates?

The one located, for the year 1891, met the definition of a 'partly used diary', with nearly all its pages unused, so in theory it could have had no printed dates, as long as at least one of the used pages had contained a diary entry dated by hand. But that would have been a pretty loose definition of a 'diary' if it was just a book that had barely been used as one. Fine for a forger, perhaps, if they only needed to tear out the odd used page here and there, but would anyone have defined it, let alone described it, as an 1891 diary in that case? How is 'a string of images of old diaries which are dated only by the dates of their handwritten entries' relevant, if Mike was told that nearly all the pages of the 1891 diary were "unused" or "blank" and he simply assumed these were all undated? He still needed to know how this diary showed its actual age and where.

Another point that seems to be missed is that Jack the Ripper would have been writing his diary using paper manufactured before 1888, regardless of whether Mike knew at the time that the diary would identify him as a real person who had died in May 1889. Lessons learned from Konrad Kujau's downfall should have warned any forger in 1992 that there could be another '1955' moment in paper manufacture around the next corner, just waiting to strike anyone using any book containing paper that could not have been manufactured a day earlier than, say, 1890. Requesting anything later than 1887, and accepting one for 1891, for the purpose of faking Jack's diary, would have been asking for trouble unless anyone thinks Mike was some sort of expert in this field. Back in a world that isn't flat, a better argument would be that he was some sort of c word instead, and just lucky to have dodged the paper bullet.

An infinitely more likely explanation is that Mike didn't need the paper to date from before 1888, when the ripper murders began, or he'd have made that his minimum requirement. Seeing just the 1889 date after the last entry in the scrapbook, he'd have been guessing when phoning Bookfinders whether the first entry was meant to have been written earlier the same year, or possibly several years earlier, in which case his request for a diary from 1880-90 might at least have made some sense to him if he wanted to know if something comparable and genuinely from that decade could have been obtained and used by a prankster in 1992.

This hasn't been missed at all, Caz. Not by me, at least.

Someone could have purchased a notebook or journal intending to start a diary and written the year in the front but then not proceeded. Check out Diary File - Digitized Historical Diaries & Journals at diaryfile.com for the "Diary of an 1829 Visit to Coastal Mine" to see what I mean. Someone's written their name, the year and month on the front page but, if they'd given up at that point, it would simply have been an unused 1829 diary.

It's an interesting website, incidentally, with images of a number of diaries which have no printed dates or years. See, for example, the Second Boer War Diary by an Imperial Officer of the Imperial Yeomanry which is known to be from 1900 but only because of clues in the text. The entries are dated by month and day, not year.

The real point about the "unused or partly used" requirement is that it shows that Mike wasn't at all interested in the written entries made by a Victorian diarist. He was desiring blank pieces of paper in the diary. That should be absolutely obvious. And for what possible reason could he have wanted a blank Victorian diary? The question answers itself.

I'd like to record this sentence of yours for posterity:

"The one located, for the year 1891, met the definition of a 'partly used diary', with nearly all its pages unused, so in theory it could have had no printed dates, as long as at least one of the used pages had contained a diary entry dated by hand."

Thank you for saying this, Caz. Could the watching Iconoclast please take note.

Having said something sensible, you sadly then go on to say something remarkably strange, and certainly wrong, when you say that this is a "pretty loose" definition of a diary. I beg to differ and would suggest it's a classic definition of a historical diary.

Tell me Caz, was the Diary of Samuel Pepys a diary? It had no printed dates.

Was the famous Diary of Sir John Evelyn, commencing in 1641, a diary? It had no printed dates.

What about the Diary of Thomas Turner 1754-1765? You guessed, it had no printed dates.

I've already referred you to the 1900 diary of the Imperial Officer of the Imperial Yeomanry on diaryfile.com. Not a printed date in sight.

You might also want to look at the 1921 Diary of Silent Film Actress Clara Kimball Young on diaryfile.com. Her diary has no date on the cover. There are printed dates inside but dates which would apply to any year in the twentieth century. Hence we can see an image of one page of her diary which is headed "July 8 19..." Clara Young herself has added the number "21" to date the entry to 1921. If she'd stopped writing on that page it might well have been possible to fake a diary entry from August 1918 in that 1921 diary.

Above all, please do check out the 1852 Diary of a Voyage from India to Boston. We are shown images of the front and back cover and three diary pages. Not a ruddy printed year or date in sight.

None of that should be surprising. It was very common for 19th century diaries not to have printed years or dates on them. Such diaries didn't even exist until 1812 when John Letts began selling the first pre-printed commercial diary. Should we expect Michael Barrett to have known this? For all we know, he might have assumed that printed diaries didn't start being sold until, say, 1912. It's not a well known historical fact, after all.

As for your question: "How is 'a string of images of old diaries which are dated only by the dates of their handwritten entries' relevant, if Mike was told that nearly all the pages of the 1891 diary were "unused" or "blank" and he simply assumed they were all undated? He still needed to know how this diary showed its actual age and where." I already answered this in my exchanges with Ike, and, worse, you answered it yourself earlier in your post! (in the sentence I quoted above). Having been told that there was an 1891 diary for sale in which "nearly" all the pages were blank, Mike might reasonably have assumed that the diarist started writing diary entries in January 1891 but then gave up. Why not? If some of the pages were not blank, as he would surely have been told, why would he not have assumed those pages contained dated handwritten diary entries? He was, after all, looking for a "partly used" diary and that is what he was apparently being offered.

I don't suppose Mike Barrett missed the point that Jack the Ripper could have written his diary on paper manufactured before 1888 because he asked for a diary in the period 1880 to 1890. But the fact of the matter, Caz, it's that it's not likely to be possible to date paper to a precise year in the nineteenth century. Could Mike have known this? Sure he could. He had access to the full resources of the Liverpool Library, after all.

Sadly for you Caz, we are back to where we always have been. Why did Mike Barrett want a genuine Victorian diary from the decade of the Ripper murders with blank pages? If you can answer that question with a fair and open mind, you might even be able to solve the puzzle that seems to have been bothering you for over 25 years as to who is responsible for creating the Maybrick diary.

[Herlock Sholmes]

But you just said in post #1114 "Because the evidence isn't available, Scott.

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

So what evidence were you talking about?

I guess it just matters whose evidence one wants to believe. Or if it's even "evidence."

If could do me the favour of not quoting me out of context, Scott, you could save me having to waste my time with posts like this one.

In my #1114 I was clearly talking about your request in #1051 for John to tell you "who conceived the story, who wrote it in the diary, when and where?"

That is what I was saying there's no evidence for.

That's why in #1074 I said to you:

"You wanted John to tell you who conceived the story. Well how can he possibly know that? How can anyone?"

You insisted in #1111 that you wanted "just brief answers" and I repeated that you are asking for things he can't possibly know, hence "the evidence isn't available". By which I obviously meant the evidence as to who conceived the story.

You then (in #1123) turned the discussion to a completely different issue, namely the assumed belief of John, RJ and myself (but "suspicion" might be a better word) that Mike and Anne wrote the diary.

In response to this, I'm saying there is evidence and that all the evidence points to Mike and Anne having written it.

But we don't know all the finer details like who originally conceived it. How can we? There is no evidence about it.

I hope I’ve cleared this point up?

Your additional question, incidentally, as to who likely "wrote it in the diary, when and were", was, I have to say, somewhat daft considering that the obvious Cluedo answer is Anne Barrett in March/April 1992 at 12 Goldie Street. Did you really need John to tell you this?

[Herlock Sholmes]

Er, no. Agreeing to purchase something over the phone is not the same as actually purchasing it. I'm pretty sure Mike Barrett of all people would have appreciated the difference even if you don't or if Martin Earl considered it a done deal. It was probably not even a binding contract to complete the purchase if Mike's spoken agreement over the phone was not recorded. If Anne hadn't honoured an agreement by Mike to purchase it - you know, with actual money - it would not have been a purchase, but a case of Mike receiving goods under false pretences, which is not a world away from receiving suspected stolen property. Maybe you think Mike was not the sort of chap to go back on any spoken, or gentleman's agreement, and risk the consequences.

The reason Mike didn't raise it as an issue with Martin Earl would be simple enough if the 1891 diary was never intended to be used for faking Maybrick's and he would still have asked to see it regardless of how it was described. If he stuck it in a drawer with the invoice and forgot all about it when arrangements were being made for him to take the scrapbook to London and nothing else mattered, then yes, I can see why Anne was so cross about having to bail him out when she learned about the overdue payment for an 1891 diary he didn't need, which he had 'agreed' to purchase unseen.

Caz, you seriously need to read what Martin Earl told you more carefully.

At the time Mike asked Earl to send him the diary he then agreed to purchase it.

We've already been over this. Earl said:

'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.'

So, if the diary was as had been described, Barrett could not have returned it. He'd thus obviously already agreed to pay for it. Legally, he was on the hook.

What is it about this process that you don't get? It's very straightforward Caz.

I don't know what you mean by "not a binding contract". Earl would have sent Mike an invoice along with, or immediately following, the diary. Failure to pay an invoice will lead to a county court judgment being entered against you. Full stop. It's one of the most straightforward legal processes which happens every day of the week.

All the hypotheticals about what might have happened if Mike had done this or Anne had done that more than 30 years later - things which did not happen - are absolute madness.

We remain in a situation where Mike had been seeking a Victorian diary with blank pages in March 1992 before anyone alive, inside or outside of 12 Goldie Street, is known to have seen the diary of Jack the Ripper. He then agreed to purchase (sight unseen) a Victorian diary with blank pages. For whatever reason, he didn't pay for it immediately, but, when he was chased, he knew it had to be paid for, so did Anne. That's it.

The only question is, and always has been: why did Mike so badly want a Victorian diary with blank pages. As I've said, the question answers itself. A discussion about Martin Earl's enforcement practices is the height of irrelevance and, despite the late desperate attempt to get something out of Earl to show that Mike wasn't seeking a diary to create a forged Ripper diary, that plan failed absolutely.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Yes. What do you not understand by Anne's admission to Keith that she thought the red herring - sorry, the red diary affair - began "pre-Doreen"?

That would have helped him and let him know that although her cheque stub was dated 18th May, she thought Mike's attempt to obtain this genuine Victorian diary had dated back to before 13th April, when Doreen was sufficiently impressed by what she saw to set the publishing wheels in motion. I can't see how "pre-Doreen" could reasonably be interpreted to mean after that date, or why Anne would have used those words if that is what she wanted to imply.



That's absolutely fine with me, Herlock. The less they both knew about it, the more Anne knew she didn't know, when giving Keith the means to find out everything there was to know.

Assuming Mike knew at the time who he was going to call, and what he was going to ask for, it doesn't matter to me how little he knew about the procedure, or how many people might become directly involved in the search, or how widely his request might be broadcast, but it ought to have mattered to anyone attempting to source the raw materials for faking Jack the Ripper's diary. Forewarned is forearmed, but if it is pretty much a certainty that Anne knew considerably less than Mike could have told her, or ever did tell her, about who he contacted and what he had actually asked for, she was arguably in more danger from what she didn't know about it, if she had helped Mike to turn a photo album, bought from an auction sale, into Maybrick's diary, after the red diary had to be rejected for being 'very small'. Even Mike must have realised the folly of revealing to Alan Gray that it had 365 printed dates in it for the year 1891.

A call to 'M Earl', when Anne was able to retrieve the cheque with the name of the payee, was bound to reveal details that she didn't know in 1995, but if Mike had had forgery in mind she'd have known it, and would have been enabling Keith to uncover potentially incriminating evidence. Her best bet in that case would have been to call Mr Earl herself to ascertain all the facts. Assuming she didn't do that, she may have considered the tiny 1891 diary, with all its 1891 dates, to be proof positive, if anyone should need it, that it had not been purchased to fake Maybrick's diary, so she was more than happy to hand it over along with the means to investigate further. Had she destroyed it, Mike's description of it as merely being 'very small' might have been left in limbo, with no physical evidence to challenge his claim that it had been purchased for forgery purposes.

If Anne telling Keith in 1995 that "the red diary affair" began "pre-Doreen" was supposed to mean that Mike had purchased the red diary before 13th April 1992, and you can't see any other interpretation, why didn't Keith Skinner understand this? Do you think he's stupid?

Not only did he question Mike in 1999 on the basis that he was lying about the red diary, because the cheque showed he bought it post-Doreen, but he wrote a letter to Ripperologist, which I've already quoted from, suggesting that the date of the cheque showed Mike was lying about needing it to forge the Ripper diary because he bought it post-Doreen.

Surely the issue is not when the "red diary affair" began but the date on which Mike purchased the red diary. As to that, Keith was quite clearly misled for many years because he thought it had only been purchased post-Doreen.

I repeat what I said about Anne: "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." Unless Keith Skinner is unable to comprehend plain English, Anne clearly did not inform Keith that the cheque was dated 18th May 1992 because it was a late payment and the 1891 diary had been received some weeks earlier.

I asked you have any thoughts on that and you clearly can't give me a reasonable answer.

The rest of your post is too convoluted for me to follow. The only point I'll pick up on is that when Mike was telling Gray the story of the red diary, it wasn't in his possession and he may not have seen it for years. Going from memory, the main thing that Mike might well have remembered about it was that it was too small. Perhaps because it was his immediate reaction when it arrived. I can't see why he wouldn't have told Gray about the dates printed on each page. It just seems like a memory issue to me.

[Iconoclast]

I'm not wishing to get back into the pointless semantic circus that is being played in order to explain why Michael Barrett requested an 1890 diary and accepted an 1891 one for a person supposedly writing in 1888 and 1889. What I would like to note is that:

1) We cannot ignore the difference between form and function. We all know that dated books are diaries by default - they don't need to be used to be diaries, they just are diaries. That's because the form of a diary is well-established. We also know that almost anything you can write on can become a 'diary' by dint of the purpose it then serves (it's function).

2) I can see no reason to think that Michael Barrett - in the pre-internet age especially - would have been so liberal in his request for an 1880-1890 diary if he thought for a moment that what he might get back might be a simple notebook which had one or more entries in for the 1880s or 1890. Reason tells me that - if he imagined for a moment that that would be possible - he would simply have done what the rest of us would have done and asked for an unused or partly-used document from 1880 to 1890 with at least twenty blank pages.

3) On being told that Martin Earl had an 1891 diary, I consider it literally asinine to then suggest that Barrett did not ask if there were any tell-tale signs on it which would reveal that it was self-evidently an 1891 diary and that '1891' was printed all over it - on every single page of the sections for entries.

4) This argument seems to hang for some people not on the asking for an impossible date and then accepting another (as it would for people who are not seeking to make an argument where none exists) but on the request for at least twenty blank pages (the convenience of bias, eh!). Indeed, at least one poster has asked the question and stated his conclusion thus, "The only question is, and always has been: why did Mike so badly want a Victorian diary with blank pages. As I've said, the question answers itself." which is simply untrue, the question most certainly does not answer itself, it simply answers the bias of the person who posted it. Given the evidence of a man apparently unsophisticated in semantic weaving seeking an impossible diary and then accepting one, the far more plausible answer to the question, above, would be, "Because he already had one". If any poster is struggling to understand why this is a very strong possibility, I refer you to my posts of old.

I might also politely point out that I was being kind when I used the term 'some people', above, as the truth is that we are not being inundated with the conventional cacophony of posts in support of this particular poster's position regarding what we all understand a diary to be and what a non-diary document might be turned into. This suggests very strongly to me that he - and he alone - is pursuing a losing argument that none of the usual suspects is willing to embarrass themselves in support of. RJ attempted a blindside pat-on-the-back-but-shut-the-****-up-before-you-make-an-even-bigger-arse-of-yourself, but sometimes a juggernaut out of control simply can't be stopped.

I find it sad that this is all someone needs to think they know in order to be rid of such a turbulent beast as the Maybrick scrapbook.

[rjpalmer]

My question is, why would Anne openly assist Keith in trying to source the cheque book stub for the payment of the diary if she was in on it? Surely that's letting the fox into the hen house, isn't it? She is either so calculating and manipulative that anything is possible, or she genuinely believed she had nothing to hide or fear from Mike's strange advert?

Hi Jay,

I hope we can have a calm, rational, and non-judgmental conversation, so, in that spirt, can I point out that your first question has been asked and answered many times, including this week? One can keep asking it over and over, but why expect a different answer?

So instead, ask yourself: if it was you, and you were guilty of forgery, what would you have done?

Seriously, mate. What would you have done?

Would you have denied the purchase and risked being caught out as liar by Keith if he traced the purchase without your cooperation? Clearly, Keith had gotten wind of this purchase, or he wouldn't have asked you about it. Wouldn't that have been very risky? And Keith would never trust you again if he found out Earl's name?

Or would you cooperate with Keith, winning his confidence, and trust your ability to convince him it was an innocent or irrelevant purchase? Which would have been a relatively simple matter since you had a cheque stub showing it was purchased in May--after Barrett had brought the diary to Doreen in London. Cooperating would HELP you sow a false trail due to the odd details of the payment.

Seriously. Isn't the choice a simple one--instead of the inherent risks of being an outright liar, Anne trusted her ability to leave a false impression?

As to your second question, two points.

1. Anne herself admitted to being manipulative, which is another oddity.

2. Martin Fido, who was a highly perceptive person, and had access to Feldman's transcripts, also characterized Anne as manipulative. His exact word.

Again, I am not pretending to be holier than thou, or holier than Keith. (And I will certainly never be holier than Tom). I never met Anne Graham, and if I had, maybe I would have been impressed by her, too. But in the cold light of transcripts, she can be seen contradicting herself many times and making any number of highly implausible claims. She also lied outright.

What baffles me is that, if you believe the diary came out of Dodd's house, you must also believe that Anne lied to Keith repeatedly over a period of many years. You must believe Anne coached her father. You must believe Anne made up an oral family tradition of Formby knowing Yapp, unless by some miracle Eddie Lyons sold the diary to a man whose wife had a direct link to Maybrick's household.

As with Caz, in your own theory, Anne is completely untrustworthy. So why ask us if Anne was manipulative? Haven't you answered that question yourself?

Bizarrely, Caz is now so committed to the proposition that Anne was entirely cooperative that she is even willing to question Keith's competence.

Because Herlock's point is a fair one, isn't it? If Anne revealed to Keith that the diary was ordered "pre-Doreen" why in the heck is Keith telling everyone four years later (in 1999) that it had been ordered post-Doreen, ie.,May 1992?

I think we can all agree that Keith isn't a liar and is also careful about trying to get precise dates. He must have appreciated the importance of learning exactly when the diary had been ordered.

So, do you and Caz believe that Keith dropped the baton during this simple assignment, or is it infinitely more likely that Anne Graham deliberately left him with a false impression that the diary had been purchased and ordered in May 1992?

Seriously. Which is more likely?

What evidence is there that Anne ever stressed that she and Mike had been late payers? Are we supposed to believe that it slipped her mind? That Anne didn't remember that vitally important detail or simply forget to relay it to Keith?

You asked, and I've answered. That's all I can do.

What I would ask in return is why you don't see Anne as a subtle manipulator? This is the same person who once told Feldman that her name was not Anne Elizabeth Graham and that she was a former member of MI-5.

Does that strike you as cooperative?

RP

[Herlock Sholmes]

I'm not wishing to get back into the pointless semantic circus that is being played in order to explain why Michael Barrett requested an 1890 diary and accepted an 1891 one for a person supposedly writing in 1888 and 1889. What I would like to note is that:

1) We cannot ignore the difference between form and function. We all know that dated books are diaries by default - they don't need to be used to be diaries, they just are diaries. That's because the form of a diary is well-established. We also know that almost anything you can write on can become a 'diary' by dint of the purpose it then serves (it's function).

2) I can see no reason to think that Michael Barrett - in the pre-internet age especially - would have been so liberal in his request for an 1880-1890 diary if he thought for a moment that what he might get back might be a simple notebook which had one or more entries in for the 1880s or 1890. Reason tells me that - if he imagined for a moment that that would be possible - he would simply have done what the rest of us would have done and asked for an unused or partly-used document from 1880 to 1890 with at least twenty blank pages.

3) On being told that Martin Earl had an 1891 diary, I consider it literally asinine to then suggest that Barrett did not ask if there were any tell-tale signs on it which would reveal that it was self-evidently an 1891 diary and that '1891' was printed all over it - on every single page of the sections for entries.

4) This argument seems to hang for some people not on the asking for an impossible date and then accepting another (as it would for people who are not seeking to make an argument where none exists) but on the request for at least twenty blank pages (the convenience of bias, eh!). Indeed, at least one poster has asked the question and stated his conclusion thus, "The only question is, and always has been: why did Mike so badly want a Victorian diary with blank pages. As I've said, the question answers itself." which is simply untrue, the question most certainly does not answer itself, it simply answers the bias of the person who posted it. Given the evidence of a man apparently unsophisticated in semantic weaving seeking an impossible diary and then accepting one, the far more plausible answer to the question, above, would be, "Because he already had one". If any poster is struggling to understand why this is a very strong possibility, I refer you to my posts of old.

I might also politely point out that I was being kind when I used the term 'some people', above, as the truth is that we are not being inundated with the conventional cacophony of posts in support of this particular poster's position regarding what we all understand a diary to be and what a non-diary document might be turned into. This suggests very strongly to me that he - and he alone - is pursuing a losing argument that none of the usual suspects is willing to embarrass themselves in support of. RJ attempted a blindside pat-on-the-back-but-shut-the-****-up-before-you-make-an-even-bigger-arse-of-yourself, but sometimes a juggernaut out of control simply can't be stopped.

I find it sad that this is all someone needs to think they know in order to be rid of such a turbulent beast as the Maybrick scrapbook.

What the hell is "an unused or partly used document from 1880 to 1890"? What a mad request that would have been! I'm quite sure that neither Earl or anyone who read such an advertisement would have understood what that was directed towards. Enough of this crazy hindsight re-wording of the advertisement, it's getting nowhere.

The fact that you may find it "literally asinine" that Mike didn't ask Earl certain questions means nothing. You seem to have forgotten that Earl hadn't seen the diary so wouldn't have been able to answer a single question about it. No doubt he read out to Mike a description he'd been given by his supplier and that was all he had to work with.

You continue to spout nonsense by speaking of "an impossible date". Even Caz has admitted (in #1142) that 1891 was not an impossible date for an 1888 diary. I've provided actual examples which demonstrate how an 1891 diary could have been used to create a fake 1888 diary. In response, you've provided nothing. Not one single piece of objective empirical evidence about what a historical diary would be expected to look like.

The question as to why Mike so badly wanted a Victorian diary with blank pages does answer itself. You've certainly not provided any alternative answer that comes even close to making sense. Saying he "already had one" does not explain it in any way. It's pretty much the opposite of an explanation!

[Herlock Sholmes]

“I find it sad that this is all someone needs to think they know in order to be rid of such a turbulent beast as the Maybrick scrapbook.”

In terms of ‘sadness’ absolutely nothing…and I do mean nothing, comes remotely close to the utterly desperate and lamentable sadness of the contortions, offences to reason, logic and common sense and the constant attempts at the twisting of reality of these awful and obvious attempts at making excuse after excuse after excuse to prop up this blatantly forged diary. I’m convinced that if we had video footage of Anne and Mike forging a diary someone would suggest that they were rehearsing a play or that they had invented a new game or that David Orsam had hired two people to disguise themselves as Anne and Mike.