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

[Observer]

You are on fire!

I fear not Ikey old boy, got mixed up with my Johnnie, and Eddie's

[Observer]

You are on fire!

Indeed, I have great balls

[John Wheat]

Nope, the term 'Johnny-Come-Lately' (as I use it here) refers to anyone launching themselves into a debate of many decades standing positing inherent 'truths' they have borrowed from others and demanding answers to questions which have been rinsed and repeated a thousand times. It is a commonly enough used expression, and perhaps others take a different meaning from it than I.

I love it when a new poster comes onto these threads (it has to be these threads as I almost never venture on to any non-Maybrick ones) and you will find that I and others have frequently humoured what might otherwise be rather worn-out canards. Indeed, I have frequently asked new posters to post because I fear that they fear they will be ridiculed. I still regret the loss of Tempus Omnia Revelat to The Greatest Thread of All because he had some brilliant ideas but whose tolerance for the sadly-inevitable antipathy was too low to battle on. No-one could blame him but he was a massive loss to our little community. I've said many times before that I regret Lord Orsam's sensational 'resignation' (he was booted off) from the Casebook because he was - as I have said before - anti-matter to Keith Skinner's matter where researching this case is concerned. He also had a sense of humour which counts very highly in my book because this is not a court of law and no crimes have been committed bar the ones we seek to solve.

When the answers to your questions are all well-documented and the counter-arguments to your well-worn arguments are all there in the record, it is as frustrating as hell to find that they are coming from someone who is about as active on this site as it is possible to get which makes me wonder how on earth they can hold such trenchant views when they have almost never posted on this theme and never shown any interest in its subject despite the frequent repeating of the arguments they apparently now hold so dearly.

Sorry but this is guff.

[caz]

Has it occurred to you that the date on the cheque---May 1992---worked to Anne's advantage? If she could leave the impression that the purchase had been made after Barrett had already taken the diary to London, and she seems to have done so, wouldn't that have diffused any lingering suspicions about the red diary? That greatly complicates things--her 'cooperation' could have been only to leave a false impression.

Has it further occurred to you that Anne might have deliberately let Mike become a 'late payer' back in March 1992 so the cheque would be misleadingly postdated to a harmless month?

We have been informed by Caroline Brown that at that some point Anne muttered something along the lines of she 'thought' the diary was purchased 'pre-Doreen' but I see that as little more than an escape route if it became necessary. Considering that twenty-five quid was a fair amount of money, that she allegedly 'threw' the signed cheque at Mike in anger, and that the Barretts had been sent a chasing letter or letters by Martin Earl, I find it extremely difficult to believe that Anne didn't remember Mike was a late payer. Yet she didn't explicitly tell this to anyone, and Keith ultimately learned it from Earl---not from Anne.

Housekeeping time, although I appreciate if there has been some tidying up in my absence, as I have yet to read everything beyond the above post...

There is no evidence that Anne was delighted to be able to date the cheque to May 1992 and leave the impression that the diary had already been seen in London before Mike set about obtaining the red one. Her reference to thinking this was 'pre-Doreen' comes from Keith's notes, and 'thinking' is not the same as 'knowing', so until Keith took up the investigation again and obtained documentary evidence for Mike's request, he only had the May date for when the red diary became Anne's property.

Martin Earl told us - and I'm sure this has been posted before - that he didn't send out written reminders but would have chased Mike's payment over the phone, in which case Anne need not have known that Mike owed anyone money until he finally had to tell her what he had done and ask for that cheque. She could only have remembered Mike was a 'late payer' if she knew it had reached that stage, but there is no evidence that she ever saw an invoice or knew when the red diary had first arrived in the post.

It's a judgment call, Ike, if you want to cozy up to Anne's honesty or hold her feet to the fire, it's your decision. I go the latter route, but then, I have my sociopathic relative to lean on. I've seen evasions and half-truths again and again.

A bit drastic, holding a woman's feet to the fire, to force her into admitting whether she was deceiving Feldman from July 1994, or had been deceiving her husband since the summer of 1991. She obviously had her own personal reasons for deceiving one of them, but the diary itself may have had very little to do with it, apart from being the means to whatever end she had in mind at the time. If she didn't lie about it by omission in 1991 to keep Mike happy, she lied about it in 1994 to keep Feldman happy. If the diary meant nothing to her, it meant everything to them and she knew it. Deceiving is deceiving, but it's not invariably practised for purely selfish reasons, let alone criminal ones. In Anne's case, self preservation may have played as big a part as the welfare of her daughter going forward. But I can understand how anyone who has ever been lied to by a woman might be incapable of seeing it in that light.

You have the book in your collection, Ike. I've seen you mention it. Ripper Diary: Inside Story.

I find the episode extremely bizarre. I think it puts Anne in a bad light. Feldman had strange theories about people not being who they said they were. He also harassed Anne's in-laws, including one episode where he brought Anne's sister-in-law to tears.

As such, one would think Anne would have been very careful not to encourage Feldman's bizarre theories. Instead, she once went along with his craziness and told him her real name was not Anne Graham. I'll chase down the exact reference if I get the time later tonight. It was apparently around the same time she nearly convinced Feldy she was a member of MI-5.

If Palmer has since found the exact reference, he will no doubt have conceded that we were not quoting Anne directly, regarding her real name not being Anne Graham. The source for her telling Feldman this was - drum roll - Feldman himself, who was passing on to Keith his own version of what she had said. A subsequent passage makes it clear that, according to Anne herself, she had wanted to make Feldman believe fully that "I was who I said I was and Michael was indeed Michael Barrett".

The argument will be that neither source can be trusted, but I'm just correcting a mistaken impression of who was saying what to whom.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Johnny-Come-Lately?

I honestly thought you wrote Johnny-Cochrane is back.

He was more likely to be speaking of OJ Simpson's lawyer. I mean, the defence of the diary is now reduced to gibberish, cryptic, meaningless expressions which cannot be understood by anyone, including those who use them! It reminds me of the famous Chewbacca Defence by Johnnie Cochran from South Park whereby what you guys seem to be saying is that if Chewbecca lives on the planet Endor with a bunch of 2-foot-tall Ewoks, Michael Barrett had plausible deniability which means the diary is genuine. It certainly make as much sense as the stuff you've been posting recently.

[rjpalmer]

There is no evidence that Anne was delighted to be able to date the cheque to May 1992 and leave the impression that the diary had already been seen in London before Mike set about obtaining the red one.

I never said there was any evidence--none of us were there--I asked if you had considered the possibility.

I have, and I think it is highly plausible.

The oddness of this suspicious purchase being a late payment, the oddness in how the cheque was filled out (as if Anne wanted no part of it), along with Keith still believing four years later that the diary had been ordered in May 1992 all adds up to make one wonder, and all we have against this is the word of Anne Graham--whom, by your own admission, told a whole string of lies to Keith and Feldman and Shirley.

We also only have Anne's word that Mike had told her that he had 'just wanted to see what a diary looked like'---which makes no sense once we see Earl's advertisement. Again, there is no evidence that Mike didn't say this, but I'm not inclined to believe it because it doesn't make any sense.

It would be entirely different if you believed that Anne was truthful with Keith about seeing the diary in the 1960s, or that there was an oral tradition linking Formby to Yapp, etc.

If that was the case, I could understand why you would believe that Anne was giving her level best cooperation.

But since you don't, I find it odd that you're bending over backwards to portray Anne as cooperative on this single, solitary occasion. She was over a barrel.

A subsequent passage makes it clear that, according to Anne herself, she had wanted to make Feldman believe fully that "I was who I said I was and Michael was indeed Michael Barrett".

The argument will be that neither source can be trusted, but I'm just correcting a mistaken impression of who was saying what to whom.

[Emphasis added].

Yes, according to Anne herself.

Feldman had bizarre theories, but I trust his account over Anne's. I see no reason why he would tell such an odd lie to his own researcher. And then we have the MI-5 mumbo jumbo.

[rjpalmer]

Deceiving is deceiving, but it's not invariably practised for purely selfish reasons, let alone criminal ones.

You're the one who seemed to suggest that Anne lied over a period of many years because Feldman had promised to make her a millionaire if she supported his theories.

If Feldman secured a film deal based on Anne's provenance, wouldn't that have been fraud?

[Herlock Sholmes]

Housekeeping time, although I appreciate if there has been some tidying up in my absence, as I have yet to read everything beyond the above post...

There is no evidence that Anne was delighted to be able to date the cheque to May 1992 and leave the impression that the diary had already been seen in London before Mike set about obtaining the red one. Her reference to thinking this was 'pre-Doreen' comes from Keith's notes, and 'thinking' is not the same as 'knowing', so until Keith took up the investigation again and obtained documentary evidence for Mike's request, he only had the May date for when the red diary became Anne's property.

Martin Earl told us - and I'm sure this has been posted before - that he didn't send out written reminders but would have chased Mike's payment over the phone, in which case Anne need not have known that Mike owed anyone money until he finally had to tell her what he had done and ask for that cheque. She could only have remembered Mike was a 'late payer' if she knew it had reached that stage, but there is no evidence that she ever saw an invoice or knew when the red diary had first arrived in the post.



A bit drastic, holding a woman's feet to the fire, to force her into admitting whether she was deceiving Feldman from July 1994, or had been deceiving her husband since the summer of 1991. She obviously had her own personal reasons for deceiving one of them, but the diary itself may have had very little to do with it, apart from being the means to whatever end she had in mind at the time. If she didn't lie about it by omission in 1991 to keep Mike happy, she lied about it in 1994 to keep Feldman happy. If the diary meant nothing to her, it meant everything to them and she knew it. Deceiving is deceiving, but it's not invariably practised for purely selfish reasons, let alone criminal ones. In Anne's case, self preservation may have played as big a part as the welfare of her daughter going forward. But I can understand how anyone who has ever been lied to by a woman might be incapable of seeing it in that light.



If Palmer has since found the exact reference, he will no doubt have conceded that we were not quoting Anne directly, regarding her real name not being Anne Graham. The source for her telling Feldman this was - drum roll - Feldman himself, who was passing on to Keith his own version of what she had said. A subsequent passage makes it clear that, according to Anne herself, she had wanted to make Feldman believe fully that "I was who I said I was and Michael was indeed Michael Barrett".

The argument will be that neither source can be trusted, but I'm just correcting a mistaken impression of who was saying what to whom.

Hi Caz,

If we're going to do some housekeeping about the cheque and the red diary, we need to correct a few statements that have been posted on this forum.

The first is by you on 12 February 2025 (#542 of this thread):

"But of course, Anne did have a choice when Mike presented her with the bill for £25 for an 1891 diary, for which payment was overdue. She could have ripped him a new one and told him to return it whence it came, knowing it had been sent on approval..."


Anne could not have told Mike to return the diary from whence it came "knowing it had been sent on approval" because it had not been sent on approval.

…

Similarly, this post by you on 5 July 2023 (#674 of "who were they" thread) is equally wrong:

"If she knew the red diary was a failed attempt by Mike to source the raw materials for a hoax, she missed a trick by keeping it and paying for it by cheque. She could have returned it whence it came, knowing that whatever Mike had asked for, in order to fake Maybrick's diary, it wasn't one for the year 1891, with printed dates throughout."


And then the source of all this erroneous thinking being your post of 8th September 1990 in the "One Incontrovertible..." thread (#6111):

"The very fact that payment was not asked for up front demonstrates that Martin agreed, on this occasion, to send him the 1891 diary on approval, which meant taking on the financial risk himself. "

The fact that payment was not asked for up front does not demonstrate that Martin agreed to send Mike the 1891 diary on approval because Martin's terms and conditions still applied whereby Mike could only have returned the diary if it was not as described. Otherwise he was legally obliged to pay for it.

…


Those corrections made, if your answer to my question as to why Anne didn't help Keith and let him know that the cheque was dated 18th May 1992 due to it being a late payment for a diary received in March, you are saying that Anne didn't know any this in August 1995, which strikes me as very surprising and highly unlikely, I can’t understand why you didn't say this to me in your #1146 of 9th July after I asked you about it on 3rd July.

The phrase "pre-Doreen" on its own means nothing because Mike might well have started to acquire a Victorian diary before he saw Doreen in order "to see what a Victorian diary looked like" but the whole point is that the cheque appears to show Mike acquiring the diary after he saw Doreen which would rule out the possibility of him using it to create a Victorian diary to present to Doreen. And that's exactly what Keith thought it showed. So, really, what Keith got from Anne was evidence that would tend to disprove what Mike said in his affidavit (when Keith saw it in 1997) about rejecting the red diary prior to seeing Doreen in London and then seeking out a photograph album at an auction to use to create the Ripper diary.

Whether by accident or design, the fact of the matter is that the cheque deceived Keith Skinner into thinking Mike was lying about the red diary for many years. If Anne was intending to be helpful by handing over the cheque to Keith without any explanation of why it was dated post-Doreen, the actual result was the very opposite of this. It's a real shame too because, having read Mike's January 1995 affidavit (which she didn't mention to Keith), Anne would have fully appreciated the significance of the date that Mike acquired the red diary within Mike's forgery story. It's a good thing that Anne isn't known to have lied about other matters, and has a reputation for being scrupulously honest, otherwise her actions would seem very suspicious.

[Lombro2]

Plausible deniability doesn’t mean the Diary is genuine. It’s supposed to plausibly deny accusations of knowingly possessing a stolen item.

You have Debunking Authenticity on the brain.

Is there anything genuine you like in this field— as in discussing genuine serial killers?

Nothing new. Nothing real. Nothing genuine.

[Lombro2]

But you’re right.

The Ripper was Bury(ied).

He wasn’t Cream(ated).

[rjpalmer]

If Palmer has since found the exact reference, he will no doubt have conceded that we were not quoting Anne directly, regarding her real name not being Anne Graham. The source for her telling Feldman this was - drum roll - Feldman himself, who was passing on to Keith his own version of what she had said. A subsequent passage makes it clear that, according to Anne herself, she had wanted to make Feldman believe fully that "I was who I said I was and Michael was indeed Michael Barrett".

I'm still looking for the second reference, because I think it's still out there, but in the meantime, there's another passage in Inside Story where Feldman claims that Anne gave him a false name.

"Furthermore, [Feldman] recalled that Anne had once told him that her maiden name was Jones, rather than Graham." [pg. 99]

The authors seem to have later asked Anne about this, because she denied it and blamed it on Feldman becoming muddled.

"In fact, Feldman had got the connection wrong, Anne would later reveal. Jones was the maiden name of her grandfather's first wife." [p. 99]

Hmmm. It seems rather strange that Feldman could have misremembered Anne giving an alternative maiden name with an obscure detail about the name of her grandfather's first wife.

I'm not sure that rises to the level of what Lombro would call "plausible deniability," but I wasn't there and can't disprove it.

It's curious that two people who both believe Anne told porkies are even bothering to have this conversation.

RP

[Herlock Sholmes]

Plausible deniability doesn’t mean the Diary is genuine. It’s supposed to plausibly deny accusations of knowingly possessing a stolen item.

You have Debunking Authenticity on the brain.

Is there anything genuine you like in this field— as in discussing genuine serial killers?

Nothing new. Nothing real. Nothing genuine.

The formulation of the wording of the Chewbacca Defence, Lombro, was, believe it or not, a joke. Satire. Because I do feel like I'm continually asking you guys to explain why Chewbacca lives on the planet Endor and getting no response.

The real question I've been asking you is how would being in possession of a real diary from the period 1880-1890, with a minimum of 20 blank pages, have enabled to Michael Barrett to have plausibly denied anything?

We've made some progress in that you've now revealed that what you think Mike was intending to deny was "knowingly possessing a stolen item". Because, until now, one possibility is that he could have been intending to deny point blank being in possession of Jack the Ripper's diary (stolen or otherwise).

But surely Mike already had a cover story lined up for how he obtained Jack the Ripper's diary. He was going to say that he received it from his dead friend, Tony Devereux, in 1991. If it was stolen he had no idea where Tony had got it from. That was his "plausible deniability" of knowingly being in possession of a stolen item, wasn't it? That's what he told Scotland Yard in 1993, wasn't it?

How was having a genuine Victorian diary with blank pages, legitimately purchased, going to be better than this or, to put it another way, how was having a genuine Victorian diary with blank pages, legitimately purchased, going to enable him to deny knowingly being in possession of a (different) stolen diary?

And who was he anticipating was going to ask him if he was knowingly in possession of a stolen item? Doreen? His wife? The police? The diary's owner? These are all very different because two of those would be expected to know what the stolen item looked like, wouldn't they?

Please articulate it because, as I keep saying, at the moment it doesn't make any sense and strikes me as nonsensical gibberish.

[caz]

You're the one who seemed to suggest that Anne lied over a period of many years because Feldman had promised to make her a millionaire if she supported his theories.

If Feldman secured a film deal based on Anne's provenance, wouldn't that have been fraud?

I did not 'suggest' this had to be Anne's motive, or her only motive, for speaking to Feldman. I stated the fact that she had spoken about him making her a millionaire if he managed to secure a film deal. Am I meant to have ignored it or pretended it never happened?

My understanding is that the deal being negotiated by Feldman did not depend on Anne supporting his theories with her 'in the family' story, but only required her to sign a document to confirm that nobody would be claiming prior ownership of the diary. If she had been made rich on that basis, we can all think it would have been highly immoral, but it's not evidence that she had helped to create the diary, or that she knew there was a previous owner with a legitimate claim on it. Paul Dodd had long since made it clear that if it had been found in his house he had never known it was there. Who else was going to challenge her signed confirmation? Ironically, nobody else could have claimed prior ownership if she had written it herself!

I'm not seeking to defend Anne's known behaviour, but there's little point in speculating further about what she did and what she knew, based on misunderstandings or errors of fact concerning the details.

If Mike brought the diary home in March 1992 and Anne later suspected - but didn't know - that it had come from Dodd's house, the story she told Feldman in July 1994 would have served to backdate its emergence by a century, but also to reassure him that he had been right to reject anything claimed by the electricians.

[caz]

Housekeeping time, although I appreciate if there has been some tidying up in my absence, as I have yet to read everything beyond the above post...

There is no evidence that Anne was delighted to be able to date the cheque to May 1992 and leave the impression that the diary had already been seen in London before Mike set about obtaining the red one. Her reference to thinking this was 'pre-Doreen' comes from Keith's notes, and 'thinking' is not the same as 'knowing', so until Keith took up the investigation again and obtained documentary evidence for Mike's request, he only had the May date for when the red diary became Anne's property.

Martin Earl told us - and I'm sure this has been posted before - that he didn't send out written reminders but would have chased Mike's payment over the phone, in which case Anne need not have known that Mike owed anyone money until he finally had to tell her what he had done and ask for that cheque. She could only have remembered Mike was a 'late payer' if she knew it had reached that stage, but there is no evidence that she ever saw an invoice or knew when the red diary had first arrived in the post.

I meant to add...

In 1995, I wonder if Anne could even have imagined that one day in the future it would be theorised that the Maybrick diary didn't even exist when the 1891 diary had been ordered and sent to Goldie Street. If Mike delivered his affidavit to her by hand in the January, as he claimed, and she had bothered to read it, she'd have known he was claiming that all the action, including the purchase of the 'very small' red diary, had taken place back in early 1990, which was obviously nonsense. She knew very well that Mike had asked her to pay for this diary in 1992. I think she would have laughed out loud if anyone had suggested to her in 1995 that the diary was faked by herself and Mike in April 1992, after having to reject a tiny diary for 1891 with printed dates on every page. Why in God's name would anyone have left it that late to even think about what they really needed to ask for and to begin their search, for something they had already promised to show Doreen? Mike could not have described the diary or answered any questions about it if it didn't yet exist and he had no idea if it ever would.

When Mike put in his request, asking for at least 20 blank pages, was he expecting those pages to be blank on both sides? If so, that would have amounted to at least 40 sides of paper that could be written on. Would he have needed to ask for that many, if he had a prepared typescript of the diary and knew the exact number of A4 sheets used?

[rjpalmer]

I think she would have laughed out loud if anyone had suggested to her in 1995 that the diary was faked by herself and Mike in April 1992, after having to reject a tiny diary for 1891 with printed dates on every page.

Possibly, but didn't Martin Fido remark that Anne frequently let out 'peels of girlish laughter' whenever she was nervous and wanted to quickly change the subject?