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

[Scott Nelson]

Well Scott, I see your story's already changed three times in the past two days. Or I'm looking at a couple of scenarios.

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. In all likelihood it may have been found at the house, but I'm open to other places. As I've written the finder didn't know what to do with it, so it's dropped off at the newspaper, nobody is interested, and it sits on a shelf for some time until Devereux picks it up. Rather than giving it to a journalist, he takes it home.

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. I didn't imply that. You brought up the quote, not me. It is possible that somebody else told Barrett where the quote could be found (one of the people working with Devereux?). In any case, I don't look on that quote as having anything to do with Mike, other than his being told where to look for it by the person who decided to put it in the diary.

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. I said, if there were quirky expressions in the diary (and none stood out to me), they could be attributable to someone other than Mike. Others have pointed out the aspects of the quirky expressions, not me.

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. But I have. When Mike dropped the idea of writing his version of the diary, he left out Ryan's book because it wasn't necessary to include it since he wouldn't be using it. The research notes would have followed specific things Shirley told him to look into, and not to consult Ryan's book.

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. As I recall, I did comment on the overall appearance of her writing, not the little "similarities" other people had brought up, because I couldn't see any. It's funny how beliefs lead to absolute commitments as to what is actually there as opposed to what may is actually there. Anne Graham is a left-handed writer, and I don't think she disguised her writing.

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. It's based on human emotions, like paranoia and jealousy. It's not convoluted, but an attempt to put oneself into the mind of Mike Barrett given the circumstances he was experiencing. I don't believe he ended up pushing his creation, but someone else's. If you can't see how Mike's "ego" couldn't have come into play, that's your problem.

But the thing that I really don't get is why you dismiss the notion of the Barretts having created the diary themselves. I don't. As Roger and a couple of others know. But the idea of the Barretts creating the thing from scratch and pushing it out into a publishing world is a somewhat too far-fetched for me, but not impossible. It's surely the simplest and most likely solution. It explains Mike's desire for a Victorian diary with blank pages (yes). It explains the handwriting similarities (problematic), the quirky expressions (more problematic), the fact of Mike finding "costly intercourse" (a non-issue), the hiding of Ryan in the research notes (unnecessary), 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. The diary ultimately came out to there, but I think it was created elsewhere. Whether you want to call it Occam's razor or Orsam's razor, the simplest explanation is usually the right one.

Yes, the simplest explanations are the best. It's just a matter of how one interprets them compared to somebody else.

[Lombro2]

Anne and Mike writing the diary is the most complicated and convoluted solution that exists and it answers no more or better than does their being fences.

[Herlock Sholmes]

I have it from Keith so it's his call not mine, RJ, and - at the risk of you shooting the messenger again - I think that was recently asked and answered.

Are you saying Keith Skinner gave you permission to post a partial extract of the Feldman/TMW telephone call but refused permission to post it in its entirety?

How extraordinary! What is it that you think he's trying to hide?

[Herlock Sholmes]

Anne and Mike writing the diary is the most complicated and convoluted solution that exists and it answers no more or better than does their being fences.

Lombro, you may be surprised to know that simply saying something doesn't make it so. We're talking about a fake diary which Mike Barrett owned and produced. He told a literary agent about it on 9th March 1992 but didn't show it to her until over a month later. In the meantime, he secretly sought out a Victorian diary with blank pages. He made money out of it, as did his wife, and he even confessed to the forgery. All he needed was a few books, an old photograph album from which he could crudely rip out the pages with photographs, a commercially available ink and some nibs, plus someone who could disguise their handwriting and write in a sort-of Victorian style. It's about as simple a solution as it gets.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Yes, the simplest explanations are the best. It's just a matter of how one interprets them compared to somebody else.

Well, Scott, let's look at your great solution to this mystery.

At some point around the turn of the 20th century, someone, for a completely unknown reason, bizarrely created what you refer to as a "spoof" journal of James Maybrick. Whether that journal involved Maybrick being Jack the Ripper seems to be an open question which presumably revolves around the toss of a coin. Heads it did, tails it didn't. Then, for reasons totally unexplained, that journal somehow gets into the hands of Michael Maybrick who bizarrely decided to hide it either in his dead brother's old house or his old office to which he couldn't possibly have had access so long after his brother's death, or perhaps it was somewhere else "associated with Maybrick" (of which you don't seem to be able to come up with examples), but you don't explain why he decided to do this rather than, say, burn it.

Then it was found in around the 1970s, although you don't say by whom or under what circumstances it might have been found. At a very minimum, if this is supposed to be a journal written by James Maybrick, it's an interesting and valuable historical document but, if it's a journal in which Maybrick claimed to be Jack the Ripper, it's sensational. Your theory doesn't seem to explain which one it is but the unknown person who found seems to have thought it was important enough to take to the Liverpool Echo where, for some bizarre reason, it was "left on a shelf", because, of course, newspapers always just leave valuable historical documents on shelves. The person who found the journal doesn't seem to care about this nor does the person at the newspaper who received it. Tony Devereux simply took it, apparently. Another way of describing that, I assume, would be that he stole it.

Then Tony Devereux does a bizarre thing with the document which one can only assume he believes to be a genuine journal written by James Maybrick, although you don't confirm this. Rather than try to sell it, he does nothing with it for about 10 or 20 years. Then at some point after 1988 he decides to spend money and time creating an expanded fake version of the diary in which James Maybrick is definitely Jack the Ripper. Why he does so is baffling because, once completed, he then does nothing with it other than give it away to Michael Barrett. We're not told if he leads Barrett to think it's genuine or tells him its something he knocked up himself based on an earlier document but that is part of the wonderful convoluted nature of the theory where we are left to use our collective creative imaginations to put it all together ourselves.

Then Michael Barrett sits on it for over six months. He doesn't seem to show it to anyone or tell anyone about it apart from an electrician called Eddie Lyons of whom there is no evidence he's ever spoken to before in his life.

And then this is where the whole thing goes wonky because on 9th March 1992: "While at Dodd's house on March 9, 1992, Eddie overhears electricians discussing a document that had been found there some time before". But, according to your theory, they're talking about a document found in the house (or somewhere else) in the 1970s, perhaps more than 20 years earlier. No explanation is provided as to how these electricians know about the discovery of this document so many years earlier which had been taken to the Liverpool Echo where it had vanished or how they could possibly have known about it.

I should comment here that you can't even keep your story straight. In your #1866 on 7th August you told me that the original spoof was "not necessarily a diary" (which is why I've referred to it as "a journal") whereas in your earlier #1861 you said that on 9th March 1992, "Eddie tells Mike what he was told about the diary being found somewhere in the house." So it was a diary that was found "somewhere in the house" or, as you now tell us, somewhere else.

Then the story gets even more bizarre because, astonishingly, despite having what must appear to be a genuine, completed and signed diary of Jack the Ripper, and despite a literary agent in London expressing great interest in seeing this diary of Jack the Ripper, Mike, by pure coincidence, has the exact same thought as Tony Devereux had had in the 1970s that he could improve on Maybrick's journal, so he decides to spend £25 buying a genuine Victorian diary so that he can embark up a hopeless plan of creating a second replica of the diary for no apparent reason other than "ego". But "ego" can hardly explain it in circumstances where it's going to be presented as James Maybrick's diary, not authored by Michael Barrett. Apparently, we're now told that paranoia and jealousy are also involved but paranoia of what and jealousy of whom is not explained.

This is supposed to be "simple" solution! Don't make me laugh, Scott. It could hardly be more bizarre and convoluted.

I wouldn't mind but you've obviously come up with this farrago of nonsense for two reasons. The first is that you seem to have fallen for the once popular but now discredited belief that the diarist must have had some intimate knowledge of the details Maybrick's life. I can only assume that this is how you think the diary once ended up in the hands of Michael Maybrick. The second is that you clearly still appear to be of the false belief that Barrett was diagnosed with Korsakoff Syndrome and suffered from this in March 1992 which would have made him incapable of creating the text of the diary. The last time we spoke about this you doubled down and insisted that you'd seen a document in Ripperana. I figure you're still looking for it and will continue to look for the rest of your life, oblivious to reason.

I note that you skipped over the point I mentioned about Anne's lies. Your theory doesn't explain why Anne told so many lies about the diary's origins. Whereas if she helped create it, it is self-explanatory.

Like I've said, Scott, you can put forward whatever creative fiction you like, although I would have thought that the creative writing board would have been a better place for this theory, which isn't supported by any evidence, but I trust you have resigned yourself to the fact that it's not going to be accepted by anyone. Mind you, there's always Lombro, I suppose.

[Iconoclast]

Are you saying Keith Skinner gave you permission to post a partial extract of the Feldman/TMW telephone call but refused permission to post it in its entirety?

How extraordinary! What is it that you think he's trying to hide?

Do you want me to PM you his email and you can ask him yourself what terrible secrets he's keeping from everyone?

[Herlock Sholmes]

Do you want me to PM you his email and you can ask him yourself what terrible secrets he's keeping from everyone?

Well it's funny you ask me that, Ike, because I've been looking back in the archives and see that on January 31st 2018, in the thread "Acquiring a Victorian Diary", when David Orsam was pressing James Johnston hard about the Battlecrease theory, Orsam pointed out that, in the published version of Tim Martin-Wright's story, it was only stated that "a diary" had been offered to him, nothing being mentioned of it having been a diary of Jack the Ripper (#800).

In his reply on the same day (#805), James Johnston said:

"Tim Martin-Wright was referring to 'Jack the Ripper's Diary' from as early as June 1994 - the first time that he contacted Feldman. That is documented."

That strikes me as a highly misleading statement because we now know that while Tim Martin-Wright did refer to "Jack the Ripper's Diary, he said that Dodgson had been shown a copy of that diary in a pub, something completely at odds with the published version of the story. It seems to me that Johnston must have deliberately withheld that critical piece of information from Orsam which only emerged in 2024 when you published an extract of a transcript of the 1994 call, six years after the Orsam/Johnston exchange, in an attempt to prove to Roger that Alan Davies had mentioned Jack the Ripper's diary (even though Alan Davies wasn't referred to by Martin-Wright in the quote you posted).

This demonstrates the importance of the full evidence being presented, not selective and potentially misleading extracts.

Johnston went on to say in 2018 that:

"According to the account which he gave to KS in 2004 - the document that was being offered to him (via Alan Dodgson) was being touted as 'Jack the Ripper's diary'. "

Are you in possession of the account Martin-Wright gave to KS in 2004? If so, can we see it?

I can't see much point in writing to him Ike if he's either going to refuse to provide any information to me or if he's going to provide information but tell me it has been kept confidential. It seems to make far more sense for you to write to him to ask for his permission to post the information openly so that everyone can see it.

I might add that you quite cunningly haven't answered my question. You just deflected. Here's my question:

"Are you saying Keith Skinner gave you permission to post a partial extract of the Feldman/TMW telephone call but refused permission to post it in its entirety?"

It's a very simple one, Ike. For which the answer is within your personal knowledge. Do you now want to have a crack at answering it?