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

[Iconoclast]

What are you babbling about, Ike? Do you really need someone to give you fictional dialogues before you can understand anything?

It's not difficult:

Supplier to Earl: "I don't have any diaries from 1880 to 1890 but I do have an 1891 De La Rue's Indelible Diary and Memorandum Book in good condition, size 2.25 inches by 4 inches with a red or maroon cover and four days to a page. Nearly all of the pages are blank and, at the end of the diary, are two Memoranda pages. On one of the two pages someone has written in blue biro 'EATON PLACE' and on the other 'ETON RISE'. Then there are four blank pages and on the last one is written in blue biro '19 W at 3 = 57 19 W at 4 = 76'. I'll sell it to you for [£20]".

Earl to Barrett: "I haven't been able to locate any diaries from 1880 to 1890 but I can offer you an 1891 De La Rue's Indelible Diary and Memorandum Book in good condition, size 2.25 inches by 4 inches with a red or maroon cover and four days to a page. Nearly all of the pages are blank and, at the end of the diary, are two Memoranda pages. On one of the two pages someone has written in blue biro 'EATON PLACE' and on the other 'ETON RISE'. Then there are four blank pages and on the last one is written in blue biro '19 W at 3 = 57 19 W at 4 = 76'. The cost to you will be £25."

Barrett to Earl: "Okay if that's all you can find I'll take it. It's great that nearly all the pages are blank which is what I asked for. Please send immediately and I'll pay once received."

Earl to Barrett: "No problem, will do."

Happy now?

Let's try again.

Your dialogue (above) is EXACTLY the dialogue Barrett might very well have had with Martin Earl. How are you getting on so far? Keeping up?

It is the dialogue of a man who does not need a document to write up a hoaxed diary of Jack the Ripper ... Still with me (James Maybrick died in May 1889, you see)?

... but - rather - is the dialogue of a man who wants a document he can produce if someone accuses him of recently coming into possession of a document bearing the records of Jack the Ripper's thoughts ... I know this is where I'll have lost you - but that's your one-way vision troubling you rather than my inability to explain a simple idea simply.

So your dialogue shows us clearly why a diary from 1889 or even 1890 was ordered and why one from 1891 was accepted: it was because he just wanted an insurance policy - plausible deniability if asked if he had recently come into possession of the record of Jack the Ripper's thoughts.

It's beautifully simplistic though I know in advance that even this simplicity will not seep into even the periphery of your one-way vision.

PS As I said the other day, yes, he would very soon have to show the real thing to Doreen Montgomery, but it was inevitable that the genie would be out of the bottle at that point whereas it was not necessarily inevitable that he would have to hand his priceless scrapbook back between mid-March and mid-April 1992 if he was able to source something he could try to pass off of an old document he had recently received which was marked by it having at least twenty blank pages. You can say it's gibberish or stupid or you can't understand it - do so all you like - but it works better than your desperately implausible notion that it is evidence that Barrett was creating an original hoaxed Jack the Ripper diary.

[rjpalmer]

Could you clarify where Keith wrote a very full and detailed description of the 1891 diary and made it clear he was fully aware of the context as to why Mike claimed he wanted the diary as I'm sure Keith will want to check the accuracy of your claim?

This has been gone over dozens of times, Ike. Why are you so constantly in a state of confusion?

Here is what C.A.B. wrote back in 2021:

"Keith Skinner has it in his possession and has described it as:

'...a small 1891 De La Rue's Indelible Diary and Memorandum Book… 2.25" by 4", dated 1891 throughout – three or four dates to a page. Nearly all of the pages are blank and at the end of the diary are two Memoranda pages. On one of the two pages someone has written in blue biro 'EATON PLACE' and on the other 'ETON RISE'. Then there are four blank pages and on the last one is written in blue biro '19 W at 3 = 57 19 W at 4 = 76'.'"

These are Keith's words, not Earl's, whose description to Barrett is not documented, and may have been vague since it's no proven that Earl ever saw the maroon diary.

I think what Herlock is suggesting is that if Earl had said something along the lines of "nearly all the pages are blank" (as Keith did) Barrett might have assumed that the pages had no printing on them. In Keith's description he does say 'three or four dates to a page" but we don't know that Earl made a similar comment and even if he did, Barrett might have understood this to mean handwritten dates on blank paper.

I hardly think you can pretend to read Mike Barrett's thoughts. I've been accused of reading Anne's--even when I merely quote her own words--but you seem to have escaped a similar accusation, though you continually tell us what Barrett thought and even invent imaginary conversations between Barrett and Earl.

Is that really a sound investigative approach? Or is it, to uses your own term, "special pleading"?

No matter what song & dance you and Caroline provide, you readers are NOT going to forget what is actually documented: Martin Earl's advertisement in Bookdealer, showing what Barrett had requested. It's not going to go away.

It's not like Herlock, Yabs, and I are anything other than interested members of the reading public. We're not lying when we say we aren't convinced by your arguments, nor are we lying when we tell you we see Barrett's request as highly suspicious.

You're insulting the intelligence of your readers, the police, Paul Dodd, Mike Barrett, and everyone else with your "doppelganger" theory.

No one who buys an allegedly stolen Diary of Jack the Ripper in the back booth of a pub is going to assume that the rightful owner won't be able to give a precise description of it.

This doppelganger business is barking mad.

[Iconoclast]

I have no idea what this means, or what you're asking.

No, of course you don't. But, then, you would say that, wouldn't you?

[Iconoclast]

So your entire objection to the 1891 diary hinges on the fact that, in your mind, Barrett simply must have asked the question: "Blank as in there are no dates on each page?". You cannot conceive of any possible alternative scenario in which Barrett did not ask that question? Is that seriously what you're telling us?

Why would you ask if I am 'seriously' telling anyone this? Does it not strike everyone as the very core of the issue if one is seeking a diary from that period to write a hoaxed Jack the Ripper record into and one has been informed that an 1891 diary with blank pages is available? To be clear, then, let me state it this way: I am aware that Mike Barrett accepted an 1891 diary from Martin Earl and that - if he was seeking it to hoax a record of Jack the Ripper's thoughts into - I cannot foresee any scenario at all whereby he would fail to check that it was suitable for this purpose. If told that there was an 1891 diary available, it seems inexplicable to me that that simple level of detail would not be requested unless Barrett was genuinely not thinking straight (there's your Get Out of Gaol card, right there, by the way). I would add, however, that accepting such a diary is actually strong evidence that he had some other purpose for it than simply seeking to hoax a record of Jack the Ripper's thoughts into so it would take a great deal more than "he just wasn't thinking straight" to shift me on this. Others may be less sturdy.

Obviously, we are at cross purposes (as Keith has reminded us): you - aligned as you are to the Jan 5, 1995, affidavit - must actually believe that it was Anne who did all the hard yards. Does Anne strike anyone as stupid enough to order up an 1891 diary without asking first what evidence there is in it that it is for 1891 or was she simply not thinking straight rather than Mike? Or do you not believe that bit of Alan Gray's Jan 5, 1995, affidavit either?

I desperately want you to wake up to the very real scenario here whereby you have created a series of apologetics for Michael Barrett who - in reality - had nothing whatsoever to do with the hoaxing of the James Maybrick scrapbook (if hoax it be). I can see that I am making little progress which surely reflects very badly on one of us (if not both)?

[Iconoclast]

If you don't believe me, why don't you just ask Keith Skinner? Because he wrote a very full and detailed description of the 1891 diary which did not include those words! And, unlike the supplier of the 1891 diary, he was fully aware of the context as to why Mike claimed he wanted the diary.

Could you clarify where Keith wrote a very full and detailed description of the 1891 diary and made it clear he was fully aware of the context as to why Mike claimed he wanted the diary as I'm sure Keith will want to check the accuracy of your claim? You are presumably referring to Mike's January 5 1995 affidavit? In the affidavit, Mike puts the responsibility of buying the 1891 diary on to Anne and that when it arrived, Mike assessed its potential and rejected it because "...it was very small." On the strength of that information, are you of the opinion that Mike had absolutely nothing to do with Martin Earl (and that it was Anne who had any discussion with him)?

Now, I need to be clear that these are questions directly from Keith himself so I trust I have represented them accurately.