New Ideas and New Research on the Diary

[caz]

Robert Smith should have the stain tested if he has the courage of his convictions.

What are the odds? Human blood or flaxseed oil?

Glue?

Be careful what you wish for. If it is glue, it could have been upwards of 90 years old in 1995. Alec Voller observed a dot of diary ink beneath one particular glue stain.

Palmer should have Anne Graham 'tested' if he has the courage of his own convictions.

What are the odds? That Mike lied in June 1994? And again in January 1995 just after she got her divorce from him?

Or did he suddenly have a pressing need to tell the truth and ease his conscience, while attempting to throw Anne under that bus for having left him?

I may have missed it, but has anyone actually come up with a remotely convincing motive - or indeed any motive - for Mike to have changed the habit of a lifetime in January 1995, to become an honest and truthful witness?

Is a serial liar even capable of changing?

[caz]

I didn't use Suzanne's father as a patsy to describe a completely different Verity watch. Obviously, he wasn't coached so probably wasn't in on it.

As for the Sock Drawer Caper, well I'll just leave that to the imagination of those who dream of golden sock drawers and sugar lumps.

I think you meant the watch repairer, Tim Dundas, who claimed there were no scratches in a watch that had nothing in common with Albert's.

Suzanne's father could not tell anyone about anything by the time this became an issue, because he was suffering from dementia and couldn't be questioned.

He presumably told his daughter and son-in-law everything he knew about the history of the watch when still of sound mind, but they just never thought to pass on any of the details to their customer, which they remembered clearly enough when Albert returned a year later to ask.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Yes, I've heard of the expression caveat emptor, Caz, usually in the context of scam merchants and dodgy sellers of goods. But I'm not asking for a refund. All I said was that I expected better from someone taking my cash. My original suggestion, to which you seem to have taken umbrage, was that Robert Smith instruct a professional etymologist to investigate the origin of "one off" in order to satisfy himself as to whether it could have been used in 1888 or not. I don't know why that's so offensive. It seems like common sense to me. But perhaps he already knows what the result would be. I certainly do.

So you don't actually know if Robert got his hands on any of your cash?

[caz]

This is why I don't enjoy discussing the hoax with you, Ike. You don't act in good faith.

I did not suggest Anne was "tricked" into writing the hoax. This shows the fundamental dishonesty of your approach.

I suggested the hoax could have started out as a fictional diary. One doesn't need to "trick" someone into writing a work of fiction. (Although it is somewhat interesting that Anne herself claims she tried to "manipulate" Mike into doing so).

And it would hardly have been the first or last time a Ripper theory was presented as fiction. Martin Fido appears to have had the same suspicion.

I also suggested that Mike could have come up with the idea of creating a physical diary as a marketing gimmick and Anne--as a codependent to an alcoholic--went along to humor him, even though she would have been suspicious of his intent.

rjpalmer 12-31-2024:

"My suggestion--and that's all it is---but it's a damn good one--is that Barrett could have told his missus that the physical photo album confessional was just a marketing gimmick for their joint novella (and I hate to tell you this, old boy, but back in the 1980s there was a mystery novel marketed along similar lines in the United States)--which allowed her to suspend just enough belief to go along with Barrett's mad scheme.

Of course, the real reason was to humor him and thus keep peace in the house.

Would she have believed him?

Probably not.

But that's where the other angle comes in.

As I've told Caz about a zillion times, look no further than Anne Graham's own words.

I think Anne helped Barrett for the very reason she said she did--she assumed that when Barrett got to London with the ridiculous Diary, the literary agent Doreen Montgomery would "just send Mike packing."

--

She wasn't "tricked" Ike---that's a superficial rendering of what I suggested.

And if this suggestion is wrong, all it means is that Anne was a more willing co-conspirator than I suspect.

But still a co-conspirator, who went from trying to destroy her own handiwork, because she was 'terrified' at the prospect of it being published, to letting her heavy drinking husband take their darling daughter, and what he now saw as his darling diary, to London in June 1992 with the sole purpose of - er - getting it published.

All Palmer's suggestions have their off-notes when the known chronology is carefully consulted, so he has to pick and choose from the words of the 'accused' in order to write his next merry tune.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Do you happen to know if Robert has ever gained financially from your purchase, Herlock? It's a serious question.

You must have bought an awful lot of books over the years, judging by your posting history. Have you never heard of the two-word catchphrase: caveat emptor?

Love,

Caz
X

Yes, I've heard of the expression caveat emptor, Caz, usually in the context of scam merchants and dodgy sellers of goods. But I'm not asking for a refund. All I said was that I expected better from someone taking my cash. My original suggestion, to which you seem to have taken umbrage, was that Robert Smith instruct a professional etymologist to investigate the origin of "one off" in order to satisfy himself as to whether it could have been used in 1888 or not. I don't know why that's so offensive. It seems like common sense to me. But perhaps he already knows what the result would be. I certainly do.

[caz]

It was the diary folk who needed to throw Suzanne and Ron under the bus, and, of course, they did the same with Anne.

How is that even possible, when all three of them were already so far under the Barrett Omnibus that there was no way back?

[caz]

Why do I need to disprove your imagination?

The watch did not 'mysteriously appear' at the same time as the diary, as you claimed.

Suzanne and Ron Murphy informed Shirley Harrison that the watch had belonged to Suzanne's father, as part of the bits & bobs left over when he retired. It had been in the family's possession for years.



There wasn't a peep about Ron and Suzanne being anything other than honest British shopkeepers until the Battlecrease caper was invented, and then it was necessary to retroactively paint them as dishonest members of a gang of thieves and fencers.

Not very nice, Lombro.

Palmer is forgetting that his new best friends, Ron and Suzanne, were already down as dishonest in his book for claiming to have noticed the scratches and treated them with jeweller's rouge back in 1992, to improve the appearance of the timepiece and get it up to scratch before putting it in the shop window.

Riddle: who in Palmer's world uses jeweller's rouge to minimise non-existent scratch marks?

Nothing new, nothing real.

Just the same old, same old.

[caz]

Imagination...it's one hell of a drug.

If Palmer says so.

It must be, if it can make Anne Graham a forger.

If I give him the wool, will he make me one too?

[caz]

Oh so you proved it saw the light of day in the previous 103 years! Wow.

Something new! Something real!............................................. .................................................. .................................................. ......................

I was thinking the same thing.

If RJ Palmer thinks there was no mystery about it, that the watch went on sale in Wallasey, at the same time as the rights to publish the diary were being sold in London, perhaps he has a new theory that the Barretts and the Murphys were in cahoots.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

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.

Do you happen to know if Robert has ever gained financially from your purchase, Herlock? It's a serious question.

You must have bought an awful lot of books over the years, judging by your posting history. Have you never heard of the two-word catchphrase: caveat emptor?

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

The Battlecrease provenance isn't clearly written in the diary. Mike probably couldn't figure where it came from until Eddie suggested it based on discussions Lyons had with colleagues who worked in the house years before. The way subsequent events unfolded, Mike didn't have to worry about using a "Battlecrease Provenance."

Hi Scotty,

You'd need some evidence that Eddie Lyons had any 'colleagues', or indeed knew anyone who had worked at that address previously. We know he was only taken on by Portus & Rhodes in late November 1991, along with Jim Bowling, for a lengthy contract in a different area.

This would have been a major reason for Feldman dismissing his Battlecrease contacts as liars, because he believed Tony Devereux had to be somewhere in the chain, but he was dead by August 1991. Feldman never knew about the double event of 9th March 1992, or he may not have been so hasty.

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.

[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

[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

[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