New Ideas and New Research on the Diary

[Herlock Sholmes]

I simply meant that between the tapes dated 31st August and 24th October 1994, I seem to have nothing on record of any conversations between Mike and Alan Gray. I was asking you when Mike first told Alan that Anne had forged the diary, because you seemed to be better informed than I was on the subject. Then you revealed that you hadn't listened to any of the tapes dating back before the November, so I asked you about the 'multiple occasions' between June 1994 and January 1995 when you claimed that Mike had explained to Alan who had supposedly done what.



I only know of the one tape from October, and I'm not about to lose another hour of my life listening to it all again, when you could have done so if you really wanted to know what Mike was claiming or not claiming on that occasion. Seth Linder refers to it in Inside Story on page 147, and he writes that at one point Mike 'promises to show Gray how he forged the Diary'. Nothing there about Anne having done so.



So check. I now see that by 'multiple occasions' you meant on four dates in early November, and I remain a little surprised that you didn't have a note of all Alan's responses, and appear to have forgotten how he reacted to Mike's repeated claims, effectively accusing Anne of being the forger.

It must have come as a bit of a surprise to Alan, considering that on 24th October Mike had promised to show him how he had forged it. The very fact that Alan had to ask on 4th November whose handwriting it was in, and then how Anne did it, indicates that this was the first time he was made aware that it was supposedly Anne, not Mike, who had actually forged it, and one could hardly blame Alan for seeing it as a change of story, which soon became the norm. On page 152 of Inside Story comes Seth's reference to Alan saying to Mike: "You said Anne did it. You're still saying it's all her handwriting", upon which Mike says it was fifty-fifty and Alan asks if they can prove that. On the same day, Mike told Alan that Tony Devereux had given him his research, which Mike then checked for himself, before creating the diary on his word processor, for Anne to write into the photo album. Mike promised he would later specify which sections he wrote himself [referring to his fifty-fifty claim], which Anne had supposedly been having trouble with. The following day, 7th November, Alan was not pleased to discover that Mike had reverted to the claim that Anne wrote all the diary, telling Mike: "You've not got to be seen as telling any more lies."

Had Alan thought to listen again to the tape recording from 16th August, he would have heard Mike's giveaway comments on the phone about the diary being 100% genuine, but needing time before he could claim that Anne forged it. Why did he need any time at all, if it was the simple truth and the diary was 100% Barrett made?



How does that equate to the eleven days Mike went on to claim it took to create the diary? "Very slow on some occasions", but quicker on others? How did Mike know that Anne would have the skill to disguise her handwriting in the first place - or indeed the will, if he had persuaded her that she was only creating the diary as a marketing 'gimmick' to help sell the story?



You misunderstood my reference to no evidence existing. I meant no evidence ever existing, in the case of neither Barrett being involved in forging the diary. Have you ever considered that Anne knew it was rubbish, and that Melvin Harris was right to believe it was rubbish too?



Hang on a minute, I didn't summarise that conversation because, as I said previously, I made a note on my timeline that I found it unintelligible. I was referring to the tape dated 16th August, when Mike had supposedly only engaged Alan to find Anne, because she had apparently moved again. I presume he had heard about the statement she had made about the diary's origins at the end of July and was intent on having it out with her.



How did you manage to get the date wrong if you were listening to the conversation of 16th August? And how odd that you found the most significant bit inaudible:

"...because I can't turn round say "Anne forged it" if you understand what I mean?"

How can you be 'confident' that wasn't said, when you admit that the recording supplied to casebook is not good quality and there are so many gaps in your 'very best transcription'? My timeline for 16th August 1994 has copied and pasted extracts transcribed from the same conversation, so the recording used back then was evidently of better quality, and if I have 'imagined it', along with the reference to the British Museum, then so has everyone else involved.



Why do you keep referring to 'we', as if you have someone whispering words of comfort and encouragement in your ear? It's clear enough to me that what Alan Gray heard Mike saying on the phone on 16th August could have had no meaning for him then, because Mike had not yet had a chance to work on him and groom him with all his diary bullshi*. That indeed took time and didn't happen overnight. It now appears that it took nearly three months before Mike was ready to light the touch paper around Bonfire Night, 1994, when he set off a quick series of roman candles, which were more like damp squibs, and not a single penny for the poor Guy, Alan Gray.

Mike could have told the full story, if true, back in October 1993 when he had his bestseller, or at least when Anne left him in the New Year. He could have gone straight to the papers a whole year before his affidavit. What was he waiting for, Christmas? Not quite, he went off early and put his sprouts on to boil in the November.

Years later Barrat & Barrett [Deceased] went into the business of making April Fools of anyone falling for the original trumped-up charges against Anne Graham. That was the day after the Awesome Auction that Never Was.

You couldn't make it up - except that Barrett and Barrat did just that.



So you reckon young Caroline had to be 'coached' to tell the Devereux story, and to say nothing about watching the photo album being transformed into the diary before her very eyes? Wouldn't it have been a tad simpler and infinitely less risky just to send her to her bedroom, or for stay overs with school friends, while the deed was being done? If Mike could persuade her mother to sit down and disguise her handwriting over 63 pages, removing Caroline from the scene of crime for the duration should have been a piece of cake by comparison. It makes so much more sense that she was allowed to be in the same room because they were only preparing a transcript, which Mike took to London with the diary. Caroline may well have remembered this as it was coming up to the end of term and the Easter holidays. All three events connected with the diary coming into their lives: her Dad asking questions over the phone; the row between her parents; and the diary being transcribed, would have been the more memorable for happening in quick succession, and far less need for any special 'coaching' than if she'd been there to see the diary in its before, during and after condition.

Caroline could not have known how her Dad ended up with that old book, or who gave it to him, if all she really remembered was that one day there was no diary in their lives and everything was relatively normal, and the next there was this 'thing', that created so much friction in the home. If her Dad was on the phone to someone, pestering them with questions, how would Caroline have known who he was talking to? It's not known how much she was ever told about her Dad's acquaintances, including Tony, before or after his fatal heart attack, which happened while the Barretts were away on holiday. Would Caroline have twigged that her Dad couldn't possibly have been phoning Tony about the diary? Or was she too young to think or care deeply enough about what she was hearing from her parents to notice any contradictions in the story? If she had not questioned them about this by February 1993, they could have been reasonably confident that she had accepted what she had heard.

Love,

Caz
X

Hi Caz,

You specifically asked me what I thought of a telephone conversation captured on the 16th August 1994 recording, so surely it was reasonable for me to assume that what you describe as "the most significant bit" was audible on the recording available on Casebook, otherwise why ask me about it? Now you seem to be telling me that you must have heard a better quality recording which isn't available to me. Why wasn't this better quality recording provided to Casebook? All I can say is that there is no way, on the recording I've listened to (and I obviously meant the 16th August one), is it possible to hear Barrett saying the words "Anne forged it". It wouldn't make sense in the context of a conversation in which he says "the diary is 100% genuine" and in which he's talking about sending something to his solicitors. Isn’t it possible that you are mistaken on this point Caz?

It's somewhat surprising that I have to tell you that there are two tapes from October 1994 on Casebook, one dated 24th October and one dated 31st October. While I haven't listened to either of them, extracts from a transcript of the 24th October recording are available on the internet. Apparently, Barrett says to Gray on that date:

'I done it on a word processor. She’s transcribed it....I thought it was a bit clever. The writing and that. Write it down then. So I forged it, she transcribed it.'

I was hoping you would confirm this for me, to save me having to listen to it. If correct, it seems like there is a consistent pattern through October and November 1994 of Barrett saying that Anne wrote the manuscript. If you're interested in Gray's reactions to what Barrett said in November, I can only advise you to listen to the tapes yourself and am surprised you either haven't done so or didn't make notes when you did. I can't see how his reactions are in any way relevant or of the slightest interest.

It may be that you haven't read the extended discussion I had with Ike about the supposed "50/50" conversation earlier in the year but I can’t see how Seth Linder has portrayed the exchange accurately on page 152 of your book without listening to the recording myself but...surprise surprise, it's gone missing and isn't available (or is inaudible). What I think it's most likely that Mike was conveying was that the creation of the diary was 50% done by him and 50% by Anne, not the handwriting being 50/50. But how can this be checked if the recording isn't available to listen to? In relying on Seth Liinder, it seems like you haven't even heard it yourself. Am I right to think that?

Your claim that Barrett could have told "the full story" in October 1993 doesn't make any sense to me. As we've discussed, I think it plausible that he only confessed in June 1994 due to his imminent forthcoming exposure of having been a journalist and he didn't then want to implicate his wife in a public newspaper confession, which seems reasonable to me. But then he privately told Gray the full story about Anne's involvement when questioned in detail about the forgery for the first time. I don’t understand why do you have such a problem with that Caz?

I truly can't see any inconsistency with Barrett saying that Anne wrote "very slow on some occasions" and the diary being written in eleven days. Why does it have to have been written quickly? Eleven days seems plenty of time for the forger to have taken some care over the handwriting.

I certainly have considered that Anne would have known that Mike's affidavit was rubbish if she wasn't involved in the forgery - because it's obvious - but, as I've explained, if that was the case, it surprises me that she regarded the affidavit as a form of blackmail. Could you please provide some evidence that Melvin Harris believed that Mike's affidavit was "rubbish"?

In asking me if I reckon that young Caroline had to be coached to tell the Devereux story, you've failed to deal with the question of why young Caroline's parents were happy to leave her alone with Feldman (assuming that happened and I'll take your word for it) when she could surely have told him that she remembered her father coming home with the diary in the Spring of the previous year, i.e. 1992, which would immediately have exposed the Devereux origin story as bogus. When she said that she remembered her father pestering Tony with questions about the diary, was it, in your opinion, an incredible stroke of luck for the Barretts that she innocently confirmed their false story? And do you think that when her father telephoned Eddie (as you presumably believe happened) she couldn't possibly have known who he was speaking to? Might not Mike having said something like "Hello Eddie" have given it away? I'm also very dubious about her story that her mother wanted to burn the diary when we know for a fact that the truth is that Anne wanted the diary put into a bank safe to protect it from fire. I've been re-reading your book and I note that Caroline, as a young adult, failed to turn up for an interview with you or your co-authors in which she could have cleared up many of these issues and told you what she remembered about the diary. Shame that, eh?

[caz]

Hi Caz,

What did the auctioneer say was wrong about the way Barrett described the conduct of the auction in his affidavit?

Everything. It's all been posted numerous times.

[caz]

So the answer to my question, based on the information you've provided, is that Mike did notsay in June 1994 that he wrote the diary, including the manuscript, on his own. Why not just say that Caz?

Hence he can't be said to have changed his story, only augmented it.

I thought you confirmed in #208 that Mike told Alan Gray in "late October 1994" that Anne wrote the manuscript. Have I got that wrong? If so, what did you mean by saying "Then I have nothing until late October 1994"?

I simply meant that between the tapes dated 31st August and 24th October 1994, I seem to have nothing on record of any conversations between Mike and Alan Gray. I was asking you when Mike first told Alan that Anne had forged the diary, because you seemed to be better informed than I was on the subject. Then you revealed that you hadn't listened to any of the tapes dating back before the November, so I asked you about the 'multiple occasions' between June 1994 and January 1995 when you claimed that Mike had explained to Alan who had supposedly done what.

Does Mike say on one of the tapes from October 1994 that Anne wrote the manuscript or not?

I only know of the one tape from October, and I'm not about to lose another hour of my life listening to it all again, when you could have done so if you really wanted to know what Mike was claiming or not claiming on that occasion. Seth Linder refers to it in Inside Story on page 147, and he writes that at one point Mike 'promises to show Gray how he forged the Diary'. Nothing there about Anne having done so.

Never mind the exact words, "the actual manuscript", did he make clear to Gray in October 1994 that Anne wrote the manuscript? I need to check if you are asking me questions in good faith.

So check. I now see that by 'multiple occasions' you meant on four dates in early November, and I remain a little surprised that you didn't have a note of all Alan's responses, and appear to have forgotten how he reacted to Mike's repeated claims, effectively accusing Anne of being the forger.

It must have come as a bit of a surprise to Alan, considering that on 24th October Mike had promised to show him how he had forged it. The very fact that Alan had to ask on 4th November whose handwriting it was in, and then how Anne did it, indicates that this was the first time he was made aware that it was supposedly Anne, not Mike, who had actually forged it, and one could hardly blame Alan for seeing it as a change of story, which soon became the norm. On page 152 of Inside Story comes Seth's reference to Alan saying to Mike: "You said Anne did it. You're still saying it's all her handwriting", upon which Mike says it was fifty-fifty and Alan asks if they can prove that. On the same day, Mike told Alan that Tony Devereux had given him his research, which Mike then checked for himself, before creating the diary on his word processor, for Anne to write into the photo album. Mike promised he would later specify which sections he wrote himself [referring to his fifty-fifty claim], which Anne had supposedly been having trouble with. The following day, 7th November, Alan was not pleased to discover that Mike had reverted to the claim that Anne wrote all the diary, telling Mike: "You've not got to be seen as telling any more lies."

Had Alan thought to listen again to the tape recording from 16th August, he would have heard Mike's giveaway comments on the phone about the diary being 100% genuine, but needing time before he could claim that Anne forged it. Why did he need any time at all, if it was the simple truth and the diary was 100% Barrett made?

Gray then asks him "How did she do the handwriting?" to which Barrett replies: "Easy. She just wrote very slow on some occasions". (4th November)

How does that equate to the eleven days Mike went on to claim it took to create the diary? "Very slow on some occasions", but quicker on others? How did Mike know that Anne would have the skill to disguise her handwriting in the first place - or indeed the will, if he had persuaded her that she was only creating the diary as a marketing 'gimmick' to help sell the story?

Your question, "Have you ever even considered that Anne 'knew it was rubbish' because no evidence existed?" strikes me as bizarre. If she wasn't involved in the forgery, she would have known by virtue of that fact alone that the affidavit was rubbish. It wouldn't have had anything to do with the lack of evidence.

You misunderstood my reference to no evidence existing. I meant no evidence ever existing, in the case of neither Barrett being involved in forging the diary. Have you ever considered that Anne knew it was rubbish, and that Melvin Harris was right to believe it was rubbish too?

As the conversation on 31st August seems to be important to you, I've had a listen to the recording myself. The result of the exercise is that I don't believe your summary of it is correct or anything near to being correct.

Hang on a minute, I didn't summarise that conversation because, as I said previously, I made a note on my timeline that I found it unintelligible. I was referring to the tape dated 16th August, when Mike had supposedly only engaged Alan to find Anne, because she had apparently moved again. I presume he had heard about the statement she had made about the diary's origins at the end of July and was intent on having it out with her.

Here's my very best transcription of what Mike can be heard saying:

“Hello….super….100% genuine…misquotes….the Sunday Times, the Sunday Times just, shall we say, attacked me…yeah, yeah…they attacked me for want of a better word…yeah, yeah… several… I’ve got to get permission as well before I can ….getting a Victorian…I’ll send it up to me solicitors… I’ll send it to me solicitors.…I can’t turn round and say yes [I have]…if you understand what I mean, you know....that’s slowly but surely, you know, and that takes time as you can well imagine, these things don’t happen overnight….but that diary is 100% genuine…so… I hope you understand…sensible….the diary….none whatsoever…it’s entirely up to you…as I say it’s 100% genuine….I mean, all they have to do is read the book themselves…100% genuine…there’s no problem.....absolutely incredible…put it that way...just the way they reacted…totally ridiculous....publishers…got nervous…ridiculous...when the paperback comes out surely….no….anyway can we talk about it tomorrow because it’s too long and complicated a story.…Yeah, it’s number 12, 12 Goldie Street, Anfield, Liverpool, L4….okay then…thank you, bye, bye.”

It's not a good quality recording but I'm confident that he never once mentions Anne during the call. It seems to me that you've imagined it. I also don't hear him mentioning the British Museum. But please feel free to provide an alternative transcript if you think your hearing is better than mine.

How did you manage to get the date wrong if you were listening to the conversation of 16th August? And how odd that you found the most significant bit inaudible:

"...because I can't turn round say "Anne forged it" if you understand what I mean?"

How can you be 'confident' that wasn't said, when you admit that the recording supplied to casebook is not good quality and there are so many gaps in your 'very best transcription'? My timeline for 16th August 1994 has copied and pasted extracts transcribed from the same conversation, so the recording used back then was evidently of better quality, and if I have 'imagined it', along with the reference to the British Museum, then so has everyone else involved.

For the moment though, we can, I think, safely ignore your speculations as to why Mike said what you think he did in August 1994 about slowly revealing that Anne wrote the diary.

Why do you keep referring to 'we', as if you have someone whispering words of comfort and encouragement in your ear? It's clear enough to me that what Alan Gray heard Mike saying on the phone on 16th August could have had no meaning for him then, because Mike had not yet had a chance to work on him and groom him with all his diary bullshi*. That indeed took time and didn't happen overnight. It now appears that it took nearly three months before Mike was ready to light the touch paper around Bonfire Night, 1994, when he set off a quick series of roman candles, which were more like damp squibs, and not a single penny for the poor Guy, Alan Gray.

Mike could have told the full story, if true, back in October 1993 when he had his bestseller, or at least when Anne left him in the New Year. He could have gone straight to the papers a whole year before his affidavit. What was he waiting for, Christmas? Not quite, he went off early and put his sprouts on to boil in the November.

Years later Barrat & Barrett [Deceased] went into the business of making April Fools of anyone falling for the original trumped-up charges against Anne Graham. That was the day after the Awesome Auction that Never Was.

You couldn't make it up - except that Barrett and Barrat did just that.

The question you asked me about the Barretts leaving their daughter alone with Feldman in early 1993 applies equally to you as to me. Why weren't they worried Caroline was going to blurt out that daddy bought the diary home in the spring of last year? How could they be sure that Caroline was going to say that her daddy got the diary off Tony and that he pestered Tony with questions, even though, according to you, the diary didn't emerge until long after Tony's death? Perhaps the Barretts were supremely confident their daughter would stick to the pre-arranged story, as she appears to have done.

So you reckon young Caroline had to be 'coached' to tell the Devereux story, and to say nothing about watching the photo album being transformed into the diary before her very eyes? Wouldn't it have been a tad simpler and infinitely less risky just to send her to her bedroom, or for stay overs with school friends, while the deed was being done? If Mike could persuade her mother to sit down and disguise her handwriting over 63 pages, removing Caroline from the scene of crime for the duration should have been a piece of cake by comparison. It makes so much more sense that she was allowed to be in the same room because they were only preparing a transcript, which Mike took to London with the diary. Caroline may well have remembered this as it was coming up to the end of term and the Easter holidays. All three events connected with the diary coming into their lives: her Dad asking questions over the phone; the row between her parents; and the diary being transcribed, would have been the more memorable for happening in quick succession, and far less need for any special 'coaching' than if she'd been there to see the diary in its before, during and after condition.

Caroline could not have known how her Dad ended up with that old book, or who gave it to him, if all she really remembered was that one day there was no diary in their lives and everything was relatively normal, and the next there was this 'thing', that created so much friction in the home. If her Dad was on the phone to someone, pestering them with questions, how would Caroline have known who he was talking to? It's not known how much she was ever told about her Dad's acquaintances, including Tony, before or after his fatal heart attack, which happened while the Barretts were away on holiday. Would Caroline have twigged that her Dad couldn't possibly have been phoning Tony about the diary? Or was she too young to think or care deeply enough about what she was hearing from her parents to notice any contradictions in the story? If she had not questioned them about this by February 1993, they could have been reasonably confident that she had accepted what she had heard.

Love,

Caz
X

[Herlock Sholmes]

Hi Abby,

Perhaps 'they' are, but nobody has told me about it.

But tell me, if the research was yours, as a result of your own work, effort and expense, would you reveal all the details here for free, just to see all the mental gymnastics involved in wishing it away?

There's no need to wish away the auction, where Mike Barrett claimed to buy the photo album, because there is zero evidence for it.

You either believe Mike, who lied as easily as other people breathe, or you believe the auctioneer, who denied that their sales were ever conducted in the way Mike described in his affidavit. That's it. One or the other.

If this was any other subject, 99.9% of reasonably informed posters would be in agreement that an auctioneer was better placed to know his own business practices than a fantasist like Barrett. But for some reason, the master bullshi**er still has the power to groom people from beyond the grave if they choose to let him. As I've said before, thank goodness he wasn't filthy rich and a politician. Brains would have been optional.

Love,

Caz
X

Hi Caz,

What did the auctioneer say was wrong about the way Barrett described the conduct of the auction in his affidavit?

[caz]

hi herlock
perhaps they are waiting to reveal the names and details surrounding the discovery of "the old book" in yet another "new book".

Hi Abby,

Perhaps 'they' are, but nobody has told me about it.

But tell me, if the research was yours, as a result of your own work, effort and expense, would you reveal all the details here for free, just to see all the mental gymnastics involved in wishing it away?

There's no need to wish away the auction, where Mike Barrett claimed to buy the photo album, because there is zero evidence for it.

You either believe Mike, who lied as easily as other people breathe, or you believe the auctioneer, who denied that their sales were ever conducted in the way Mike described in his affidavit. That's it. One or the other.

If this was any other subject, 99.9% of reasonably informed posters would be in agreement that an auctioneer was better placed to know his own business practices than a fantasist like Barrett. But for some reason, the master bullshi**er still has the power to groom people from beyond the grave if they choose to let him. As I've said before, thank goodness he wasn't filthy rich and a politician. Brains would have been optional.

Love,

Caz
X

[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.

[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.

[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

[Herlock Sholmes]

Thanks for the quotes. I haven't had a free moment to return to the other threads yet. I hope to do so eventually.

I've already provided the information I took from the relevant newspaper articles when compiling my timeline. I know of no direct quote from Mike at that time, where he states that he had anyone helping him to forge the diary, and yes, I thought I already pointed out that everyone at the time assumed that he was claiming to be 'the' forger, not just one of them - which would be natural enough if he gave no other impression. I wasn't around at the time, but IIRC Melvin Harris later believed there were four conspirators, so take your pick.

I assume you already knew the answer, so were you asking for yourself, or for someone else?

Any more thoughts on Mike's strange telephone conversation, in Alan Gray's presence, when he told someone the diary was 100% genuine, while saying he couldn't turn round and say Anne forged it, that would take time?

Were they not mutually exclusive propositions, for the caller and Alan Gray to have grappled with? I'm happy for you to seek advice if you need it before responding.

Love,

Caz
X

Thanks my question, Caz. I don't know why you say I already knew the answer though. I certainly wasn't aware of Barrett having claimed to have written the diary by himself but I don't know everything he said in June 1994 and you claimed earlier in this thread that he "went from claiming publicly in the June that he had written the diary by himself, to telling Alan Gray several months later that Anne had assisted him." I think you must now be conceding that this wasn't an accurate statement.

I see you're asking me for my thoughts on "Mike's strange telephone conversation" which suggests you've somehow missed my post #229 in this thread in which I told you that, having listened carefully to the recording, I believe you've imagined Mike saying that "he couldn't turn round and say Anne forged it, that would take time". He doesn't mention Anne at all in that call. Do you have any thoughts on that?

As for him saying the diary is 100% genuine, which I agree he did say, we need to know who he was talking to and what the context was. Without that, it's impossible to know what Mike was doing here. We also have no idea if Gray was even listening to the conversation or if he left the room while it was taking place. The recording is very poor and, to the extent that Gray was eavesdropping the call, it's impossible to know if Mike explained to Gray what the call was about and why he'd said what he had to the person at the other end of phone

[Herlock Sholmes]

Other people's opinions are other people's opinions, Herlock.

Love,

Caz
X

Absolutely, Caz. I was merely attempting to answer your question though: "Who are these people, John, who 'go on' as though the diary [I prefer a small d] were a literary masterpiece?"

I found some others by the way:

Poster "Ron Beckett", 31 August 2008, in thread "One Incontrovertible, Unequivocal, Undeniable Fact Which Refutes the Diary" at #72: "The Isreali writing specialist thought it was a masterpiece as do other literary people who have knowledge of arsenic and strychnine addiction."

Poster "Iconoclast", a.k.a. Ike, 23 July 2019, in thread "The Diary—Old Hoax or New?" at #21: "For our post-1987 hoaxer, you are looking for a creative genius who was willing to give away his greatest masterpiece..."

Poster "Lombro2", 14 February 2025, in this thread, #39: "We (actually I and no one else) can concoct—I mean construct—a seamless narrative of how Michael Barrett created his masterpiece."

Oh and a poster called "Caz", 19 December 2017 in thread "Acquiring a Victorian Diary" at #225: "It's also the only window Mike knew would have been available to him, in which to obtain a more user friendly book and get his masterpiece penned in time for its debut in London."

And poster "Caz" again, 5 September 2023, in thread "One Incontrovertible, Unequivocal, Undeniable Fact Which Refutes the Diary" at #10061: "Crafty old Palmer. He misses out the bit about Mike taking what's already in the old book he got from Eddie, and copying it into this genuine Victorian diary, to pass off as his own literary masterpiece."

Funny old world, isn't it?

[caz]

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?

Other people's opinions are other people's opinions, Herlock.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Hi Caz,

I already posted two examples from the recordings of 4th and 5th November 1994 when discussing the tapes with Ike back in February.

See my #471 and #474 of the thread "Old Hoax or New or Not a Hoax at All?" (and also Roger's #470)

https://forum.casebook.org/forum/ripper-discussions/suspects/maybrick-james/845634-the-diary-%E2%80%94-old-hoax-or-new-or-not-a-hoax-at-all-%E2%80%8B/page32#post847587

By way of reminder, using the recording dates from 1994 given on Casebook, these were:

Gray: Whose handwriting is it? Barrett: Anne's. (4th November)

Gray then asks him "How did she do the handwriting?" to which Barrett replies: "Easy. She just wrote very slow on some occasions". (4th November)

"My wife, Anne, wrote the Jack the Ripper diary, the actual manuscript". (5th November)

If you want more examples:

“Anne Barrett wrote the diary, that’s the whole point”. (5th November)

“Anne wrote it”. (6th November)

"Anne wrote the diary". (6th November)

“Anne actually wrote the manuscript”. (8th November)

“Anne wrote the f*cking diary, the manuscript”. (8th November)

If you want to know how Gray responded I suggest you listen to the recordings yourself. I don't have a note of this, but I don't recall him saying anything of the sort you've suggested.

Now that I've answered your questions Caz could you answer the one that I’ve previously asked please:

"Can you provide a quote from June 1994 in which he said he wrote the diary, including the manuscript, on his own?...are you quite sure he ever said that he did it all by himself? Or was that something everyone assumed him to be saying because he didn't mention anyone else?"

Thanks for the quotes. I haven't had a free moment to return to the other threads yet. I hope to do so eventually.

I've already provided the information I took from the relevant newspaper articles when compiling my timeline. I know of no direct quote from Mike at that time, where he states that he had anyone helping him to forge the diary, and yes, I thought I already pointed out that everyone at the time assumed that he was claiming to be 'the' forger, not just one of them - which would be natural enough if he gave no other impression. I wasn't around at the time, but IIRC Melvin Harris later believed there were four conspirators, so take your pick.

I assume you already knew the answer, so were you asking for yourself, or for someone else?

Any more thoughts on Mike's strange telephone conversation, in Alan Gray's presence, when he told someone the diary was 100% genuine, while saying he couldn't turn round and say Anne forged it, that would take time?

Were they not mutually exclusive propositions, for the caller and Alan Gray to have grappled with? I'm happy for you to seek advice if you need it before responding.

Love,

Caz
X

[Herlock Sholmes]

Who are these people, John, who 'go on' as though the diary [I prefer a small d] were a literary masterpiece?

Mike Barrett seemed to think it was, but I don't know of anyone else offhand. It was presumably intended to read like the private ravings of an arsenic eating tradesman, whose poetry and prose were of little merit; not the sort of thing that Dickens would have been proud of.

But may I warmly congratulate you for observing that it is written in rather a simplistic style - yes I agree - and that this 'might suggest' that the Barretts were responsible. I consider this a giant leap in the right direction on your part. It can't reasonably be put any more strongly than that, when none of us actually knew these people, as a couple or as individuals, back in the early 1990s when the story began. Not one person has come forward in all that time to say that they knew or associated with the Barretts during that period and were persuaded by Mike's later forgery claims.

Love,

Caz
X

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?

[caz]

But, Caz, surely you're making a positive claim that the Barretts didn't write the diary. In which case, the onus is on you to substantiate that claim.

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.

If you were willing to concede that they might have done it but that you personally don't think they did, and that in your view the arguments are strongly against it, that would be fine. It's the fact that you deny the very validity of the suggestion that the Barretts could have forged it, without explaining why such a suggestion is invalid, which is the problem here.

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.

And just to correct you, if I may. I did not say that it is likely that no evidence existed in 1995 that Mike forged the diary. I said that it's likely that no physical evidence of the forgery existed, as, if the Barretts were the forgers, it had probably all been destroyed. That's very different from saying there was no evidence at all that they wrote it.

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.

But I don't have to prove that the Barretts forged the diary because I'm not saying they did. I'm saying that I can't see how we can rule out the possibility that they did. I just can't see why they couldn't have done it. You seem to have given it your best shot but the position remains that they are obvious candidates for having forged a diary that was obviously created after 1945 and probably after 1972 and which is not known to have been owned or seen by anyone before

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

[Herlock Sholmes]

Going back to this one, Herlock, before I catch up with the latest posts, could you just clarify what you meant, when you claimed that 'on multiple occasions after June 1994, from what I heard on the tapes, Mike would say "I wrote the diary" but at the same time he would say that he didn't write the manuscript, Anne did'?

Have you been able to date any of these 'multiple occasions' where you were able to hear Mike specifically telling Alan Gray that Anne wrote "the manuscript"?

If, as you later admitted, you didn't actually listen to any of the tapes dating back to before November 1994, how many occasions would 'multiple' be, and were they all before 5th January 1995, when Mike was meant to have got all his forgery ducks in a row concerning who did what, when and how?

Any clarification you can give would be helpful, particularly regarding where you heard Mike claiming, on multiple occasions, that Anne wrote the manuscript. It would be equally helpful to know how Alan Gray responded on each of these occasions - if only for the laugh. Did he eventually say: "Yes, Mike, you've told me the same thing on multiple occasions. Change the record - er, wait, no - I don't mean that literally!"

Love,

Caz
X

Hi Caz,

I already posted two examples from the recordings of 4th and 5th November 1994 when discussing the tapes with Ike back in February.

See my #471 and #474 of the thread "Old Hoax or New or Not a Hoax at All?" (and also Roger's #470)

https://forum.casebook.org/forum/ripper-discussions/suspects/maybrick-james/845634-the-diary-%E2%80%94-old-hoax-or-new-or-not-a-hoax-at-all-%E2%80%8B/page32#post847587

By way of reminder, using the recording dates from 1994 given on Casebook, these were:

Gray: Whose handwriting is it? Barrett: Anne's. (4th November)

Gray then asks him "How did she do the handwriting?" to which Barrett replies: "Easy. She just wrote very slow on some occasions". (4th November)

"My wife, Anne, wrote the Jack the Ripper diary, the actual manuscript". (5th November)

If you want more examples:

“Anne Barrett wrote the diary, that’s the whole point”. (5th November)

“Anne wrote it”. (6th November)

"Anne wrote the diary". (6th November)

“Anne actually wrote the manuscript”. (8th November)

“Anne wrote the f*cking diary, the manuscript”. (8th November)

If you want to know how Gray responded I suggest you listen to the recordings yourself. I don't have a note of this, but I don't recall him saying anything of the sort you've suggested.

Now that I've answered your questions Caz could you answer the one that I’ve previously asked please:

"Can you provide a quote from June 1994 in which he said he wrote the diary, including the manuscript, on his own?...are you quite sure he ever said that he did it all by himself? Or was that something everyone assumed him to be saying because he didn't mention anyone else?"