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

[erobitha]

Keith was kind enough to email me with his response:


I checked the transcript of my interview with Mike Barrett (Liverpool Library - April 14th 1994)...



MB: Oh yeah, I attended the funeral [Tony Devereux]. Yeah myself, Railway John

and my dad - my dad. Yeah the three of us.



So my error of memory.

[caz]

Hi Scott,

while I personally don't give much if any credence to Melvin Harris's Kane/Devereux theory anymore, there is a bit of 'housekeeping' that might be worth passing along.

When you presented your theory on the 'Google Ngrams' thread early this year, Caroline Brown's raised the objection (and not for the first time, if I recall) that Devereux and Billy Graham may not have even known one another:

"I'm not sure if Billy Graham would have had occasion to meet Tony Devereux. It would have been a reasonably easy walk for Mike and young Caroline, between Goldie Street and Fountains Road, but Billy was elderly by then, and lived close to the Barretts - Sleepers Hill if memory serves." -- C.A.B. 3-13-2025

This appears to be just an assumption, however, and not an established fact, for I recently noticed a statement made by Keith Skinner back in 2017 that might potentially challenge any suggestion that the two men were complete strangers:

"A thought which has just occurred to me is I remember Mike telling me that he, his father-in-law and 'Railway John' (don't even ask) all went to Tony's funeral in August 1991 - and I recall being told by one of Tony's daughters, (it should be on tape), that Mike went round to the family and asked for something of their father's to remember him by. They were surprised and I wondered why Mike had done this. At the time it crossed my mind that perhaps Mike was trying to create an impression of how close he was to Tony in order to make it seem the most natural thing in the world for Tony to have given him the diary and thereby secure his ownership of it. But if that was Mike's intention, then it supports his story he had been given the diary by Tony - which leads us back to Anne Graham's account of provenance. And means that March 9th 1992 date has to be just a bizarre coincidence? "

Mr. Skinner does not tell us if he ever attempted to confirm Billy's presence at Devereux's funeral, but if correct it would certainly suggest that the two men DID know one another. Why else would the 'elderly' Billy Graham have attended the funeral of a complete stranger, especially since Barrett had someone else to accompany him?

As an aside, I'm at a lost to understand Keith's reasoning. If Barrett hitting up the sisters for a memento was his way of 'trying to create the impression' of a close relationship with Tony (that didn't actually exist) how does this 'support' Mike's story of having been given the diary by Tony?

Doesn't it suggest the exact opposite--that he was laying the groundwork for a bogus provenance? And the whole gesture is rather absurd. If Devereux had genuinely given Mike the Diary of Jack the Ripper surely that would have been something to 'remember him by' as opposed to a bowling ball or an ashtray or whatever knickknack Mike had in mind.

Another bizarre anecdote in a bizarre saga.

It's all in the interpretation, I suppose.

Now it looks like we are back to having no evidence that Anne's father would have met or got to know Tony Devereux, we can look at this again with new eyes.

Mike's fear in the early days after taking the diary to London was that Shirley would naturally contact Tony's family to see if they knew anything about the diary. Regardless of whether his story was true or not, that Tony had given it to him as a reward for being a good mate, Mike's fear - expressed on the record - was that his daughters could have tried to claim the diary as rightfully theirs. In the event they didn't do so and doubted their father ever had it.

I read Keith's observation in that context, so if Mike was 'gifted' the diary by Tony before his death in August 1991, he might have seen a need to justify this act of generosity to the family at the funeral. In this scenario Mike wouldn't have known if they knew about the diary and were expecting it to be among Tony's effects, and to ask them would have been to tempt fate. Better to sow the seeds of a closer relationship than may actually have been the case, to prevent any potential resentment.

As it is, the very fact that Mike asked Tony's family for something to remember him by would tend to argue against him having already been given the diary - and I have it in the back of my mind that this thought did actually occur to one of the daughters: why would Mike have asked for something else of their father's, if he had recently given him this diary, of which they had no knowledge?

There is some evidence that Billy Graham didn't have much time for Mike, and Mike for his part resented the move to Goldie Street so Anne could be closer to him. So a question mark hangs over whether Billy would have given anything to Mike, or lent him any money with or without Anne's approval, for any unspecified spending, including a certain photo album.

There is also the question of who else could have been roped in to do the diary handwriting if Mike's famous 'practice runs' - whenever they are meant to have taken place - had revealed Anne's handwriting to be no less 'distinctive' than his own, or similarly impossible to disguise effectively for the duration of the task. What if she had pretended not to be up to it, in order to get out of it? No amount of domestic abuse can give the victim skills they didn't already possess.

This couple seemed to have few close friends between them, and none in common as far as I know. Would Mike have abandoned the plan if there was no obvious third conspirator he could recruit? Who you gonna call, when you need hoax buddies who can be trusted not to turn hoax busters when you give them the brief?

Not Tony, if he thought Mike a clown, barely knew Anne if at all and was pushing up the daisies by the time the 'practice runs' took place; not Billy, if he wouldn't have given Mike the time of day and didn't like the way he treated Anne; ditto any of Anne's friends. One of Mike's sisters, perhaps? Or, in a parallel universe, one of Tony's daughters?

Was Railway John a sleeper?