New Ideas and New Research on the Diary

[Herlock Sholmes]

Is there any point in answering any more of your questions when you didn't bother to read the post you quoted from, which contained a whole paragraph dedicated to the suggestion that Anne had assisted Mike in creating the diary? Here it is again, but you are seriously trying my patience now:



You wrote:



Mike didn't have his thought processes in order throughout the period between June 1994 and the end of the year, in case you hadn't noticed. 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. By the first week in January 1995, he had decided to rope in his late, not so lamented 'friend', his wife's deceased father - and even his daughter Caroline as a living witness to the diary's nativity. Much had happened since June 1994 to influence his behaviour and decision making. What could he have done differently to get his new version of events out there sooner if, as I think you said yourself, the papers were not exactly falling over themselves to print a potentially libellous accusation this time round, by a deeply troubled husband and father who had been without his family for the whole of 1994 and was again drowning his sorrows in drink, as he had been doing when his solicitor retracted his first story?

I wonder if you are mixing up two issues here: Mike could only have acted impulsively regarding his forgery claim, and spilled all the right beans in the right order and all at once at the earliest opportunity, if that was really his aim and he had the beans to spill. The facts indicate that he didn't, and was therefore struggling impotently over time to try and make his story believable. It doesn't matter if he was the impulsive type, as I see him, or laid back to the point of being horizontal, if what he wanted to achieve was simply not going to be possible, either in the short or the long term. That's a very different beast from seeing an old book signed Jack the Ripper and using his gift of the gab to make it his own in the shortest possible time.



It was RJ Palmer's contention that Anne was 'terrified' about anything diary related, never mine. In 1992, the prospect of Mike one day saying he had forged the diary himself was hardly likely to have dawned on her. It was the prospect of Mike getting it published that RJ Palmer argued would have scared the living hell out of her [melodramatic or what?] and he also argued that she came out with her new story in July 1994, because she was 'terrified' at the prospect of Mike linking her with the diary's creation.

None of it makes any sense, because by June 1992 Anne was so 'terrified' that she coughed up the train fare for Mike's return trip to London with the diary to get a publishing deal, and her new story in July 1994 was very likely to have got Mike frothing at the mouth and - er - linking her with the diary's creation at the next earliest opportunity, if only he could have provided a coherent and credible account of the forgery process from start to finish. I'm not sure how Anne could possibly have known that he couldn't even do that, assuming they had worked together on producing the diary, or that all the hard evidence had been mopped up and destroyed by then. If Mike had been the one to source the raw materials, she'd have been relying on him not to have left any knowledge or trace of this process with a third party, or in the marital home when she left it in January 1994. She could have destroyed the auction ticket in theory, if it ever existed and she knew where Mike kept it, but he claimed he still had it in April 1999, which, if true, would at least have given RJ Palmer some cause to think Anne might have been 'terrified' at the prospect of him whipping it out at any time from June 1994. But Mike didn't leave it to anyone in his Will, and went to his grave without it, and there never was a scintilla of supporting evidence for its existence.

Love,

Caz
X

Are you sure it's accurate to say that Mike "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." Can you provide a quote from June 1994 in which he said he wrote the diary, including the manuscript, on his own? The reason I ask is 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. So 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?

Clearly, Roger has never said that Anne was terrified about Mike falsely claiming that she was involved in forging the diary. I just don't see how a false claim by Mike that Anne was involved in forging the diary would have affected her in any way. Nor can I believe that Mike would have thought so. That's why I find it so difficult to understand why Anne reacted in June 1994 as if Mike's confession was an attack on her personally. Can you explain it? And it's why I find it so difficult to see why she would have felt blackmailed by any threat by Mike to circulate his affidavit. Yet she said she regarded it as blackmail.

[caz]

I've checked in Robert Smith's book and I think I can see why you're refusing to answer my question. He didn't witness a single thing. Smith tells a story of Alan Davies at some unknown date after November 1992 informing someone that Eddie Lyons had found "a leather-bound diary" under the floorboards of Battlecrease. It seems to me that this probably occurred in 1993 after Feldman and started this rumour among the electricians. Also, if "a Battlecrease witness" had spoken of "a leather-bound diary", I can't understand why Caz didn't mention this? Surely that's way more significant than an "old book" (which expression Smith doesn't attribute to Davies at all). Presumably it's because Alan Davies isn't "a Battlecrease witness". Someone must have told him about the Maybrick diary in 1993, after Feldman started pestering the electricians, and he passed this rumour on. That hardly "proves the Battlecrease Provenance". In fact, it doesn't prove anything.

I didn't mention it, Herlock, because if I mentioned everything published in the various books that could be relevant or significant, just for your benefit, I'd still be here at Christmas 2030, assuming I live that long. I'm currently more concerned about my cat, Monty, who is fifteen, off his food and not displaying his usual, highly vocalised needypuss complex. I don't need an even needier purrrson to take his place right now.

Tim Martin-Wright was told about Jack the Ripper's diary before Feldman arrived to muddy the waters. Alan Davies had worked for Portus & Rhodes, like the Battlecrease crew, and he was working with Jim Bowling on another job just a week after Jim had been sent with Eddie Lyons to Battlecrease to help out with the rewiring for the storage heaters on 9th March 1992. Alan Davies told Alan Dodgson about the diary and he told Tim Martin-Wright about it, because of Tim's known interest in antiques. Tim made an offer for the diary, but he was then told it had already been sold to a bloke in a pub over in Anfield. All this happened before Feldman's involvement, and Tim gave his own account independently of anyone else, and before Feldman could have influenced it in any way. Tim happened to pick up a copy of Shirley's book and quickly recognised that she was writing about the diary he would have bought if it had still been on the market. Tim read the book in the car, while his wife was driving them both home.

Naturally, you will be assured by the usual suspects that I'm flat out lying about all this, or at the very least totally confused about the supporting evidence currently in Keith's possession - because they have a crystal ball to tell them so.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Apart from ‘one off instance’ Abby which shows unequivocally that the diary is a forgery, there is content in the diary which whilst not being 100% proof certainly comes close. It shows how very, very unlikely it was for Maybrick to have been the ripper. The red handkerchief is one obvious example. This, along with other things, count strongly against the diary being genuine…and these are without the total proof of one off instance (on the subject of which, all that we get is “surely someone could have used”…and that kind of thing. Every suggestion against that has been put forward so far have been embarrassing and feeble to be honest)

How would a forged diary make the slightest difference to what the real James Maybrick may or may not have done in his spare time?

You can point to the evidence that convinces you that the real James did not write the diary, but it can tell you nothing about what else the real James didn't do.

If I fake a diary by Monty Druitt, would the contents tell you how 'very, very unlikely it was' for Monty to have been the ripper?

Love,

Caz
X

[Herlock Sholmes]

Just read the post, Herlock, instead of trying to read into it what's not there.

I merely observed from listening to the various recordings that when Keith and Coral were gathering witness accounts, the diary was referred to on more than one occasion, and by more than one of the interviewees, as "the old book" when claiming to have personal knowledge of it, and not just what they could have read in a book. I don't know why they thought of it in this way; they just did. I don't know if any significance can be attached to it. It is what it is.

If you don't like it being called "the old book", is that because you are worried that it could be significant? If you are happy that there is no significance, is there a problem with it being described in that way?

Love,

Caz
X

Its not that I don't like it being called an "old book" Caz, it's just that I can't understand why you keep calling it that in quotation marks. I'm trying to work out who called it that. So far, you've not identified a single person who described the diary in that way, let alone someone who can be described as a witness.

What you've said in your post could be extremely important so I find it hard believe that you're not prepared to expand on it. Which of those interviewed claimed to have personal knowledge of an old book? And what do you mean by "personal knowledge"? I wasn't aware of anyone claiming to have personal knowledge of anything relating to the discovery of the diary. So how they name something is less important than the fact that they claim to have had personal knowledge of something. What is it?

Is it possible to find out more about the witness accounts gathered by Keith and Coral? Or is this something else which is secret?

The reason I press the point is because I have a suspicion that all the interviewees were doing was passing on to Keith and Coral second hand rumours which had been started by Feldman and his investigation, so that they weren't witnesses in any true sense of the word. Just electricians who had heard the famous story of Eddie's discovery of Jack the Ripper's diary. If that's the case, it doesn't matter what they called the diary, does it?

But, truly, if there was someone who in 1992 had personal knowledge of the discovery of an "old book" in Battlecrease, please do tell us who that was and how they knew about it. It seems pretty important to me.

[Herlock Sholmes]

I didn't mention it, Herlock, because if I mentioned everything published in the various books that could be relevant or significant, just for your benefit, I'd still be here at Christmas 2030, assuming I live that long. I'm currently more concerned about my cat, Monty, who is fifteen, off his food and not displaying his usual, highly vocalised needypuss complex. I don't need an even needier purrrson to take his place right now.

Tim Martin-Wright was told about Jack the Ripper's diary before Feldman arrived to muddy the waters. Alan Davies had worked for Portus & Rhodes, like the Battlecrease crew, and he was working with Jim Bowling on another job just a week after Jim had been sent with Eddie Lyons to Battlecrease to help out with the rewiring for the storage heaters on 9th March 1992. Alan Davies told Alan Dodgson about the diary and he told Tim Martin-Wright about it, because of Tim's known interest in antiques. Tim made an offer for the diary, but he was then told it had already been sold to a bloke in a pub over in Anfield. All this happened before Feldman's involvement, and Tim gave his own account independently of anyone else, and before Feldman could have influenced it in any way. Tim happened to pick up a copy of Shirley's book and quickly recognised that she was writing about the diary he would have bought if it had still been on the market. Tim read the book in the car, while his wife was driving them both home.

Naturally, you will be assured by the usual suspects that I'm flat out lying about all this, or at the very least totally confused about the supporting evidence currently in Keith's possession - because they have a crystal ball to tell them so.

Love,

Caz
X

So the reason you mentioned a Battlecrease witness supposedly talking (vaguely) about "an old book" but didn't mention a Battlecrease witness supposedly talking (specifically) about a "leather-bound diary" is because you'd still be here at Christmas 2030 if you'd done so? Seriously?

But now I think we're getting to the meat of the matter. You say "Tim Martin-Wright was told about Jack the Ripper's diary before Feldman arrived to muddy the waters." Can you please provide the evidence to support this claim?
I note that we've miraculously now transmogrified from a leather-bound diary to Jack the Ripper's diary - another thing that I guess you didn't have time to mention previously (and something I don't find at all in Robert Smith's book) - but I'll let that pass.
Then, in respect of the Alan Davies story you've told me, about which you say: "All this happened before Feldman's involvement...". Is there any available evidence to support this claim?

I'm certainly not accusing you of lying Caz but am I to take from your reference to "the supporting evidence currently in Keith's possession" that this will turn out to be more "evidence" you're sadly unable to share with me to support what you're claiming?

[Herlock Sholmes]

How would a forged diary make the slightest difference to what the real James Maybrick may or may not have done in his spare time?

You can point to the evidence that convinces you that the real James did not write the diary, but it can tell you nothing about what else the real James didn't do.

If I fake a diary by Monty Druitt, would the contents tell you how 'very, very unlikely it was' for Monty to have been the ripper?

Love,

Caz
X

I couldn’t help a smile, Caz, by your framing of the murdering and mutilation of women in London as something James Maybrick might have done in his spare time.

Just a little side hobby, eh?

I'd say that the difference between Monty and Maybrick is that Monty was an actual Scotland Yard suspect in the case, whereas Maybrick's possible involvement was the invention of a modern forger, but please yourself if you think he might have been Jack the Ripper, that's entirely your prerogative. I was just having a little chat with Abby who I knew would understand what I'm saying.

[Losmandris]

Amazed this has reached 14 pages! I mean, come on? Really??????????

[John Wheat]

Amazed this has reached 14 pages! I mean, come on? Really??????????

Hi Losmandris

I know ridiculous isn't it.

Cheers John

[caz]

Amazed this has reached 14 pages! I mean, come on? Really??????????

I know, Herlock just can't stay away, despite having no new ideas or new research to post. Just question after question about the same old, same old, that has been answered, addressed, debated, discussed and argued about time and time again.

If he stops asking ancient questions, and raking over old ideas, I'll stop responding to him on this thread.

Fair enough?

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Hi Caz,

Your claim that Mike Barrett was "the world's least well known and most untrained journalist" is surely nothing more than exaggeration. He was a journalist in a nationally distributed magazine published by a major and reputable publisher who had his name in the by-line, sometimes accompanied by the word "EXCLUSIVE". No one is suggesting that he was John Pilger. I really don't know why you feel the need to underplay Barrett's journalism. But it simply didn't matter how big or famous or highly trained he was. It was the mere fact of him having been a journalist and the fact that he kept this secret from Shirley Harrison which is the key point here.

Mike had no training - and I challenge anyone to find evidence that he did. He and Anne both admitted - separately - that he couldn't write or spell, and his typing was rubbish, so she had to tidy everything up or it wouldn't have made it into print. Do you know if he even passed the 11-plus?

I'm pleased you now agree that this discovery was, in fact "a nasty shock" to the researchers at the time, although you seem to have missed my point that it would have been so much greater a shock had Mike not already claimed to have forged the diary.

Maybe I wasn't clear, but the nasty shock I referred to was when Mike first said he had forged the diary. I really don't see Shirley reeling from the shock of learning about his previous writing ventures. Awkward, possibly, because people like Nick Warren were determined to find everything about Mike's activities 'suspicious', but Shirley already had more than enough first-hand knowledge of Mike's limited research and literacy skills, while he was meant to have been helping her write her first diary book, and she never had cause to change her mind on account of anything he managed to get published in the 1980s.

You also confuse what actually happened (which is irrelevant to the question of Mike's motive for confessing) with what Mike would have been worried in his mind in June 1994 wouldhappen.

And what, pray, would Mike have been worried about, when his story appeared in the paper, claiming to have written the diary himself? Are you borrowing RJ Palmer's mind-reading skills? He must have realised he was putting any future royalties at risk, at the very least.

So the fact that, in your opinion, after June 1994, Mike tried and failed to produce a credible account of how the diary was written isn't relevant to the issue of what motivated Mike to confess in the first place. He could hardly have known that no-one would take his confession seriously, could he? In fact, you must agree that if he was the forger, or one of them, he must have been utterly baffled by the lack of impact his confession had on people like Feldmann, Smith and Harrison. How could he possibly have predicted that?

Oh come on, Herlock. This is Mike you are talking about. Feldman, Smith and Harrison never thought for a single second that he had written the diary himself, and he could hardly have been 'utterly baffled' by this, considering he was painfully aware of his own appalling and distinctive handwriting, which is precisely why he had to change the story or forget it, and Anne turned out to be the perfect fall girl for him in the circumstances.

I suggest that Warren's revelation would and should have been a disaster to people like Harrison, and to Mike himself, in circumstances where the June 1994 confession hadn't been made. They would certainly have needed to deal with it.

Well you'll never know, will you? But I wonder how you think they would have dealt with Warren's not-so-damning revelation, if Mike had not taken things to another level entirely, with his ridiculous forgery claims, which he was never able to substantiate? Melvin Harris, remember, didn't believe Mike or Anne forged the diary, despite everything Mike tried to claim to the contrary, so Warren's 'journalist' revelation would have made no impact on Melvin's thinking regardless, which tells its own story.

When you say to me "if Mike himself had no evidence to prove he was a forger, I'm not sure how any of the researchers were meant to find it", this shows that you've misunderstood what I was saying. What you were replying to was my statement that: "Absent the confession, though, surely it would have led to some very uncomfortable questions for Mike, unless the researchers at the time were completely incompetent or, worse, unwilling to consider any evidence which pointed towards him being the forger." That's got nothing to do with the competence of researchers in finding any evidence (or not), which is an entirely different issue. All I was saying there was that, unless the researchers were incompetent or unwilling to consider evidence pointing towards Mike as the forger, such as his journalism career, they would have asked Mike some difficult questions about why he'd never mentioned to any of them it before. That is surely uncontroversial.

If Melvin Harris had still been around, you could have run this past him, because he didn't consider Mike's dabbling with journalism pointed to him as the forger, so was Harris incompetent in your view?

As for the evidence that Mike was extremely agitated by Warren's forthcoming article and how that manifested itself, I already suggested a reason for that. It's the fact that he threatened in writing to sue Warren for defamation by letter dated 13 May 1994. I can't think of anything that demonstrates extreme agitation more than that.

So why not just point to Mike's threat, and leave out your opinion that this showed he was 'extremely agitated'? You might have had a point if it was out of character for Mike to threaten people with legal action, whenever he felt under threat himself.

Now that I've given you my source (although I'd already provided it), could you please provide in return your hard evidence that Mike threatened Eddie Lyons with solicitors in 1993?

Both parties admitted to the exchange independently and on the record. It happened on Eddie's doorstep and Mike angrily confronted Eddie. When he mentioned getting his solicitor involved, Eddie took his cue to go inside and shut the door. Eddie claimed this was the only time he ever met Mike, and denied they met again on 26th June 1993, evidently having made up and become friendly enough over the interval to meet up in the Saddle and try to pull a fast one on Robert Smith.

As for your attempt to demonstrate that Mike changed his mind like the weather, you haven't told me anything I didn't already know other than: "In his final years, when sobered up and less of a live wire, Mike reverted once more to the Devereux provenance and his stated belief that the diary was genuine." Could you provide the source for this please? The latest knowledge I have of Mike saying the diary came from Devereux was 2002/3 when he was expecting money from Shirley Harrison's "American Connection" book. What is the evidence for Mike's position after this date, please?

This is not new information, but the source, naturally enough, was always Mike himself. This is why I was careful to say his 'stated' belief, because none of us knows what he did believe, or what he actually knew, and his word could never be relied on. He obviously knew where he got the diary from, in whatever form, but anyone else who knows that, and is still alive, isn't telling. There was a poster called 'pinkmoon' a few years back, who didn't believe the diary was genuine, but happened to meet Mike Barrett one day in a shop in Southport, where he was living when we interviewed him for Inside Story [see page 270]. Mike told 'pinkmoon' - for what it's worth - that he had nicked the diary from a couple of electricians. During the interview for our book, a smartly dressed and sober Mike told us yet another story, that the diary had not come from Anne's family, but from his own. I have seen no evidence that he ever repeated any of his forgery claims in his later years, and the opposite was the case when he tried to impress Robert Smith with his novel, which again showed that he was just not cut out for it.

You keep saying that a tiny scrap of paper could have saved Mike all the trouble, but that assumes that the auction ticket hadn't been destroyed in 1992. Why do you think he would have kept it? If we assume that the ticket had been destroyed in 1992 (or in 1993, along with the other physical evidence of the diary's creation) how do you say Mike could have proved to your or anyone else's satisfaction that he was the forger?

It was Mike who said he had kept it and claimed to have brought it with him to London in April 1999.

I say he was lying.

I say he never had it in the first place, so he had nothing to keep or destroy.

What say you?

That Mike's failure to produce the auction ticket means that he had it in 1992 but must have destroyed it by June 1994?

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

It's interesting that you say that this would have been an odd thing for Eddie to have said to Brian in isolation as Brian was collecting the firm's van and was about to back down the drive to go to another job because it struck me when, I first read Robert Smith's book, that it would have been very odd for him to have told Brian in those circumstances that he'd found (and stolen!) something from the house a few months earlier.

Eddie didn't tell Brian he had stolen anything. It was a find he had made in the house, which he thought could be "important" and he ran it past Brian as he didn't know what to do about it. Brian assumed he had just found it, and was in a hurry to get away as it was a Friday afternoon, so he advised Eddie to tell the boss. Obviously, Eddie didn't do that, and was never going to do that if he had found the diary on his first visit, back on 9th March 1992, and had subsequently heard that it had attracted a London publisher. One can surely imagine what would have been going round and round in Eddie's head when he was sent back to the house in the July.

But anyway back to the point. Is the real answer that no identifiable Battlecrease witness has referred to the diary as an "old book"?

No - but you are free to make up your own answers, and you clearly have some kind of aversion to anyone directly connected with the Battlecrease evidence referring to the diary as "the old book" [as opposed to "an old book", which you seem to prefer for some reason]. For future reference, the Battlecrease 'witnesses' are not confined to the four electricians who were present on 9th March 1992, and why would you want them to be, if you don't accept that date has any particular significance?

The witness testimony has come from a variety of sources over the years, all connected with this diary that was allegedly found in Battlecrease. Goodness knows how many friends, relatives and associates of the main witnesses must also have been told about it and may still be around. Even if you try to reduce it all to a conspiracy consisting of rumour, hearsay and lies, where nobody stands to gain anything from believing it or repeating it, the Battlecrease evidence collectively stands in stark contrast to the vacuum that is Auction Theory. Not a single witness after all these years has been found to support any of Mike's forgery stories, from personal observation or knowledge, not even in the form of rumour or hearsay. If you are happy with that, I'm happy for you, but it's not for me.

As for the record of the conversation between Lyons and Smith, look Caz, let me make one thing clear. I simply don't care if you or anyone else want to keep evidence secret and hidden in this case. All I was asking is if there is a note available of the conversation between Smith and Lyons. That's it. If the answer is no there is not, that's all I needed to know. But please don't expect me to comment on things that I'm not fully informed about.

That suits me, Herlock. Please don't comment in future on anything you are not fully informed about - including your suggestion that I might want to keep evidence secret and hidden. If it's not my evidence, what do you expect me to do? All I can say is that I have seen no evidence yet that the double event of 9th March 1992 was a coincidence, and nothing yet that could support Mike's auction claim. And no, I don't believe Robert has made his notes on the meeting with Eddie 'available' for you to see. That would be his call. Same with all the recorded and transcribed interviews, which have yet to be made available to everyone, and which are not mine to share. How many times do I need to repeat this?

I really don’t see why this subject or these questions/points irritate or annoy Caz but they clearly do for some reason.

Hardly surprising, Herlock. There's an awful lot you 'really don't see', and I'm talking about all the stuff that has already been made available.

Love,

Caz
X

[Herlock Sholmes]

Mike had no training - and I challenge anyone to find evidence that he did. He and Anne both admitted - separately - that he couldn't write or spell, and his typing was rubbish, so she had to tidy everything up or it wouldn't have made it into print. Do you know if he even passed the 11-plus?



Maybe I wasn't clear, but the nasty shock I referred to was when Mike first said he had forged the diary. I really don't see Shirley reeling from the shock of learning about his previous writing ventures. Awkward, possibly, because people like Nick Warren were determined to find everything about Mike's activities 'suspicious', but Shirley already had more than enough first-hand knowledge of Mike's limited research and literacy skills, while he was meant to have been helping her write her first diary book, and she never had cause to change her mind on account of anything he managed to get published in the 1980s.



And what, pray, would Mike have been worried about, when his story appeared in the paper, claiming to have written the diary himself? Are you borrowing RJ Palmer's mind-reading skills? He must have realised he was putting any future royalties at risk, at the very least.



Oh come on, Herlock. This is Mike you are talking about. Feldman, Smith and Harrison never thought for a single second that he had written the diary himself, and he could hardly have been 'utterly baffled' by this, considering he was painfully aware of his own appalling and distinctive handwriting, which is precisely why he had to change the story or forget it, and Anne turned out to be the perfect fall girl for him in the circumstances.



Well you'll never know, will you? But I wonder how you think they would have dealt with Warren's not-so-damning revelation, if Mike had not taken things to another level entirely, with his ridiculous forgery claims, which he was never able to substantiate? Melvin Harris, remember, didn't believe Mike or Anne forged the diary, despite everything Mike tried to claim to the contrary, so Warren's 'journalist' revelation would have made no impact on Melvin's thinking regardless, which tells its own story.



If Melvin Harris had still been around, you could have run this past him, because he didn't consider Mike's dabbling with journalism pointed to him as the forger, so was Harris incompetent in your view?



So why not just point to Mike's threat, and leave out your opinion that this showed he was 'extremely agitated'? You might have had a point if it was out of character for Mike to threaten people with legal action, whenever he felt under threat himself.



Both parties admitted to the exchange independently and on the record. It happened on Eddie's doorstep and Mike angrily confronted Eddie. When he mentioned getting his solicitor involved, Eddie took his cue to go inside and shut the door. Eddie claimed this was the only time he ever met Mike, and denied they met again on 26th June 1993, evidently having made up and become friendly enough over the interval to meet up in the Saddle and try to pull a fast one on Robert Smith.



This is not new information, but the source, naturally enough, was always Mike himself. This is why I was careful to say his 'stated' belief, because none of us knows what he did believe, or what he actually knew, and his word could never be relied on. He obviously knew where he got the diary from, in whatever form, but anyone else who knows that, and is still alive, isn't telling. There was a poster called 'pinkmoon' a few years back, who didn't believe the diary was genuine, but happened to meet Mike Barrett one day in a shop in Southport, where he was living when we interviewed him for Inside Story [see page 270]. Mike told 'pinkmoon' - for what it's worth - that he had nicked the diary from a couple of electricians. During the interview for our book, a smartly dressed and sober Mike told us yet another story, that the diary had not come from Anne's family, but from his own. I have seen no evidence that he ever repeated any of his forgery claims in his later years, and the opposite was the case when he tried to impress Robert Smith with his novel, which again showed that he was just not cut out for it.



It was Mike who said he had kept it and claimed to have brought it with him to London in April 1999.

I say he was lying.

I say he never had it in the first place, so he had nothing to keep or destroy.

What say you?

That Mike's failure to produce the auction ticket means that he had it in 1992 but must have destroyed it by June 1994?

Love,

Caz
X

I was saying that the amount of training Mike had - whether highly trained or not trained at all - is irrelevant. He was a journalist in a nationally distributed magazine published by a major and reputable publisher who had his name in the by-line, sometimes accompanied by the word "EXCLUSIVE". . But he had kept it secret. It doesn't matter if he needed Anne's help or not. He would still have had to explain how it had happened and why he'd concealed it.

If Shirley had first hand knowledge of Mike's supposedly rubbish literary skills, wouldn't that have been even more reason for her to have been surprised and shocked that Mike had formerly been a journalist?

I thought I already explained what Mike would have been worried about in June 1994 prior to his confession, but I'll say it again. If the scenario of the Barretts as the forgers is the correct one, Mike had been living a terrible lie for the previous two years, deceiving everyone around him, all the researchers who probably thought of him as a friend and now he was about to be exposed as a former journalist, something he'd deliberately concealed from all of them. In his mind, he knew they were all going to question him about why he hadn't told them but he didn't have any answers and it was, in his mind, going to be obvious for this reason that he was the forger, or at least one of them. So he got ahead of it, owned the story and publicly confessed. I don't think I can make it any clearer.

And if Mike was the forger, which is a premise I thought you'd agreed you could work with, then it would obviously have been baffling to him as to why Feldman, Smith and Harrison didn't believe him. And he didn't change the story after June 1994, he augmented it by revealing Anne's role to Alan Gray.

Again, it doesn't matter how the researchers would, in fact, have dealt with Warren's revelation. It's what Mike feared would happen that is important because we're only discussing why he might have confessed. It doesn't matter what Melvin Harris thought about Warren's revelation, although I note you've provided no evidence as to what Harris actually thought about it.

And you've really misunderstood my reference to incompetence, even though I explained it. You keep thinking I'm saying that the researchers would have been incompetent for not believing Mike wrote the diary knowing him to be a journalist. I'm not saying that. I'm saying they would have been incompetent not to have questioned him about why he hadn't told them about it before. In other words, because they weren't incompetent, we can guarantee that they would have asked him that question. And if Mike knew that he had no good answer for it, that could explain why he gave up the pretence and confessed.

In respect of Mike having threatened Eddie with a solicitor, you're relying on the word two men who you claim were in a conspiracy together and who have lied repeatedly about it for the truth of this private incident. And despite me asking for the "hard evidence", you've once again given me nothing but a vague account which appears to be based on your memory. Why can't you give me the quotes where both Mike and Eddie say that Mike threatened Eddie with a solicitor? Why is it so difficult to provide this?

As for Mike's views after 2003, I cannot believe you're relying on anything the anonymous poster called "pinkmoon" has said. I well remember his various contradictory accounts being exposed by David Orsam in 2018 (see "Acquiring A Victorian Diary" thread, #1069 and #1081). Here is one example of what pinkmon posted:

"Mr Barrett has told lots of far fetched stories about the diary to me and lots of other people over the years.He told me lots of different stories all revolving round him been this master forger the one thing that he always said was all he wanted was to raise a few hundred quid to buy a decent greenhouse he never expected this to become so big.Mr Barrett is a loon he is not capable of forging anything and anyone with any sense would not get him involved with anything at any level"

And here's another classic from pinkmoon:

"I met mike barrett a few times from what I gather from our meetings was that the diary was written shortly before its "discovery" mike barrett didnt write it but im pretty convinced he was in the room when it was written I dont know who wrote it for sure but I have an idea who did."

So I think you'll agree we can and should discount anything "pinkmoon" said.

As for the auction ticket, it doesn't matter if Mike was the forger or not, he could have seen people getting excited about the thought of seeing an auction ticket and led them on, perhaps in the hope of a free trip to London and some food and booze. Mind you, you haven't quoted Mike saying that he'd kept the auction ticket and brought it with him in April 1999 so I will, as usual, reserve judgement until you show me some evidence. I would have thought that the auction ticket, if it existed, would have been destroyed in March 1992. Why would he have kept it? But if not in 1992 then in 1993 when Scotland Yard came poking around. Really the only point here is that your continued claim that "a tiny scrap of paper could have saved Mike all the trouble" is a bit silly because it seems to be based on Mike saying he had the ticket in 1999 which you don't even believe.

What I note you didn't do is answer my question: "If we assume that the ticket had been destroyed in 1992 (or in 1993, along with the other physical evidence of the diary's creation) how do you say Mike could have proved to your or anyone else's satisfaction that he was the forger?" Or do you accept that proving authorship in the absence of physical evidence would have been a difficult thing for Barrett to do, if he'd been the forger?

[caz]

Are you sure it's accurate to say that Mike "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." Can you provide a quote from June 1994 in which he said he wrote the diary, including the manuscript, on his own? The reason I ask is 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. So 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?

Clearly, Roger has never said that Anne was terrified about Mike falsely claiming that she was involved in forging the diary. I just don't see how a false claim by Mike that Anne was involved in forging the diary would have affected her in any way. Nor can I believe that Mike would have thought so. That's why I find it so difficult to understand why Anne reacted in June 1994 as if Mike's confession was an attack on her personally. Can you explain it? And it's why I find it so difficult to see why she would have felt blackmailed by any threat by Mike to circulate his affidavit. Yet she said she regarded it as blackmail.

Strange post, Herlock.

If Mike didn't mention that anyone else was involved, when he made his original claim to have written the diary, how does that become evidence that others were involved, but for some reason he chose not to say so?

What was the date of the first time Mike told Alan Gray on tape that he wrote the diary, but Anne wrote the manuscript? Was it before or after Mike was sent his author copies of Shirley's paperback, which was on 15th September 1994? I ask because on 16th August, while in Alan Gray's company, Mike's phone rings and he tells the person on the other end that the diary is genuine and the British Museum also passed it as genuinely Victorian. He says he'll have a word with his solicitors because he can't turn round and say Anne forged it - that takes time, it won't happen overnight, but that diary is one hundred percent genuine.

No wonder Alan Gray found Mike hard work!

I noted on my timeline, that when I first listened to their conversation dated 31st August, I found it largely unintelligible, but maybe you had better luck with it here on the casebook?

Then I have nothing until late October 1994, so I'm struggling to find when Mike first told Alan Gray to his face that Anne had written the manuscript, and how he managed to square that with what he was telling someone on the phone in Alan's presence back in August.

Clearly, RJ Palmer doesn't believe Mike 'falsely' claimed that Anne was involved, and I don't believe she was ever 'terrified' - except perhaps in those very early days, when Mike wanted to take the diary to London, if he was lying to Doreen about where he got it from and when. So I don't know what point you are making here. The evidence shows that Anne wasn't affected by Mike's claim that her handwriting was in the diary. She knew it was rubbish, and only threatened to retaliate if he had been able to carry out his own threat to go public - which didn't happen this time. Nobody would like to be publicly accused of forgery by their estranged partner, true or false.

I can't explain Anne's reaction back in June 1994, when Mike went to Harold Brough with his first forgery claim, but that's a separate issue from his later claims, accusing Anne of forgery. I don't imagine I would have taken it well, if the husband I had left went to the newspapers to claim he had committed forgery in the marital home while I was under the same roof, regardless of whether it was true or not, but maybe that's just me. It must have been a huge embarrassment for someone who always came across as a very private person, who had been deeply affected by having to admit that her long marriage was over. One might think Anne would have taken it far more personally when Mike involved her in his forgery claims, along with her late father and Caroline, to rub extra salt in the wounds, but the difference was that Mike hadn't gone public with it, and couldn't do so without losing the affidavit as his bargaining tool to make her speak to him.

Love,

Caz
X

[Herlock Sholmes]

Eddie didn't tell Brian he had stolen anything. It was a find he had made in the house, which he thought could be "important" and he ran it past Brian as he didn't know what to do about it. Brian assumed he had just found it, and was in a hurry to get away as it was a Friday afternoon, so he advised Eddie to tell the boss. Obviously, Eddie didn't do that, and was never going to do that if he had found the diary on his first visit, back on 9th March 1992, and had subsequently heard that it had attracted a London publisher. One can surely imagine what would have been going round and round in Eddie's head when he was sent back to the house in the July.



No - but you are free to make up your own answers, and you clearly have some kind of aversion to anyone directly connected with the Battlecrease evidence referring to the diary as "the old book" [as opposed to "an old book", which you seem to prefer for some reason]. For future reference, the Battlecrease 'witnesses' are not confined to the four electricians who were present on 9th March 1992, and why would you want them to be, if you don't accept that date has any particular significance?

The witness testimony has come from a variety of sources over the years, all connected with this diary that was allegedly found in Battlecrease. Goodness knows how many friends, relatives and associates of the main witnesses must also have been told about it and may still be around. Even if you try to reduce it all to a conspiracy consisting of rumour, hearsay and lies, where nobody stands to gain anything from believing it or repeating it, the Battlecrease evidence collectively stands in stark contrast to the vacuum that is Auction Theory. Not a single witness after all these years has been found to support any of Mike's forgery stories, from personal observation or knowledge, not even in the form of rumour or hearsay. If you are happy with that, I'm happy for you, but it's not for me.



That suits me, Herlock. Please don't comment in future on anything you are not fully informed about - including your suggestion that I might want to keep evidence secret and hidden. If it's not my evidence, what do you expect me to do? All I can say is that I have seen no evidence yet that the double event of 9th March 1992 was a coincidence, and nothing yet that could support Mike's auction claim. And no, I don't believe Robert has made his notes on the meeting with Eddie 'available' for you to see. That would be his call. Same with all the recorded and transcribed interviews, which have yet to be made available to everyone, and which are not mine to share. How many times do I need to repeat this?



Hardly surprising, Herlock. There's an awful lot you 'really don't see', and I'm talking about all the stuff that has already been made available.

Love,

Caz
X

But hold on Caz. If Eddie was actually going to "run past" Brian the discovery of the diary you say he'd made in Battlecrease in March, he was going to have to tell Brian he'd stolen it, wasn't he? What else could he have said about it? You can't seriously be saying that all he was intending to say to Brian was that he'd found something without telling him what it was or giving him any further information. So what I'm saying is that it would have been very odd for him to have approached Brian to tell him this important but otherwise secret information as Brian was collecting the firm's van and was about to back down the drive to go to another job. Certainly at least as odd, if not odder, as him mentioning to Brian that he'd seen a lot of old books in the house.

If you're denying that no identifiable witness has referred to the diary as an "old book" why haven't you identified him, her or them? it doesn't bother me at all if anyone has spoken of "an old book", "the old book", "Uncle Tom Cobbley's old book" etc., I just want to know who has done it. And the only reason I want to know is because you keep saying it! But now you've gone all secret squirrel and won't tell me who that person or persons is/are. I also don't care if it's an electrician or not an electrician. I just want to know who it is. Your refusal to tell me leads me to think that there isn't anyone and you realize you're mistaken.

As for commenting on whether you want to keep evidence hidden and secret, I do feel fully informed about that because you've basically told me that this is what you are doing. Remember when I asked you for the evidence of Mike telling Scotland Yard about his journalistic background? You refused to provide it and it remains hidden and secret to this day. I've literally no idea why. And why haven't the recorded and transcribed interviews been made available to everyone? Don't you think that's a shameful state of affairs?

[Herlock Sholmes]

Strange post, Herlock.

If Mike didn't mention that anyone else was involved, when he made his original claim to have written the diary, how does that become evidence that others were involved, but for some reason he chose not to say so?

What was the date of the first time Mike told Alan Gray on tape that he wrote the diary, but Anne wrote the manuscript? Was it before or after Mike was sent his author copies of Shirley's paperback, which was on 15th September 1994? I ask because on 16th August, while in Alan Gray's company, Mike's phone rings and he tells the person on the other end that the diary is genuine and the British Museum also passed it as genuinely Victorian. He says he'll have a word with his solicitors because he can't turn round and say Anne forged it - that takes time, it won't happen overnight, but that diary is one hundred percent genuine.

No wonder Alan Gray found Mike hard work!

I noted on my timeline, that when I first listened to their conversation dated 31st August, I found it largely unintelligible, but maybe you had better luck with it here on the casebook?

Then I have nothing until late October 1994, so I'm struggling to find when Mike first told Alan Gray to his face that Anne had written the manuscript, and how he managed to square that with what he was telling someone on the phone in Alan's presence back in August.

Clearly, RJ Palmer doesn't believe Mike 'falsely' claimed that Anne was involved, and I don't believe she was ever 'terrified' - except perhaps in those very early days, when Mike wanted to take the diary to London, if he was lying to Doreen about where he got it from and when. So I don't know what point you are making here. The evidence shows that Anne wasn't affected by Mike's claim that her handwriting was in the diary. She knew it was rubbish, and only threatened to retaliate if he had been able to carry out his own threat to go public - which didn't happen this time. Nobody would like to be publicly accused of forgery by their estranged partner, true or false.

I can't explain Anne's reaction back in June 1994, when Mike went to Harold Brough with his first forgery claim, but that's a separate issue from his later claims, accusing Anne of forgery. I don't imagine I would have taken it well, if the husband I had left went to the newspapers to claim he had committed forgery in the marital home while I was under the same roof, regardless of whether it was true or not, but maybe that's just me. It must have been a huge embarrassment for someone who always came across as a very private person, who had been deeply affected by having to admit that her long marriage was over. One might think Anne would have taken it far more personally when Mike involved her in his forgery claims, along with her late father and Caroline, to rub extra salt in the wounds, but the difference was that Mike hadn't gone public with it, and couldn't do so without losing the affidavit as his bargaining tool to make her speak to him.

Love,

Caz
X

Sorry Caz, this question doesn't make any sense to me:

"If Mike didn't mention that anyone else was involved, when he made his original claim to have written the diary, how does that become evidence that others were involved, but for some reason he chose not to say so?"

Where did I say anything of the sort that causes you to ask me that?

All I did was ask you for a quote from June 1994 where Mike said he wrote the diary, including the manuscript, on his own. Can I take it from your failure to provide such a quote that he never said this?

Instead, you've moved to a different subject about something Mike said on a tape in August 1994. From what you say, and this isn't a tape I've listened to, it sounds like Mike was promoting Shirley's paperback in the hope of making money from it. I'm afraid I don't understand what "he can't turn round and say Anne forged it - that takes time" could have meant. It's kind of ambiguous. It's a shame you've written that in the third person instead of reproducing what Mike said in his actual words. But I suspect we'll need to know what the other person on the phone was saying to him before we can work it out.

I don't know the first time Mike told Gray on tape that he'd forged the diary because I've only listened to four of them from November 1994 but if it was October then great. Was Mike asked by Gray who forged the diary any earlier than this? If not, it probably explains why Mike said it at that time.

When you say "The evidence shows that Anne wasn't affected by Mike's claim that her handwriting was in the diary" what evidence are you talking about which shows that Anne wasn't affected by it? When you say "She knew it was rubbish" how are you possibly able to say this? Or is this something you are saying on the basis she wasn't one of the forgers? It may be that "Nobody would like to be publicly accused of forgery by their estranged partner, true or false" but, as I have been saying, it strikes me as odd to regard the threat of such an accusation as blackmail as opposed to a silly annoyance.

Thank you for conceding that you can't explain Anne's reaction in June 1994. It's not just that she didn't take it well but she regarded it as an attack on her personally, even though she wasn't mentioned. That's the strange bit. But I would suggest that it's consistent with her being one of the forgers.