New Ideas and New Research on the Diary

[Scott Nelson]

If I recall, when I originally posted the image Caroline Brown dismissed it as another one of Barrett's lies---speculating that he had seen the donkey photo sometime during his life and just threw it in to his supposedly fictional confession as a bit of useful detail.

Maybe it came from Billy Graham, or one of his parents?

[rjpalmer]

Tracing the photograph or photo album after all these years is wildly improbable, but the headstone reads "Chubby, the Dear & Affectionate Little Friend of H & M Pennell."

The 1921 UK Census lists Harriett & Mary Pennell, two spinster sisters, living at 9 Brougham Terrace, Everton, Liverpool.

Mary was a member of the Royal Human Society and ran a cat shelter in Brougham Terrace.

[Lombro2]

I was 100% convinced of that Family Provenance because I tended to give women the benefit of the doubt. Then I researched it to death, going back to Formby and Yapp and the laundry service that fenced items stolen by maids, and couldn't prove it.

Now I know nobody can sit on a Jack the Ripper diary for even five minutes, much less 100 years. At least, not in Liverpool.

[Mike J. G.]

Now I know nobody can sit on a Jack the Ripper diary for even five minutes, much less 100 years. At least, not in Liverpool.

Go on, enlighten me...

[Mike J. G.]

Hi Lombro,

Congratulations, but alas, you're seven years, one month, and one day late to the party. I posted this same image back in January 2018:

Acquiring A Victorian Diary - Casebook: Jack the Ripper Forums


I, too, thought it mighty coincidental that Merseyside, of all places, had a pet cemetery where donkeys roamed free, and that the image of a donkey by a grave dated to between the two wars...which is oddly suggestive of Barrett's description of the supposedly imaginary photo album.

If I recall, when I originally posted the image Caroline Brown dismissed it as another one of Barrett's lies---speculating that he had seen the donkey photo sometime during his life and just threw it in to his supposedly fictional confession as a bit of useful detail.

I don't find that very convincing. What would be the point of inventing a photograph of a donkey by a grave that no one would be able to verify or confirm? Would such a ploy have even crossed his mind?

After all, it took a quarter of a century for such a photograph to show up on the internet---was Barrett playing the 'long game'?

Or were these donkeys in the pet cemetery local Liverpool celebrities and showed up in local photo albums in the 1930s and 40s?

(Melvin Harris, skeptical that the Maybrick photo album was necessarily Victorian, said he saw very similar albums, with similar bindings, dating to as late as the 1930s)

Are you still convinced the album was a figment of Barrett's imagination?

Regards,

The Professor or The Madman--take your pick.

I wonder where that picture was taken...

A recent discovery on a field once owned by the RSPCA in Halewood was the grave of a war horse named Blackie who served in World War 1.

This is a stone's throw from where I work, and the grave was actually found and reported by a groundsman from my workplace who was never credited.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c2q0nw256lko.amp

[rjpalmer]

A recent discovery on a field once owned by the RSPCA in Halewood was the grave of a war horse named Blackie who served in World War 1.

Hi Mike.

That's interesting. The article states that the Liverpool Horse's Rest moved to that site in 1937. The photograph is also listed as being taken in 1937.

According to an advertisement in the Post of the R.S.P.C.A., the previous site of the Horse's Rest was in Broadgreen.




The date on the headstone shows that 'Chubby' died in 1929, so instead of this being a 'pet cemetery,' I wonder if this is at the Horse's Rest at Broadgreen, Liverpool?


Mrs. Mary Pennell, who apparently erected the headstone was also associated with the R.S.P.C.A. who ran cat shelters as well as the horse's rest.



It would certainly fit.

[Lombro2]

Yes, and it would also be a good place to put your horse in this race to rest.


In Loving Memory of

-- Barrett Hoax Theory --

The dear and affectionate little friend of

R & J Palmer

Died February 23, 2025

"In Hopelessness"

[John Wheat]

Yes, and it would also be a good place to put your horse in this race to rest.


In Loving Memory of

-- Barrett Hoax Theory --

The dear and affectionate little friend of

R & J Palmer

Died February 23, 2025

"In Hopelessness"

Ridiculous post. The Diary was penned by The Barretts.

[Lombro2]

Nothing New Nothing Real.

[Herlock Sholmes]

The diary is a categorically proven forgery. All the silly comments in the world won’t change that. We have explained the ‘one off’ refutation to you numerous times and all that you’ve done is displayed in post after post that you simply don’t understand the point. You can’t do or you wouldn’t have made the posts that you have made. It can’t be explained in simpler terms so I have to wonder whether your actually do understand that it’s a forgery but keep the ‘argument’ going just for the sake of it.

It’s a forgery. That should be an end of it.

[Lombro2]

I'm just highlighting the main points of the Barrett Theory that everyone who swears by it needs to be aware of.... Including the Donkey.... Why are you not interested?

You should be glad there's a Noah in the desert covering the outside possibility. You never know if you might need to jump on the ship of fools.

[Mike J. G.]

Hi Mike.

That's interesting. The article states that the Liverpool Horse's Rest moved to that site in 1937. The photograph is also listed as being taken in 1937.

According to an advertisement in the Post of the R.S.P.C.A., the previous site of the Horse's Rest was in Broadgreen.




The date on the headstone shows that 'Chubby' died in 1929, so instead of this being a 'pet cemetery,' I wonder if this is at the Horse's Rest at Broadgreen, Liverpool?


Mrs. Mary Pennell, who apparently erected the headstone was also associated with the R.S.P.C.A. who ran cat shelters as well as the horse's rest.



It would certainly fit.

Allo, RJ.

I was wondering the same thing, although this article states that there was a pet cemetery in Halewood as far back as at least 1922, which is apparently the oldest date on one of the headstones. This is the same area where Blackie was buried.

https://portal.ariadne-infrastructure.eu/resource/eb8addefdc762edc3353b5a45996558517af8dec8e5172814dbf55b6c895e0ac

[caz]

My one and only contribution to this thread is this….’one off instance’ is 100%, categorically an anachronism which proves, conclusively proves, that the diary is a modern forgery. Robert Smith isn’t short of a few quid is he? So why doesn’t he try and knock down the main argument against the diary being a fake? He could invest a few quid, hire an Etymologist to research the subject, and then he could crow until his heart was content that ‘one off instance’ could have been used by Maybrick after all. Simples. Job done. But in all these years neither he nor anyone else has taken that step. Why? Because they know what the answer would be. FAKE.

Is this a 'new idea' or 'new research' I see before me?

Or just another dagger, aimed at someone who doesn't post here, whose personal finances, and what he may or may not currently be doing about the diary, are none of anyone's damned business?

Harrumph.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Caz came up with a new idea about the "alleged" Saddle pub transaction:

So Eddy had the Diary and immediately went to a pub at a time when Mike Barrett was known to regularly stop in. Why? Was it just because he was a published author? Mike was already a dealer in scrap metal and we know he was a thief. So dealer and thief equals fence or, at least, it strongly suggests the possibility. Mike claimed it and ran with it, apparently knowing that Eddy couldn't call the cops on him.

So now it looks to me like there's a good possibility that Mike was a regular fence and dealer in stolen property, and he and Eddy already had some sort of association. Otherwise why would Eddy give him the book? Eddy must have trusted him because of previous dealings and got "conned".

Hi Lombro2,

I think it more likely that this was a one off instance of two local men, with different reasons for being in the same pub on that Monday lunchtime in March. Eddie was living within a stone's throw at the time, and the long-term contract he had been working on with Jim Bowling right up until the Saturday, had been put on hold for a few days, resulting in their boss sending the pair to Battlecrease to help Arthur Rigby and his apprentice on an unofficial basis. Mike was known to frequent the Saddle anyway, on weekdays in term time, before collecting his young daughter from school, but Eddie had previously been tied up elsewhere all day, Mondays to Saturdays, with no opportunity to pop in when Mike was there. There is no evidence that they already knew each other, or that either man knew the other would be there that day.

Seeing the diary, unwrapped from its brown paper, was all Mike would have needed to spot an opportunity he couldn't resist, and then brag about his celebrity contacts and what have you, just as he used to do when bending the late Tony Devereux's ear over a pint in the same hostelry [if I am allowed to use an archaic word in good humour, without the language police clapping the darbies on me]. Promising not to "split on his new mate", when Eddie wasn't exactly forthcoming about where he'd got the old book from, except to say that "no effing bugger alive" knew about it, Mike then offered to take it off his hands and find a buyer.

It's really quite simple and fits in well enough with the evidence from witness testimony, in combination with the chronology and context of known events. Nothing has to be forced backwards or forwards in time, or adapted to comply with any of the claims made about the diary's origins by the serial liar at centre stage. The mere fact that he studiously avoided making Battlecrease the provenance, while working his way through pretty much any other way he could think of to explain how he came to own it, is suggestive of a liar who would say anything but the truth.

Every time Mike made a 'confession', the story changed and included at least one eye-wateringly childish claim that you won't find anyone falling for today.

In June 1994 he said he forged the diary all by himself.

In January 1995 he said he had forged it with his ex-wife, then they waited for Tony Devereux to recover before deciding what to do with the finished forgery, but instead he died and gave them the provenance they needed.

Another time he said Anne had dropped a real kidney on the diary, causing the kidney-shaped stain.

Then he claimed he had faked the watch too, by putting the scratches in it himself.

In 1999, he said he had added sugar to the diary ink to do something or other to the molecules.

Molecules, bollecules.

Now there's a two-word phrase you won't see very often.

Love,

Caz
X

[Herlock Sholmes]

Is this a 'new idea' or 'new research' I see before me?

Or just another dagger, aimed at someone who doesn't post here, whose personal finances, and what he may or may not currently be doing about the diary, are none of anyone's damned business?

Harrumph.

Love,

Caz
X

Hi Caz,

I’m sorry that my post has annoyed you but as someone who spent his own money, out of his own personal finances, to purchase Robert Smith's book, I was expecting better from someone who was trying to sell me the claim that the diary was written in the 19th century than the woefully inaccurate information about "one off" that I read in that book. So I do think it's my business, having paid good money for that book just like anyone else that bought it.