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

[Herlock Sholmes]

I have “Plausible Deniability”.

You have “Implausible (even for Michael Barrett) Stupidity”.

“I’m going to make a Ripper diary forgery. Let me ask a guy to put an ad out for an unused or partially used Victorian diary. I hope they all look the same.”

So how would acquiring an unused or partially used Victorian diary created by Mr John Smith of Oxford in 1886 have enabled Mike to plausibly deny being in possession of Jack the Ripper's diary?

[Herlock Sholmes]

Smug twat.

I see that having been caught bang to rights you're reduced, for the second time today, to childish and indefensible personal abuse, clearly against the forum rules.

What brought you down to this level?

Well we can see that your excuse of yesterday for not posting more of the 1994 Feldman/TMW transcript, namely that "I have it from Keith so it's his call not mine", has been exposed as the hollow excuse that everyone suspected it was.

The truth is that you've always been at liberty to post whatever you want from the transcript, without any restrictions placed on you by Keith Skinner, yet you pretended that this is not the case, until I forced the truth out of you. As Roger has already observed, "you leave the impression that you can't do so without permission. But then, in practically the same breath, you admit that you have no restrictions."

Now we have the inevitable tantrum and insults, as you show your true colours, when you would surely be better served posting the evidence to support your own claim that Martin-Wright was a "witness" to something important which shows that the diary came out of Battlecrease. But it all seems to be falling apart. The story is full of holes and contradictions, different people say different things and their accounts are withheld and kept top secret to avoid Roger and myself (and others) ridiculing and debunking them.

What an absolute disgrace.

[Lombro2]

The Murphys had plausible deniability. It’s called an antique store.

Nothing real. Nothing new.
Nothing else to do?
When you think you still have to solve the case?
Really! What an absolute disgrace!

[rjpalmer]

Hi Herlock,

If I might inject a note of civility into a conversation that has gone badly off-the-rails, I wouldn't say that I'm motivated by a desire to 'debunk and ridicule' the Battlecrease provenance but, rather, to try to understand why people believe in it. To weigh, if I can, whether it is plausible or believable or if the 'evidence' is what some claim it to be.

If, from Ike's point of view, his opponents are motivated by a desire to 'ridicule' his ideas, it is perhaps understandable why he would be hesitant to agree to a free exchange of ideas and information. He is blood and bone and nerve endings like the rest of us. Perhaps Ike would violently disagree with the following, but in thinking it over, it seems to me that the excerpt he posted from the Feldman/TMW conversation is so damaging to the diary that I find it a little difficult to believe there is anything worse that he is deliberately withholding, so I'm hesitant to accuse him of any nefarious motivations. I don't know if there is any point in continuing, but I would hope that we could lower the temperature if we do continue. Good night to all.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Fair points Roger. Perhaps my choice of words like 'ridicule' wasn't the best but but Ike's post was unnecessary. Especially when I haven't resorted to comments like that.

[Lombro2]

More clarification here:

If Michael Barrett was the Murphy’s, the red diary would be a Micky Mouse watch they ordered in March. Of course, it could only be to forge a Rolex. It can’t be part of his watch collection that might include a stolen Rolex.


I don’t think you really want to know what we really think.

[Iconoclast]

The truth is that you've always been at liberty to post whatever you want from the transcript, without any restrictions placed on you by Keith Skinner, yet you pretended that this is not the case, until I forced the truth out of you.

This is a microcosm of the problem these threads now have with you posting on them with your twattish smugness. You lie. Over and over again, you lie. I don't know if you know you're doing it, but you are doing it. You are brazenly lying. I told you why I don't post more than the occasional snippet but I'll tell you again so that you can lie about it again: No restrictions were ever placed upon me - the material has been given to me freely from people who do not share my views regarding Maybrick. Why would they do that if we don't agree on the most fundamental aspect of the case - the author of the scrapbook? Because they trust that I would treat that material honestly. They trust that I will not sell my soul to try to appear to be making a point. I will not take seven words from a 30-word paragraph and claim that that was what was said. In my book, twisting the truth is same thing as telling an untruth. I freely gave an assurance that I would not use the material without the agreement ofd those who gave me it, and I'm sticking to it (bar the very occasional snippet).

You could not force the truth out of a wet paper bag because you would not know what the truth looked like in order to do so. I have previously stated on more than one occasion that in the most general sense someone might think an 1891 diary could be used to hoax the 1888 thoughts of James Maybrick but that this could not be realistically possible in the specific case of what you claim Mike Barrett was seeking to do when he accepted one from Martin Earl. But all you ever report is that "you have already agreed that an 1891 diary can be used for an 1888 hoax". You miss out the bits - carefully included to avoid misunderstanding - so that you can smugly taunt and crow to try to get a rise out of posters. If twisting the truth is all you can do then you ain't no friend of mine and if you ain't no friend of mine, I won't be doing your bidding when you smugly, arrogantly demand it.

The above includes just two examples of how certain posters deliberately manipulate what we know or what has been said in order to try to appear to be making a cogent point. The ridiculing then follows when posters attempt to illustrate the limitations of those mendaciously-constructed comments and claims. It's a single lens reflex instinct they have where what is in focus is only a tiny amount of the detail otherwise provided. And I hate it and I hate it because it is fundamentally dishonest. Mike Barrett could have said, "I danced on the Moon in clogs and ate all the green cheese and hallucinated I was John Lennon on a skateboard whilst I wrote the diary", and all that would ever get played back, time and time again, would be, "Mike Barrett admitted he wrote the diary".

Now we have the inevitable tantrum and insults, as you show your true colours, when you would surely be better served posting the evidence to support your own claim that Martin-Wright was a "witness" to something important which shows that the diary came out of Battlecrease. But it all seems to be falling apart. The story is full of holes and contradictions, different people say different things and their accounts are withheld and kept top secret to avoid Roger and myself (and others) ridiculing and debunking them.

Again, a microcosm of everything I cannot abide about the human mind - its ability to string together five disparate notions, spin them, spin them together, spin the weave some more and produce an 'evidence-based' piece of shite.

Tell the truth. Do not twist the truth. If you are theorising that something might have happened, don't use terms like 'obviously', and don't ridicule posters' comments with what you naively describe as 'debunking'. You have to earn the right to know what other people know. With every post you make, you push yourself further and further away from the shore, and I for one will most certainly not be throwing you a lifeline.

What an absolute disgrace.

Yes, you are.

[Herlock Sholmes]

This is a microcosm of the problem these threads now have with you posting on them with your twattish smugness. You lie. Over and over again, you lie. I don't know if you know you're doing it, but you are doing it. You are brazenly lying. I told you why I don't post more than the occasional snippet but I'll tell you again so that you can lie about it again: No restrictions were ever placed upon me - the material has been given to me freely from people who do not share my views regarding Maybrick. Why would they do that if we don't agree on the most fundamental aspect of the case - the author of the scrapbook? Because they trust that I would treat that material honestly. They trust that I will not sell my soul to try to appear to be making a point. I will not take seven words from a 30-word paragraph and claim that that was what was said. In my book, twisting the truth is same thing as telling an untruth. I freely gave an assurance that I would not use the material without the agreement ofd those who gave me it, and I'm sticking to it (bar the very occasional snippet).

You could not force the truth out of a wet paper bag because you would not know what the truth looked like in order to do so. I have previously stated on more than one occasion that in the most general sense someone might think an 1891 diary could be used to hoax the 1888 thoughts of James Maybrick but that this could not be realistically possible in the specific case of what you claim Mike Barrett was seeking to do when he accepted one from Martin Earl. But all you ever report is that "you have already agreed that an 1891 diary can be used for an 1888 hoax". You miss out the bits - carefully included to avoid misunderstanding - so that you can smugly taunt and crow to try to get a rise out of posters. If twisting the truth is all you can do then you ain't no friend of mine and if you ain't no friend of mine, I won't be doing your bidding when you smugly, arrogantly demand it.

The above includes just two examples of how certain posters deliberately manipulate what we know or what has been said in order to try to appear to be making a cogent point. The ridiculing then follows when posters attempt to illustrate the limitations of those mendaciously-constructed comments and claims. It's a single lens reflex instinct they have where what is in focus is only a tiny amount of the detail otherwise provided. And I hate it and I hate it because it is fundamentally dishonest. Mike Barrett could have said, "I danced on the Moon in clogs and ate all the green cheese and hallucinated I was John Lennon on a skateboard whilst I wrote the diary", and all that would ever get played back, time and time again, would be, "Mike Barrett admitted he wrote the diary".



Again, a microcosm of everything I cannot abide about the human mind - its ability to string together five disparate notions, spin them, spin them together, spin the weave some more and produce an 'evidence-based' piece of shite.

Tell the truth. Do not twist the truth. If you are theorising that something might have happened, don't use terms like 'obviously', and don't ridicule posters' comments with what you naively describe as 'debunking'. You have to earn the right to know what other people know. With every post you make, you push yourself further and further away from the shore, and I for one will most certainly not be throwing you a lifeline.



Yes, you are.

What you say is making no sense, Ike. And yet again you choose to result to being personal rather than sticking to the topic at hand; which is precisely what I’m doing.

You told Roger point blank that it was Keith Skinner's call as to whether you can post further extracts from the transcript of the 1994 Feldman/TMW conversation (#1889). Then, when I asked you directly if Keith had given you permission to post a partial extract from that transcript but was refusing you permission to post the whole thing, you suggested I contact Keith Skinner to ask him what "terrible secrets" he's hiding (#1896).

But that was all a charade because the truth, as you now admit yourself, is that "No restrictions" were ever placed up you. So why did you tell Roger it was Keith Skinner's call as to whether you post more extracts? Why did you tell me to email Keith Skinner? It's always been entirely your decision. You've already posted stuff without Keith's permission so why can't you post more? It was an entirely reasonable request by Roger but your response, deflecting to Keith Skinner, was far from reasonable.

You tell us that "the people" who give you information, "trust that I would treat that material honestly. They trust that I will not sell my soul to try to appear to be making a point."

Now let's look at the original extract that you posted on 2nd September 2024 in the "One Incontrovertible, Unequivocal, Undeniable Fact Which Refutes the Diary" thread Roger had asked you specifically if Alan Davies had mentioned a Jack the Ripper diary or whether "this is your memory playing tricks" (#10916). He asked you directly: "Isn't it true that Davies only mentioned a diary or (if his missus can be believed) an old book?"

So the question you were supposed to be addressing was in respect of what Alan Davies had said. But you didn't address that. Instead you appear to have sold your soul by trying to appear to make a point because, in revealing the exclusive information from the 1994 transcript which had never been published before, you only told us what Timothy Martin-Wright had said. But Martin-Wright had made no mention of Alan Davies. So how was it addressing Roger's question?

Was it that you didn't like Roger suggesting that your memory was playing tricks? So that in desperation you posted the only evidence you had of anyone mentioning Jack the Ripper's diary?

All this leads to some very serious and material questions:

1. Why is there apparently no evidence of Alan Davies ever having mentioned any knowledge of Jack the Ripper's diary to any investigators? Who questioned him on the matter and what did he actually say?

2. Why is there apparently no evidence of Alan Dodgson having mentioned any knowledge of Jack the Ripper's diary to any investigators? Who questioned him on the matter and what did he say?

3. What exactly did TMW tell Keith Skinner in 2004? Did he then mention having been told that an employee had been shown a copy of Jack the Ripper's diary? Or did he tell a different story?

These are entirely reasonable questions for me to be asking. They are serious questions at the very heart of the matter. It's also entirely reasonable to ask what else Feldman said in 1994. Why do you feel it needs to be kept a secret? It was a telephone conversation from more than 30 years ago! What issue can possibly prevent you from posting the whole thing? How can it be confidential in any way? Rather than addressing these issues you seek to deflect by going into a tirade of personal abuse.

It's also worth noting how you explained away the discrepancy between what TMW said in 1994 and the published story as told by Dodgson. In #10925 you stated:

"Tim has hardly embellished the story by thinking Dodgson had seen the diary in a pub. That bit was obviously what Alan Davies had said to Dodgson (that the diary had been shown around a pub in Liverpool) and what Dodgson told Tim but which - one and a half long years of unrelated business later - Tim misremembered. But he didn't forget that Alan Davies mentioned the diary of Jack the Ripper in December 1992."

So you dismissed it as if of no importance, as if "the diary of Jack the Ripper" is something Alan Davies had said he'd seen, even though there is no mention of Alan Davies in TMW's account. You came up with an explanation for TMW being confused but is that really the case? It is surely critical to discover if there is any credibility in TMW's story which doesn't seem to match what Alan Dodgson has said.

I note that, bizarrely, you seem to want to turn this discussion about TMW back to the 1891 diary, about which you continue to write incomprehensible nonsense as I have explained in other posts, but let's keep the focus on this issue.

Are you going to address any of the serious points I've raised and the reasonable questions I've asked or are you only going to resort again to abuse?

[Lombro2]

It’s inexplicable how a simple statement by Tim that he heard, around Christmas of 1992 (that’s a landmark date—Dec 25–BTW) that Davies told Dodgson that he saw a copy of the Jack the Ripper diary, gets turned into Tim hearing about Davies seeing xeroxes of the diary given or shown to him by Feldman around April Fool’s Day in 1993.

And the main one daring to refute the twisted version is the “Chief Defender of the Diary”— Caz!

Wow! The dragon should be called Chubby Checkers.

[Herlock Sholmes]

It’s inexplicable how a simple statement by Tim that he heard, around Christmas of 1992 (that’s a landmark date—Dec 25–BTW) that Davies told Dodgson that he saw a copy of the Jack the Ripper diary, gets turned into Tim hearing about Davies seeing xeroxes of the diary given or shown to him by Feldman around April Fool’s Day in 1993.

And the main one daring to refute the twisted version is the “Chief Defender of the Diary”— Caz!

Wow! The dragon should be called Chubby Checkers.

Not for the first time, Lombro, you're confused as to the facts.

Tim didn't say anything about having heard about Jack the Ripper's "around Christmas of 1992" when he first told the story to Feldman in June 1994. What he said at that time, according to James Johnston, was that the conversation he was remembering was "eighteen months/two years ago" which means that he placed it at some time between June and December 1992.

According to Shirley Harrison, writing in 2003, Tim confirmed that the conversation occurred "a month or two" after his shop opened in October 1991 (sic), thus placing it to around November or December 1991 (Harrison, The American Connection, p. 291).

When speaking to Keith Skinner in 2004, according to James Johnston, Tim dated the conversation to an unspecified date in December 1992, apparently due to an entry in a personal diary which mentions the purchase of a hat stand or a hall stand (but the connection between this and the Jack the Ripper diary story has never been explained).

According to Robert Smith, writing in 2017, Alan Dodgson must have spoken to Davies at some point after the Bootle shop opened for business in November 1992 and, thus, said Smith, "Martin-Wright believes Davies came into the shop close to Christmas 1992".

But James Johnston posted on Casebook in 2018 to say (without providing any documentary evidence) that the Bootle shop actually opened on 26th October 1992. According to James Johnston, Dodgson himself dated the conversation to "a month or two"after the Bootle shop opened (using the same wording that Tim did when speaking to Shirley prior to her 2003 book).

You might, however, be able to see one pretty big problem. In the 1994 extract we've been provided with, Tim didn't mention the Bootle shop at all. The events he described occurred in a pub. If that's truly the case, the date of the opening of the Bootle store could be one huge red herring.

It's also hard to avoid the suspicion that Dodgson and Tim had discussed the timing because they both used the exact same expression, "a month or two" [after the Bootle shop opened]. It only needed it to be four or five months after the shop opened, which is something they could easily have confused in their memory, to take us into the spring of 1993.

[Scott Nelson]

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. A spoof story, not necessarily a journal. 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 (the theory was already explained in numerous posts), 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 (you don't know for sure, the document could have been hidden shortly after Maybrick's death. I prefer some place other than under floorboards), 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 (Why burn it? If the story was intended as a spoof, there would have been nothing incriminating about 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 (likely found by construction workers in the house, some of whom later worked at the house in 1992, or they passed on the story of a document having been found there). 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. It was neither. It was likely a humorous story which Devereux turned into a Maybrick-as-the Ripper diary. 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. I've previously explained that the document may have been passed from one place to another before being dropped off at the newspaper office. I think nobody there thought much of it and it remained on a shelf or in storage until found by Devereux. 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. Since nobody there was interested in doing anything with it, then yes, he took it home with him.

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. No, I don't think Devereux ever believed it was James Maybrick's diary, but recognized it as the spoof it was intended to be. Rather than try to sell it, he does nothing with it for about 10 or 20 years. The document could have been found by him and brought home at any point while he was working there. 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 (because he was dying) other than give it away to Michael Barrett. I think he gave it first to Billy Graham (because it was originally his photo album), then Billy gave it to his daughter. 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. He told Barrett nothing about it. Not even who it was about. Barrett had confirm this for himself after Eddie told him where it came from.

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. I think he did know Eddie from before and Eddie knew he had the diary. When Eddie learned on March 9, 1992 about a Maybrick document having been previously discovered in the house in the 1970s, Eddie told Mike and he put two and two together.

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. Yes. 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 (they remembered the document being taken away, but not where) where it had vanished or how they could possibly have known about it (answered above).

I should comment here that you can't even keep your story straight (it's an evolving theory). 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. Devereux probably referred to it as a "diary." As I said the original document may have been the spoof story, probably found in the house and taken to the newspaper offices.

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 (at the time it wasn't hopeless to Mike) of creating a second replica of the diary for no apparent reason other than "ego". Well, as a matter of fact, yes. That's the way I think Mike's mind worked. 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. Why not? As I've explained before, Mike set himself up with a tight deadline when he called the Crew Agency and when he realized he couldn't deliver his attempt at literary fame (because he was incapable), he simply turned over what he had. Apparently, we're now told that paranoia and jealousy are also involved but paranoia of what and jealousy of whom is not explained. Paranoia -- afraid that someone else would try to cash in on the diary, eg., father-in-law, Eddie or someone else in the know. Jealousy -- of Devereux or the Devereux Committee.

This is supposed to be "simple" solution! Don't make me laugh, Scott. It could hardly be more bizarre and convoluted. It may seem convoluted and bizarre, but it's really not. It's a simple analysis of strained human behavior in the sad diary saga.

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 original spoof, yes. Michael Maybrick, the organist in Harry Dam's play, The Shop Girl, with Dam possibly being the originator of the spoof, if not the chief writer). 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. Part of the reason, yes. 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 believe it was Nick Warren who first brought out the Korsakoff Syndrome and I'm sure I remember seeing an actual diagnosis somewhere. Yes, thank you, I'm oblivious to reason and you're not, I suppose. You insist the diary writing is in Anne Graham's disguised hand and it's clearly not.

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. I think I covered the one about the diary 'being in her family for years' as referring to photo album possibly belonging to Billy Graham, so maybe that isn't technically a lie. Whereas if she helped create it, it is self-explanatory. You'll have to remind me of all the other supposed lies she told. I won't defend all of them if I don't understand them or believe they could be lies.

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.

The only reason I've argued this far is because I'm likely dealing with David Barrat directly, not his parrot, Michael Banks.

[Herlock Sholmes]

The only reason I've argued this far is because I'm likely dealing with David Barrat directly, not his parrot, Michael Banks.

What do you mean, you're "likely dealing with David Barrat directly"? Is everyone on this forum quite literally obsessed with Orsam? I mean, is he in the room with you now, Scott?

Mind you, Barrat's parrot is quite good.

But, Scott, I’m not saying that you're crazy but you must admit that's kind of crazy talk.

Anyway, I've seen what you have to say in your bold comments and I don't think a single person in the world would describe it as "simple". It may even be the most dull and convoluted thing I've ever read, or rather skimmed over, because, as you seem think you're talking to someone else, not me, I couldn't be bothered to read it properly. So I'll leave you to your little bit of happy creative fan fiction and I hope you enjoy the rest of your life searching for that non-existent Nick Warren article.

[Scott Nelson]

Quick example, you hyphenate no one, "no-one". The only other person I've come across who does this is Barrat.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Quick example, you hyphenate no one, "no-one". The only other person I've come across who does this is Barrat.

It took me a full 30 seconds to find Ike’s post 1826

“I 100% knew that if I taunted Sholmes that no-one was supporting his argument, you'd be straight in there with some attempt to fill the gap!”

[Herlock Sholmes]

Or Ike’s 1805

“I'll remind you that no-one is coming to your defence with this facile position you are taking.”