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

[caz]

It’s already been proven that the diary wasn't "in a hole". The inclusion in the diary of the expression "a one off instance" proves that it wasn't written until after 1945 and thus couldn't have been placed in any kind of hole.

Ah, so before 1946 the words 'one', 'off' and 'instance' had yet to be invented, and between 1946 and 1992, there were no holes of any kind anywhere, not even in Blackburn, Lancashire?

It's funny, but sadly not in the same way as the Edinburgh Fringe.

[Observer]

I guess that makes me 50% of the "people".

So 50% of the people agree with Observer. Maybrick was not a top hated toff. The top hated toffs would be lower level government workers like William Suff. We have some of those here.

Those guys are the Suff of Nightmares!

Indeed, certain one's make me quite Sickert

[Observer]

Try lower middle class, Observer, and I suspect you'd be nearer the mark. These days, he'd be called working class.

Love,

Caz
X

Yes, I tried lower middle class but decided he was better than that, and he was in my opinion. But it's all subjective isn't it ? My point was - there's no way he was a top toff

[Herlock Sholmes]

Oh, I didn't realise you had been corrected concerning your previous insistence that it is 'impossible' to positively match disguised handwriting to the individual using it.

Or is it only professional handwriting examiners who can't do this, while amateurs can 'match' whatever they like to anyone of their choosing? At least it would be consistent with the funny but sad argument that Alec Voller, who actually formulated his own ink - Diamine - wouldn't know it on the page from a bar of soap, while the amateurs saw it a mile off.

Have you been able to match the diary handwriting to Anne's? I trust you are not referring to samples she once wrote for Keith on the spur of the moment, which also look nothing like the diary handwriting. If so, I would gently suggest that if she had penned it, she'd have been mentally deficient to deliberately disguise her normal hand again for those samples, and show off a natural ability to change it at will, when she could simply have replicated her normal hand as easily as falling off a log.

So is she manipulative or mentally deficient in your view? Or both?

Did I say that the disguised handwriting can be positively matched to Anne's handwriting? No, I didn’t. If it could be positively matched, it's all over. Can it be matched though? Yes, it can.

When I speak of the handwriting match, I'm talking, as you know, about the examples of her normal handwriting which have been posted on this forum.

As for the handwriting sample that Anne provided to Keith Skinner in 1995, I asked you on 1st July (#948) to explain why this handwriting sample looks so different to her normal handwriting. I repeated this question the next day (#960) then again on 8th July (#1129) and then again on 23rd July (#1534). My question remains unanswered. Will you ever explain it? Don’t you find it ‘strange’?

Regarding your own question to me, I don't understand it. It seems like Anne wanted to ensure that a handwriting expert wasn't going to be able to compare her normal handwriting to the diary handwriting because she was worried it might be matched. I can't see why that means she has to be either manipulative or mentally deficient. Might she simply not have feared that her role in the forgery could be exposed if she provided a sample of her normal handwriting?

[Herlock Sholmes]

It started off well with: 'It looks like...', but substituting the word 'because' for 'if' is a better look for your argument.

If we knew Mike did end up using an auction find to create the diary, none of us would be here arguing the toss.

Just sayin'.

So your argument now is that 1888 and 1889 were not in the 1880s?

The remaining tired old arguments in the rest of your post have been disposed of many times. There's nothing in them. They are obviously just a (very ineffective) way of you trying to get round the frustrating fact that you're unable to come up with a single plausible reason why Mike wanted those blank Victorian pages.

[Herlock Sholmes]

No need to apologise for poor eyesight - unless you have ignored your eye test reminders.

Nobody wants the bailiffs to come round but they do, regardless, or it wouldn't be the 'common and very well known procedure for debt recovery' which you so eloquently describe, would it? There's even a reality show on Channel 5 tonight called: Call the Bailiffs: Time to Pay Up! Series 3, 9th out of 12 episodes.

Being a bailiff would be a cushy number if the mere threat of one beating a path to the door of the Mike Barretts of this world was enough to make them all roll over and cough up. But this is the real world, and you have rightly acknowledged the need for bailiffs to do more than growl from the sidelines at people who owe money.

If they ever come up with a show called: Repossession: Time to Pay Up - or find your locks changed while you were down the boozer pissing away your benefits, it would be a better fit for Mike Barrett and his circumstances after the breadwinner fled from his abuse, I'll grant you.

You may argue that this is all totally irrelevant, but you invoked the spectre of bailiffs, to put the willies up Mike Barrett, and have become bogged down by your own irrelevant argument.

What makes this relevant is the ease with which your argument can be refuted by the wealth of actual evidence we have about Mike's character and known behaviour.

This is nothing to do with speculation as far as I'm concerned; we all do that when the evidence is lacking, some more wildly than others. This, for me, is about how closely your arguments in general fit with the facts, the evidence and the known context. If your argument itself is irrelevant, but as easily refuted as this one, what does it say about arguments you make that are absolutely crucial to your own theory that the Barretts jointly created the diary in early April 1992?

I'm at a loss to know what you're even talking about. Is your argument that because bailiffs come round to houses of people who can't or won't pay their debts that Mike wouldn't have cared if bailiffs came knocking at his door over the sum of £25 which we know his wife had the funds to pay? It doesn't make any sense.

I guess I need to remind you that this all started because you misunderstood Earl's terms and conditions. You wrongly said that no payment needed to be made in May 1992, or at all. All I've done is draw to your attention that the red diary legally needed to be paid for or there would have been undesirable consequences. I can't think of anything more uncontroversial or less worthy of extended commentary.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Ah, so before 1946 the words 'one', 'off' and 'instance' had yet to be invented, and between 1946 and 1992, there were no holes of any kind anywhere, not even in Blackburn, Lancashire?

It's funny, but sadly not in the same way as the Edinburgh Fringe.

Well, Caz, on 3rd February I asked Lombro in this thread (#235): "How did a diary created at some point between 1945 and 1992 inclusive end up beneath the nailed down floorboards of Battlecrease?" Answer came there none.

Funnily enough, it was a question I'd already asked you on 29th January (#161), and then again on 25th June (#895), but there was no answer from you on either occasion.

So let me try it again with this new wording: How could a fake Maybrick diary created after 1945 have found itself "in a hole" and then come out of that hole to end up in the hands of Mike Barrett?

Just to answer your own questions. Firstly, the expression "one off instance" was not an expression which entered the English language prior to 1945. The way you phrase it is a bit like a diary purporting to be from 1958 referring to the author having watched Coronation Street (first broadcast in 1960) and you asking if the words "Coronation" and "Street" didn't exist in 1958. Yes, it really is that daft! There were plenty of holes in England after 1945 but if you're not talking about a hole under the floorboards of Battlecrease you might as well be talking about a hole on the moon because your and Lombro's theory relates to one hole and one hole only.

[caz]

It wasn't a matter of Anne being "the only game in town," as Caroline likes to claim. He didn't have to go to bat for Anne, and he made no secret about the fact that he believed her. Perhaps he still does in some small way. I don't know.

It's not my phrase. It's Keith's, and it's also his claim. For him it was very much a matter of Anne's provenance being 'the only game in town' when she first gave her account to Feldman in July 1994, which gave Keith something at last that he could work with. I wasn't around back then, but up until that point, there was only Mike's claim to have been given the diary by Devereux to "do something with", with no information about its origins, and then came his complete change of story in June 1994, claiming to have forged it with no involvement from Devereux, which his solicitor quickly retracted on his behalf, sensing the wretched man's mental instability.

No, Keith didn't have to bat for Anne, any more than Palmer has to see her up to her elbows in Diamine ink around All Fools' Day 1992, appropriately enough. By 2004, Keith had an alternative possibility he could consider seriously, with evidence this time to support it. To give him credit, he conceded openly in 2007 that Anne could well have been lying to him and everyone else about the diary's origins since 1994. But regardless of how manipulative she could be, or how many lies or contradictions she could have come out with before breakfast, following her "in the family" claim, Keith would not to my knowledge count this as evidence that she must have created, or helped Mike to create the diary back in 1992. That would be a whole different game of test cricket. If forgery had been the only possible explanation for Anne telling lies about where the diary came from, things might have been different, but it wasn't and it isn't, despite all the usual denials and howls of protest.

[caz]

Yes, I tried lower middle class but decided he was better than that, and he was in my opinion. But it's all subjective isn't it ? My point was - there's no way he was a top toff

Better than that, Observer? What would make someone who was, or considered themselves to be, upper middle class 'better' than someone who was happy to know their place, among the lower middle or working classes?

Reminds me of a sketch...

But I agree with you that Maybrick was no top toff. He just fancied himself as one, which, in my subjective opinion, made him a top snob.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Did I say that the disguised handwriting can be positively matched to Anne's handwriting? No, I didn’t. If it could be positively matched, it's all over. Can it be matched though? Yes, it can.

When I speak of the handwriting match, I'm talking, as you know, about the examples of her normal handwriting which have been posted on this forum.

As for the handwriting sample that Anne provided to Keith Skinner in 1995, I asked you on 1st July (#948) to explain why this handwriting sample looks so different to her normal handwriting. I repeated this question the next day (#960) then again on 8th July (#1129) and then again on 23rd July (#1534). My question remains unanswered. Will you ever explain it? Don’t you find it ‘strange’?

Regarding your own question to me, I don't understand it. It seems like Anne wanted to ensure that a handwriting expert wasn't going to be able to compare her normal handwriting to the diary handwriting because she was worried it might be matched. I can't see why that means she has to be either manipulative or mentally deficient. Might she simply not have feared that her role in the forgery could be exposed if she provided a sample of her normal handwriting?

A match is a match, even when the argument is spent.

I thought I had just addressed your argument about the sample given to Keith, and the only reason I find it 'strange' is the one I gave, that a forger would have to have a screw loose to deliberately change their handwriting again, showing off an ability to do so, particularly in the immediate wake of a vengeful spouse swearing that affidavit and shoving it through their letter hole.

Anne didn't shy away from writing letters to Mike, presumably in her usual hand, so he could have submitted much larger and more representative samples to Keith at any time, for a handwriting expert to compare directly with the diary, if he had really wanted to expose his own wife. The samples Anne herself supplied on request would have proved nothing in that event, and they still prove nothing.

I don't care if you 'understand' any of this or not. I don't have to answer to you. And nor, apparently, did Anne have to answer to Mike or anyone else, concerning her nonmatching handwriting. It's truly desperate to argue that a mismatch is actually a match by a missus.

[caz]

So your argument now is that 1888 and 1889 were not in the 1880s?

Don't be so fatuous. It's another sign of your own desperate arguments.

Context, old boy. Context.

Without it you are just pissing in the wind.

[caz]

Well, Caz, on 3rd February I asked Lombro in this thread (#235): "How did a diary created at some point between 1945 and 1992 inclusive end up beneath the nailed down floorboards of Battlecrease?" Answer came there none.

Funnily enough, it was a question I'd already asked you on 29th January (#161), and then again on 25th June (#895), but there was no answer from you on either occasion.

So let me try it again with this new wording: How could a fake Maybrick diary created after 1945 have found itself "in a hole" and then come out of that hole to end up in the hands of Mike Barrett?

Just to answer your own questions. Firstly, the expression "one off instance" was not an expression which entered the English language prior to 1945. The way you phrase it is a bit like a diary purporting to be from 1958 referring to the author having watched Coronation Street (first broadcast in 1960) and you asking if the words "Coronation" and "Street" didn't exist in 1958. Yes, it really is that daft! There were plenty of holes in England after 1945 but if you're not talking about a hole under the floorboards of Battlecrease you might as well be talking about a hole on the moon because your and Lombro's theory relates to one hole and one hole only.

For some reason, a hole beginning with A is all I can think about right now.

You can word it any way you like and continue doing so until we all die of boredom. It still won't make the diary emerge from an auction beginning with A for Awesome.

[Observer]

Better than that, Observer? What would make someone who was, or considered themselves to be, upper middle class 'better' than someone who was happy to know their place, among the lower middle or working classes?

Reminds me of a sketch...

But I agree with you that Maybrick was no top toff. He just fancied himself as one, which, in my subjective opinion, made him a top snob.

Love,

Caz
X

Indeed, think of that sketch, and know your place.

What did I say regarding pedants? Enter the dragon .....oops, slip of the tongue, enter the pedant. If you were paying attention, it was only my opinion that he belonged to the upper middle classes, therefore better than an individual of the lower middle class. Of course I should have said I considered him better off financially than an individual of the lower middle classes. I did say the whole class system was subjective though. So, know your place[/QUOTE]

[Herlock Sholmes]

It started off well with: 'It looks like...', but substituting the word 'because' for 'if' is a better look for your argument.

If we knew Mike did end up using an auction find to create the diary, none of us would be here arguing the toss.

Just sayin'.

It was your premise I was responding to, Caz. You wanted me to explain why, if he was the forger, Mike didn't go "the whole hog". My answer was that, if he was the forget, he did. Given that you've now replied to my post twice, my answer must have really upset you.

[Herlock Sholmes]

A match is a match, even when the argument is spent.

I thought I had just addressed your argument about the sample given to Keith, and the only reason I find it 'strange' is the one I gave, that a forger would have to have a screw loose to deliberately change their handwriting again, showing off an ability to do so, particularly in the immediate wake of a vengeful spouse swearing that affidavit and shoving it through their letter hole.

Anne didn't shy away from writing letters to Mike, presumably in her usual hand, so he could have submitted much larger and more representative samples to Keith at any time, for a handwriting expert to compare directly with the diary, if he had really wanted to expose his own wife. The samples Anne herself supplied on request would have proved nothing in that event, and they still prove nothing.

I don't care if you 'understand' any of this or not. I don't have to answer to you. And nor, apparently, did Anne have to answer to Mike or anyone else, concerning her nonmatching handwriting. It's truly desperate to argue that a mismatch is actually a match by a missus.

No, I don't believe you have addressed it.


Why is Anne's handwriting in the sample so markedly different from her normal handwriting in her correspondence?

You seem to forget that the correspondence of hers that we have in her hand was written to Mike before Mike had accused her of forging the diary. The only letter of hers that we have after he did so is typewritten.

So, again, why was the handwriting in the sample she provided in 1995 so different from her normal handwriting from 1994?