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?

[caz]

Personally, I don't think there is any reasonable doubt that the booklet was Barrett's. Scotland Yard told Martin Fido that it was Barrett's, Devereux's daughter had a specific memory of her father identifying it as Barrett's copy, and Paul Feldman even reported that Barrett's name was written on the inside cover.

It could have been Mike's, but Feldman was wrong about his name being written anywhere on or in the copy Janet Devereux eventually handed over to Bonesy. Keith established this, in addition to the fact that Janet had stated in October 1993 that she had borrowed the book from her father in January 1991. Bonesy didn't know the book was originally Mike's before Tony lent it to his daughter. This was just a reasonable presumption based on her account.

It does seem a little strange that a non-reader who owned no books would have had this one - regardless of how it ended up with Tony. Did Mike read the relevant chapters aloud to him, in connection with his secret plan to fake Maybrick's diary? Or did he just spot it sitting on the shelf in Goldie Street and think of Tony, housebound and bored to tears, without appreciating that books - even this wee collection of short stories - were not normally his thing? Was Janet surprised to see it in her father's house, but not surprised that he let her borrow it straight away? Presumably he wasn't in the middle of reading it at the time. The other strange thing is that she still had the book seven months later when her father died, if he'd asked her to return it promptly because it belonged to Mike.

Against this, we have Barrett's shifting account of seeing the book for the first time several months after Devereux's death.

During an interview given to Keith Skinner on 14 April 1994, Barrett claimed he bought the booklet after seeing it in the history section of WH Smith's bookstore (Ripper Diary, p. 85)

But several months earlier, in September 1993, Barrett had told Martin Howells a different account: that he had found the booklet at the Liverpool Library and had merely 'got it out.'

MH: Did you at this stage know who had written the diary?

MB: No. Right. What happened was...

MH: Just start, “at this stage I didn’t know”.

MB: At that stage I didn’t and what happened was I kept on looking throughout the library for Jack the Ripper, Jack the Ripper, Jack the Ripper. I was looking in all the books, Jack the Ripper, Jack the Ripper. Well the opening page of the diary has got ‘Whitechapel Liverpool Whitechapel London’, so I thought to myself “hang on a minute Mike stop,” but this is after many months – I emphasise many months. Stop looking at Jack the Ripper and start looking at Liverpool murders. Right and I got a book out by Richard Whittington Egan. Right, and in that book, its got quite a lot of short stories, short stories, just very small short stories – Springheel Jack and everything else what have you, and I come across Florence Maybrick, the murder, right, I think it was called Poison and Motive[?] if I’m not mistaken, and I come across that and then I come across that and I found Battlecrease House, which is very important – Battlecrease House. I suddenly realised Battlecrease House is in the diary. So consequently it had to be. So instead of looking for the Ripper I went all the way for James Maybrick, and this is what started to convince me.

MH: Did you ever show any of these books to Tony Devereux?

MB: No. Well Tony Devereux was dead.

MH: Yeah. It’s just that one of the daughters has apparently said that in fact she remembers that book Murder Mayhem and Mystery being lent to the younger daughter. Tony Devereux’s.

--

So, which was it? Did Barrett buy it at WH Smith's, or did Barrett check it out from the library?

Barrett couldn't keep his story straight and I see no reason to believe either account.

Yes, it's certainly a muddle. Copies of the book could undoubtedly have been picked up multiple times in either place and by anyone, whether it was prior to January 1991, between August 1991 and April 1992, or between the spring and summer of 1992.

It's also worth noting that Barrett gave this account in September 1993 but his research notes already mentioning the same booklet were turned in to Shirley Harrison the previous Spring/Summer.

Although Shirley couldn't put a precise date on when she got the notes from Mike, she did think it was around July or August 1992, with no suggestion that it was as early as the spring.

This means the discovery that Devereux---described by his own daughters as a non-reader who 'owned no books'--having the exact same booklet that appears in the research notes--and apparently Barrett's own copy to boot--is far too coincidental to ignore as meaningless.

If it's a coincidence that can be ignored as meaningless, that a Fountains Road resident was working in Maybrick's former home on 9th March 1992, the day of Mike Barrett's first known mention of the unique, unrepeatable one-off that is the Maybrick diary, why would it be 'far too coincidental' to ignore as meaningless, that a copy of an extremely popular collection of Liverpool tales could have found its way innocently into the home of another Fountains Road resident over a year previously?

There was a connection between Devereux and the Maybrick case and, for some reason, Barrett didn't want anyone to know about it...even though he had otherwise inextricably linked Devereux to the diary though his provenance.

Didn't want anyone to know about it? Or simply forgot all about taking a copy of this same book round to Tony's, because it meant nothing to him at the time? This is at least supported by the fact that he didn't ask for it back and wasn't given it back, not even at Tony's funeral, when asking the family for something to remember his old friend by.

[rjpalmer]

We were also told that Anne Graham remembered--or thought she remembered---buying Mike Murder, Mayhem, and Mystery 'for Christmas.'

Was Anne in the habit of remembering buying Mike books that were actually owned by Tony Devereux?

Or do you think Anne was lying about buying the booklet for Mike in order to bolster her claim of having given the diary to Tony, and by a stroke of enormous good luck, Janet Devereux had a false memory of her father also identifying it as Barrett's copy?

It all comes across as doubt-weaving when there is no actual doubt.