New Ideas and New Research on the Diary

[Herlock Sholmes]

I don't believe the Barretts wrote the diary, but I can't prove a negative. All I can do is to consider the evidence for accusing the Barretts and, because I find it totally unconvincing, I am not going to believe they did it. The onus is on the accuser to demonstrate, with hard evidence, when and how Mike obtained the scrapbook if he did so in order to create the diary, and nobody has come close to doing that.



A problem for you, maybe, but I'm happy to remain sceptical while waiting for the evidence of a hoax conspiracy. I'm not trying to convince you that I'm right to be sceptical - I don't have completely unrealistic expectations.



Yes, if the Barretts forged the diary, the sensible thing to do would have been to destroy - or at least try to destroy - anything and everything that could have proved it, but Mike tried to claim he did have such evidence, without ever substantiating that claim. The onus was on him to do so, if he wanted people to believe him.



We see the position differently. I don't care if the diary was written on 8th March 1992, although I would find that highly unlikely, but the only theory involving the Barretts in its creation dictates that it had to be handwritten between 1st and 13th April 1992, which contradicts the evidence that it already existed on 9th March. I have seen no evidence that the scrapbook was ever in an auction sale, before or after that date.

For me, seeing is believing. After the recent 'bumbling' fiasco, I realised that some people will resist believing it even when they see it, in this case the fact that the word was known, used and understood in Maybrick's Liverpool in the 1880s. I had the piss ripped out of me when I first dared to suggest that the diary author - regardless of when it was written or by whom - might have been using the Dickens character, Mr Bumble, for inspiration. But nobody had the balls or the decency to acknowledge that the word was not after all 'obsolete' or incongruous, or worse, and that the examples posted by Gary Barnett made all their own objections 'obsolete' for all time. Not a word of apology, just forget about that and move on to more fertile ground.

At least Druitt would have known what was "not cricket".

Love,

Caz
X

Caz, in 2015 you posted:'I am 100% certain that Mike got involved by pure chance, and long after the diary had been written and placed in Battlecrease'. That is surely a statement that needs substantiating. If you can't prove this, why say it? The fact you might find the involvement of the Barretts unconvincing doesn't mean they didn't forge the diary, does it? For myself, all I can say is that I'm not accusing the Barretts of anything. I just can't see why they couldn't have done it, and you certainly haven't explained why they couldn't have done it. So it seems to me that if you don't have the evidence to rule the Barretts out, you should be keeping an open mind and accepting the possibility that they might have done it. At the very least, I would suggest that you shouldn't be treating people, like myself, who think the Barretts might have done it as the enemy.

I'm aware that it's been said that Mike tried to claim that he had the auction ticket, although I've never seen any form of quote from him saying this, so, until I do, I can't form a definitive opinion, but you've always said, and I certainly accept, that Mike was a compulsive liar and we shouldn't believe anything he ever said. That's why I found it odd that you said something like "Mike could easily have proved he forged the diary by producing the auction ticket". To say such a thing is to fall for Mike's (apparent) lies. Yes, I know you didn't believe him for one second, but then why frame the question in such a way? I'm suggesting that (if he was the forger) the reality is that he couldn't easily prove that he forged the diary.

Now you've really confused me with your statement that a theory that the diary was written between 1st and 13th April 1992 "contradicts the evidence that it already existed on 9th March." What evidence are you talking about? There isn't any, surely. You can't possibly be saying it existed because the known liar, Mike, said so to Doreen can you? What else is there? Surely, no evidence at all outside of the Barretts who were telling a false story that it was in their possession long before Tony Devereux died in August 1991. So, please, if I've missed some evidence that the diary existed as a physical item on 9th March please do tell me what it is because it must be very important.

I'm not sure what the recent "bumbling" fiasco is that you mention unless it's the fact that some people bizarrely seem to think that the diarist is remotely likely to have used the expression "bumbling buffoon" in 1888 when expressions of this nature not, in fact, used by anyone until the mid-twentieth century. And the word "bumbling" WAS obsolete in the 1880s, other than in regional dialects, Caz, that's a fact recorded by a contemporary dictionary, and the "bumbling" in "bumbling buffoon" has nothing to do with the Dickens character, Mr Bumble. The ambiguous examples of the word "bumbling" provided elsewhere have changed absolutely nothing in circumstances where I had already stated it wasn't literally impossible for someone in 1888 to have written the expression "bumbling buffoon" and I've no idea who you think should be apologising to whom. But that really is a different discussion to the one in this thread, and one which simply avoids the fact that it's "one off instance" in the diary which proves that it wasn't written before 1945 and, thanks to Roger Palmer's amazing detective work, which I trust you're aware of, we can now say with some confidence that it couldn't have been written before 1988

[rjpalmer]

we can now say with some confidence that it couldn't have been written before 1988

Hi Herlock,

I received a private message from someone who had no idea what this reference meant. I'll start a new thread, so my observations aren't forever lost in the shuffle (and in case anyone wants to comment).

Cheers.

[John Wheat]

This point rang a bell for me Caz as a couple of weeks ago I read Ike’s Society’s Pillar. I took a quick second look and one of the main themes is that the diary is not a "shabby hoax". Here are some of the things I found in that essay:

"the signs of complexity in the Maybrick scrapbook should at least dispel the myth that the document is necessarily a ‘shabby’ hoax" - page 30

The document has "A consistent narrative and psychopathology" - page 31

"As easy as it is to claim that the story which unfolds reflects a ‘shabby’ hoax, the reality is that it actually required a significant amount of attention to detail and research which – collectively – reflect a complex and intimate analysis of the known facts around Maybrick’s life and the crimes he is supposed to have committed as well as of the typical mind functioning at the time of the crimes" - page 31

Cites Professor David Cantor as saying that if not by James Maybrick himself the only other possibility for authorship of the diary was that "it was written by a shy, but emotionally disturbed genius, who combined the novelist’s art with an intelligent understanding of serial killers, the agreed facts of Jack the Ripper and James Maybrick". page 32

"this otherwise genuinely complex document" - page 32

Cites Harrison saying of Dr David Forshaw that "His principle conclusion was encouraging: he said for a forger to have faked this deceptively simple diary he would have needed to master a profound understanding of criminal psychology and the effects of drug addiction" - page 32

"Three eminent researchers in their fields have gone on the record as supporting the notion that the Victorian scrapbook is psychologically deeply complex." - page 33

Cites Canter as saying that the author of the diary was using "a powerful literary device" which would have turned into self-parody if used by "a less skilful author" - page 36

"The letter from Margaret Baillie puts paid to any assumption that the Victorian scrapbook is a slipshod piece of work. It implies that the document is either extremely well-researched or else it is authentic." - page 36

"deep complexity in the scrapbook" - page 39

"if this was the work of a hoaxer, then it is yet another excellent example of the complexity of the research which consistently underpins his work." - page 47

"If it represents the author’s attention to detail in creating a hoax, it is jaw-droppingly precise and would unequivocally prove the inherent complexity of research required to complete this otherwise apparently superficial fraud." - page 48

"It is a particularly masterly touch of the hoaxer that he has James Maybrick quite clearly laying claim to the sobriquet ‘Jack the Ripper’," - page 49

"Given the truly outstanding research conducted by whoever concocted a Jack the Ripper hoax from the life of James Maybrick, his efforts deserve to be fairer witnessed than they have been to date." - page 54

"it is a crime to have written such a hoax (as money ultimately exchanged hands as a consequence), but it is a far greater crime that the brilliance, the complexity, the audaciousness, and the good fortune of the hoax has not yet been fully appreciated" - page 55

"the reference to ‘society’s pillar’ provides a rather neat play on the final syllable of his name - ‘brick’ – a literary device which the James Maybrick (as portrayed in the Victorian scrapbook) frequently delights in." - page 63

"when the moment requires literary expansion, we get it". - page 108

When viewed as a whole, we are being told by Ike in his essay that, if the diary is a forgery, it is extremely well-researched, if not outstandingly researched, inherently and deeply complex, brilliant, masterly, audacious, with a consistent narrative and psychopathy, written by someone with a profound understanding of criminal psychology and the effects of drug addiction, an intelligent understanding of serial killers, a jaw-droppingly precise attention to detail and an ability to use literary devices and literary expansion. It seems to me that a fair summary of all that would be that Ike is saying that if the diary isn't genuine, it's a literary masterpiece. Perhaps that's the type of thing John was thinking of?

Yes its this type of thing I was referring to.