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

[Scott Nelson]

Posted by Michael Banks above:

Ah, yes, Scott, the simple explanations are always the best.

Let's just go through your "explanations" in turn.

1. So Mike was intending to spend time and money writing and creating the third generationof the diary for no obvious reason, even though he had no penmanship skills, when he had a fully completed, old looking Jack the Ripper diary in front of him. Yes? What's the problem here? As I said his ego got the better of him. And, of course, we know that your opinion is based on an imagined diagnosis of Korsakoff Syndrome for Mike Barrett which makes you think he wasn't capable of creating a fake diary himself. And when he found out he couldn't, he turned over what he had.

2. Funnily enough, if the diary is in "Anne's disguised hand" that would explain why you wouldn't be able to see it because it's disguised. But most people can certainly see similarities in the unusual way that Anne forms certain characters which are similar to those of the diarist. If you can't see those similarities, you must be in denial. Not denial. I just can't see them. And if some people were being honest, they would admit they can't see them either. And it must either be a coincidence that Mike identified his wife as the scribe or he had spotted those similarities himself.

3. Why would "Devereux or one of his colleagues" have been investigating a quote in the diary to try and identify its source? I never said they were. What special abilities do you think Devereux or his anonymous colleagues had to find obscure English quotations? Since I'm proposing that the diary evolved through time, we can't identify who put it in or when the quote was incorporated.

4. The quirky expressions used by both Barrett and the diarist have been dealt with in a past thread: they include "so help me", his use of "regards", his use of "or I" and his use of "within". Even Caz accepts that Mike used similar quirky expressions to the diarist but believes that Mike picked them up from reading the diary, something which is highly unlikely for him to do and incorporate into his normal speech. I don't know, maybe the "quirky" expressions were Devereux's or somebody else's.

5. Your answer about Ryan makes no sense because the research notes were produced at Shirley's request after Mike brought the diary to London. But once Mike was no longer planning on rewriting the diary, there would have been no need to try and hide anything.

6. What is the basis of your belief that the diary is "second-generation morph of a spoof"? If it was "hidden in Battlecrease or some other place associated with Maybrick" why do you tell us that the diary had been found in Dodd's house? It would have to have been hidden in Dodd's house wouldn't it, to have been found there, not "some other place"? But who would have hidden it in Dodd's house around the turn of the century, and for what purpose? Michael Maybrick may have been tasked with hiding the spoof story/diary. It could have been found in Dodd's house or in Maybrick's office building.

I did say on numerous occasions that I thought Eddie came into the pub on March 9th with a story that had been told to him by the electricians, not a physical diary. Since Eddie would have already known that Mike had the diary, he knew this possible provenance would be important to Mike, who couldn't figure out where it came from.

I did suggest that Mike may have been tasked with finding ink, but he would have been kept in the dark about the creation of the diary even after it was in his hands.

You can, of course, hold whatever beliefs you want, and at least you agree with me that Mike must have been seeking a Victorian diary with blank pages to write upon those pages, which is something I suppose (thank you), but I'd like to comment that I don't find anything you've said plausible or convincing in the slightest. Naturally. Whether you care - and you probably don't - is entirely up to you but I very much doubt that anyone else will think this is the answer.

You're right, I don't care what you think. What I've presented over the past few years is a theory, which has been modified slightly at various times and will probably continue to change. People can consider parts of it possible or reject it outright. Do you honestly think you or anybody else have "the answer" - the absolute answer? Most, if not all of the time, you're just parroting Barrat anyway.

Thank you by the way, for keeping the gaslighting to a minimum this time. But I probably spoke too soon.

[Lombro2]

The scrip doesn’t have to be thrilling and action-packed. I’m sure Schtonk 1 wasn’t. It just has to make sense.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Posted by Michael Banks above:

Ah, yes, Scott, the simple explanations are always the best.

Let's just go through your "explanations" in turn.

1. So Mike was intending to spend time and money writing and creating the third generationof the diary for no obvious reason, even though he had no penmanship skills, when he had a fully completed, old looking Jack the Ripper diary in front of him. Yes? What's the problem here? As I said his ego got the better of him. And, of course, we know that your opinion is based on an imagined diagnosis of Korsakoff Syndrome for Mike Barrett which makes you think he wasn't capable of creating a fake diary himself. And when he found out he couldn't, he turned over what he had.

2. Funnily enough, if the diary is in "Anne's disguised hand" that would explain why you wouldn't be able to see it because it's disguised. But most people can certainly see similarities in the unusual way that Anne forms certain characters which are similar to those of the diarist. If you can't see those similarities, you must be in denial. Not denial. I just can't see them. And if some people were being honest, they would admit they can't see them either. And it must either be a coincidence that Mike identified his wife as the scribe or he had spotted those similarities himself.

3. Why would "Devereux or one of his colleagues" have been investigating a quote in the diary to try and identify its source? I never said they were. What special abilities do you think Devereux or his anonymous colleagues had to find obscure English quotations? Since I'm proposing that the diary evolved through time, we can't identify who put it in or when the quote was incorporated.

4. The quirky expressions used by both Barrett and the diarist have been dealt with in a past thread: they include "so help me", his use of "regards", his use of "or I" and his use of "within". Even Caz accepts that Mike used similar quirky expressions to the diarist but believes that Mike picked them up from reading the diary, something which is highly unlikely for him to do and incorporate into his normal speech. I don't know, maybe the "quirky" expressions were Devereux's or somebody else's.

5. Your answer about Ryan makes no sense because the research notes were produced at Shirley's request after Mike brought the diary to London. But once Mike was no longer planning on rewriting the diary, there would have been no need to try and hide anything.

6. What is the basis of your belief that the diary is "second-generation morph of a spoof"? If it was "hidden in Battlecrease or some other place associated with Maybrick" why do you tell us that the diary had been found in Dodd's house? It would have to have been hidden in Dodd's house wouldn't it, to have been found there, not "some other place"? But who would have hidden it in Dodd's house around the turn of the century, and for what purpose? Michael Maybrick may have been tasked with hiding the spoof story/diary. It could have been found in Dodd's house or in Maybrick's office building.

I did say on numerous occasions that I thought Eddie came into the pub on March 9th with a story that had been told to him by the electricians, not a physical diary. Since Eddie would have already known that Mike had the diary, he knew this possible provenance would be important to Mike, who couldn't figure out where it came from.

I did suggest that Mike may have been tasked with finding ink, but he would have been kept in the dark about the creation of the diary even after it was in his hands.

You can, of course, hold whatever beliefs you want, and at least you agree with me that Mike must have been seeking a Victorian diary with blank pages to write upon those pages, which is something I suppose (thank you), but I'd like to comment that I don't find anything you've said plausible or convincing in the slightest. Naturally. Whether you care - and you probably don't - is entirely up to you but I very much doubt that anyone else will think this is the answer.

You're right, I don't care what you think. What I've presented over the past few years is a theory, which has been modified slightly at various times and will probably continue to change. People can consider parts of it possible or reject it outright. Do you honestly think you or anybody else have "the answer" - the absolute answer? Most, if not all of the time, you're just parroting Barrat anyway.

Thank you by the way, for keeping the gaslighting to a minimum this time. But I probably spoke too soon.

Well Scott, I see your story's already changed three times in the past two days.

First you told me that "While at Dodd's house on March 9, 1992, Eddie overhears electricians discussing a document that had been found there some time before". Now, maybe it wasn't found "there", i.e. at Dodd's house, but at Maybrick's office, but who found it there you don't say, nor, if it was "taken to the offices of the Liverpool Echo" why the hell it would have ended up with one of the printers but not a journalist (who would have revealed its existence in the newspaper), nor if so many people knew about it, why it was able to be kept a secret. It's bordering on conspiracy theory.

Then you told me that, "it likely would have been Devereux or one of his colleagues who cracked the "costly intercourse" problem." Now the idea that they "cracked" anything is forgotten and they actually wrote it in.

Then you told me that you couldn't see that the diary is full of Mike's quirky expressions, now you say that they were maybe Devereux's or "someone else's" even though Mike is the only person with whom they are identified.

You still haven't explained why Mike hid from Shirley his knowledge of Ryan's book in notes he gave her in the summer of 1992.

The other funny thing is that you posted in your friend Orsam's "Diary Handwriting" thread in 2018, in which he demonstrated examples of Anne's characters being similar to the diarist's, yet didn't say you couldn't see the similarities. Not a squeak out of you about that. All you mentioned was a different slant. That was an odd comment to make if you couldn't see any similarities in the first place. If you couldn't see the similarities, you had the perfect opportunity to tell Orsam but, strangely, didn't take it.

To my mind you still haven't provided a convincing explanation as to why Mike felt the need to replicate what he already had in front of him (let's not quibble about the word "replicate" again). Just saying "ego" explains nothing. As far as I can see, you seem to have decided to produce an imaginative, complicated, convoluted, fictional account which doesn't seem to be based on anything at all.

But the thing that I really don't get is why you dismiss the notion of the Barretts having created the diary themselves. It's surely the simplest and most likely solution. It explains Mike's desire for a Victorian diary with blank pages. It explains the handwriting similarities, the quirky expressions, the fact of Mike finding "costly intercourse", the hiding of Ryan in the research notes, it explains all the lies Anne told and, above all, explains the provenance of an item which is known to have come out of 12 Goldie Street. Whether you want to call it Occam's razor or Orsam's razor, the simplest explanation is usually the right one.