The Maybrick Thread (For All Things Maybrick)

[Iconoclast]

On the table in the dining room? ... What do we make of this jarring contradiction in Harrison's two paperback editions?

I don't really make anything of them. We know so very little about the truth of the matter that it is impossible to comment. My own 1989 Amstrad PCW9512 came with a cover for the main unit and one for the printer but both of these were fairly translucent depending upon how the light fell. Barrett had an earlier Amstrad model for which I have no idea if there was a cover. Can we exclude the possibility that the WP was indeed on the table with its cover on (if it had one) and DS Thomas had one of those dancing gorilla moments? I don't know. My gut instinct would say that Anne was telling the truth and Mike was asked the question about whether he had a WP and that therefore Mike must have said to someone that his WP was there on the table all along when in fact it wasn't. How can we possibly know, though, what really happened?

What I would ask is, why would DS Thomas (or his colleague if he was also there) ask Mike Barrett if he had a word processor? What would be the point? The Maybrick scrapbook was handwritten into a very old book. What would it matter whether Mike had a word processor or not? DS Thomas might equally well have asked Mike whether he owned any notebooks or scraps of paper (if he was looking for evidence of a premeditated text from which the scrapbook text was copied-out). Perhaps DS Thomas was seeking clues as to whether Mike was deliberately suppressing an unmentioned previous career as a journalist whilst he was on invalidity benefit? It feels like a stretch, but perhaps his detective radar was blaring out that here was a skilful man of letters and therefore perhaps he had a word processor hidden away somewhere on which he might have composed a hoaxed text before he or someone else hand wrote it into the scrapbook. It's possible, I guess. But - still - what would be especially telling about a word processor that a notebook or scraps of paper could not have equally told?

I'm fascinated to know why it matters. I appreciate that Kenneth Rendell made a huge drama out of it live on a US radio station but that was just to utterly and quite dishonourably muddy the waters for Shirley Harrison - the cheapest possible shot anyone could have made given that a man in 1992 in the UK having an Amstrad word processor was truly no great breaking news event. The fact that this particular guy also had an old Victorian scrapbook seems utterly irrelevant to me other than to explain why a typescript of the scrapbook's contents had apparently been found on one of the discs which was still no great shakes given how freely Barrett had provided a print-out of that typescript (or some version of it) to Doreen Montgomery well over a year earlier. If the big deal is that it shows Mike to be a liar then we have wasted a great deal more quality SocPill time these past few days. Imagine Bonesy was trying to get to the bottom of whether a local thug had written a threatening letter to an elderly neighbour. Would it have occurred to anyone at all to ask the thug whether he had a word processor? Why would the question ever come up for Barrett to deny it? I don't know, but it evidently must have done.

Since Shirley was not present at Scotland Yard's interrogation, her belief that the word processor had been "on the table in the dining room" could have only come from Barrett. Harrison had been deceived, not only by Mike, but by Feldman who was working his magic from behind the scenes.

I'm not sure what magic you feel Feldman was working but the news that Shirley was being deceived by Mike Barrett has not shaken any earth around me and I can't imagine why it would shake the earth around anyone else. He was a liar. That's what liars do. As a mental terrorist, he positively revelled in it, it would appear (unless he was just very keen to practice it in order to perfect his skills).

Still clinging tenaciously to Barrett's honesty, Harrison also wrote (in the 1998 paperback) that "[Mike Barrett's] use of a word processor was, in any case, in the first edition of my book."

Still the earth around me remains apparently very solid indeed.

Have you had a chance yet to refer to page 7 of Harrison's first, hardback edition? Isn't there something rather 'funny' or odd about what it states?

I've read it but I can't see anything 'funny' or odd about it, no. Perhaps you would enlighten me?

Ike

[rjpalmer]

Now that I have, Keith Skinner - with his usual prodigious memory for all things Maybrick - has pointed me in the direction of Shirley Harrison's 1998 paperback, The Diary of Jack the Ripper, pages 259 to 260, in which Shirley wrote

Hi Ike,

Please read the following carefully.

No offense meant, but had Keith Skinner instead pointed you in the direction of Shirley Harrison's first paperback edition, you would have found the following remarkable statement on page 272:

"The facts are this. The police did not have a warrant. Mike Barrett invited them to his house and co-operated in every way. The WPC was hardly "found." It was on the table in the dining room where he had transcribed the diary with the help of his wife, in order to make it easy to read." (page 272)

On the table in the dining room?

I pointed out this discrepancy to Caroline Brown nearly a quarter of a century ago after she wrote:

"I have to say that I do think Mike would have got rid of the wp, or anything connected with it, if he truly knew any of it to be damning. The fact that he and Anne made no secret of making the transcript, and handed it over with the diary, together with the fact that the wp was there, as bold as brass, when the police came to investigate, subsequently clearing Robert Smith of fraud, without even considering charges against Mike..."

I then pointed Caroline to the very passage that Keith has now pointed you.

What do we make of this jarring contradiction in Harrison's two paperback editions?

Since Shirley was not present at Scotland Yard's interrogation, her belief that the word processor had been "on the table in the dining room" could have only come from Barrett. Harrison had been deceived, not only by Mike, but by Feldman who was working his magic from behind the scenes.

Still clinging tenaciously to Barrett's honesty, Harrison also wrote (in the 1998 paperback) that "[Mike Barrett's] use of a word processor was, in any case, in the first edition of my book."

Have you had a chance yet to refer to page 7 of Harrison's first, hardback edition?

Isn't there something rather 'funny' or odd about what it states?


RP

[John Wheat]

[QUOTE=Herlock Sholmes;n853169]

Can I suggest that the problem here, Ike, is your tendency to deny the obvious. Michael Barrett was undoubtedly working as a journalist between 1986 and 1988 but you don't like this because it offends your image of Barrett as a gibbering idiot who could not have written the diary so you literally attempt deny reality.

It also doesn't help when you say things are "evident" which are not supported by evidence. I'm thinking of your disastrous and now disproven claim that "Evidently, Barrett didn't think of himself as a journalist" for which there is no evidence at all and for which the actual evidence flatly contradicts your claim.
[/QUOTE

Hi Herlock

The points are that Mike Barrett was a journalist at one point. That he was certainly not a gibbering idiot and that there is nothing to suggest that between them Mike and Anne could not have written the diary. It's just that some don't like this. Because it might suggest something they don't like.

Cheers John

[Herlock Sholmes]

In Conclusion

I think it was perfectly reasonable of me to challenge the evidence for the claim that Mike Barrett had denied to DS Thomas that he owned a word processor.

Now that I have, Keith Skinner - with his usual prodigious memory for all things Maybrick - has pointed me in the direction of Shirley Harrison's 1998 paperback, The Diary of Jack the Ripper, pages 259 to 260, in which Shirley wrote:

"Anne has since described that day as the worst in her life. She prepared refreshments and hardly said a word while Detective Sergeant Thomas grilled Michael who kept asking for beer. In the middle of it all Anne's father , Billy Graham, turned up and Michael asked Detective Sergeant Thomas to pretend he was the insurance man rather than admit his true identity. Among other things Michael denied that he had a word processor."

So Keith got it from Shirley who had got it from Anne Barrett. I can't see any obvious reason for why Anne would lie about Mike denying the word processor so I have to accept that he did deny it. Of course, we know why he did - Paul Feldman gave him the rather poor advice that he should deny it if asked which Barrett appears to have duly done. I'm personally struggling to see what the link is between a man having an Amstrad word processor in 1992 and an old book with a handwritten confession in; but what I do know is that Barrett's stupid denial gave Kenneth Rendell the opportunity to make a huge drama of the 'sinister development' that a word processor had been found with a typescript of the diary contents on one of its discs.

Mike Barrett, the gift that just keeps giving. One of life's born fools.

"Enough" [thank you, Richard Curtis].

This is a classic attempt by you to deny reality and to re-shape it into something more comforting.

You did not challenge the evidence for the claim that Mike Barrett had denied to DS Thomas that he owned a word processor. What happened is that you hadn't understood that Mike Barrett had denied to DS Thomas that he owned a word processor. That's because you hadn't read Keith's words properly.

You thought that the issue was that Mike Barrett simply hadn't mentioned owning a word processor. Hence you asked:

"What did he have to fear and why would he feel the need to mention his word processor? Was he even asked if he had one?"

That's not challenging the evidence. It's not understanding it.

My point is that Mike obviously wasn't being candid with Scotland Yard in October 1993. I would suggest that one thing he knew when speaking to them is that they had already spoken to Devereux's family. Either Bonesy told him that the Devereux family believed he was a journalist or he feared they would have said this because this is what he'd told Devereux to whom he'd also mentioned that he'd had articles published in a magazine. But I reckon he'd not specifically mentioned the magazine titles, Celebrity and Chat, to Devereux so he felt able to twist the truth when speaking to the police by saying that he'd only ever had articles published in a children's magazine. He got away with it then (although I can't help wondering what Anne was thinking when she heard him say this, knowing it wasn't true, or why she didn't report this lie to Keith Skinner) but he surely knew it would be a different matter after his journalism was publicly exposed in Ripperana by Nick Warren in the summer of 1994.

[Herlock Sholmes]

My Dear Readers,

If there is one thing that recent exchanges have shown it is that we must always:

1) Aim to establish the truth-basis of any claim;
2) Avoid the temptation to draw unreasonable or patently-skewed inferences from events in order to give the illusion that there is evidence to support our views.

What may seem 'obvious' to you may not be obvious to someone else. 'Obvious' needs to be tautologous the moment the actual agreed-upon evidence has been provided. What may seem well-established to you may turn out to be ambiguous, unproven, or just plain wrong.

If we can do the first and avoid the second, the fog will lift considerably and we can possibly start to see what inferences are reasonable to draw rather than simply convenient to draw.

I do not believe for one moment that Mike Barrett had anything whatsoever to do with the creation of the Maybrick scrapbook. I say this because there is no evidence to support it. Yes, he was the first to produce it (in London on April 13, 1992) and - yes - he later claimed he had created it as part of a hoax designed to help him pay his crippling mortgage. The first claim we can reasonably accept as true: no-one has ever come forward and claimed that they had seen that specific document prior to April 13, 1992. The second claim we cannot reasonably accept as true: Mike Barrett proved to be a chronic liar and thereby sacrificed his right to be taken at face value as an honourable person.

And that's where we are with Barrett. And I'm absolutely done with Barrett. In my remarkable Society's Pillar 2025 (no hope, by the way), I have to spend half the document talking about Mike Barrett. And here on the Casebook, I have to keep reminding everyone that there is zero evidence that Mike Barrett had any involvement whatsoever in the creation of the Maybrick scrapbook.

I fully understand that those who - not unreasonably - have the gravest concerns regarding the authenticity of the scrapbook would home in on Barrett. I imagine I might be tempted to do the same because he's a very easy foil to fall back on in the rather stark absence of any other plausible candidates for a hoax.

I don't believe in the Cottingley Fairies and I like to think I am not naive enough to fall for such hoaxes. I am strongly convinced that Lee Harvey Oswald did not fire on John Kennedy on November 22, 1963, and therefore I am strongly drawn to the possibility that he was killed as part of a conspiracy. And I genuinely believe that the Maybrick scrapbook is authentic. I - perhaps as much as anyone - can articulate the reasons we should rightly have for not believing this, but I believe that there is sufficient reason to keep digging for now. The reliance on Mike Barrett being the creator of a scam gives me hope because he can be so easily seen through. A stronger candidate for a hoax would possibly tilt my sails in another direction altogether, but in the absence of a credible case against Barrett, I retain my confidence in Maybrick.

I don't want to talk about Barrett any more than I already do in SocPill so I'm going to attempt to ignore him until such time as the evidence is overwhelming that he created the text of the Maybrick scrapbook and had that text written-up into the document itself. This will mean that I have to bite my tongue many times when his name comes up and someone says it's 'obvious' that this is true and that is true when it is no more than convenient conjecture based upon a need to have someone to fall back on in the absence of a proven hoaxer. It won't be easy, but I am done with Barrett so let's see how I get on.

PS I will seek to finish the Barrett denial of his word processor discussion and then he and I will attempt a trial separation and I can get on with SocPill with fewer tedious interruptions.

Ike

Can I suggest that the problem here, Ike, is your tendency to deny the obvious. Michael Barrett was undoubtedly working as a journalist between 1986 and 1988 but you don't like this because it offends your image of Barrett as a gibbering idiot who could not have written the diary so you literally attempt deny reality.

It also doesn't help when you say things are "evident" which are not supported by evidence. I'm thinking of your disastrous and now disproven claim that "Evidently, Barrett didn't think of himself as a journalist" for which there is no evidence at all and for which the actual evidence flatly contradicts your claim.

[Iconoclast]

As Roger has already pointed out, it's not a case of Mike "failing to mention to Bonesy of the Yard" that he owned a word processor. It's about what Keith Skinner described as Mike's "denial to the police, in October 1993, that he owned a word processor". Can you not read anything properly, Ike?

In Conclusion

I think it was perfectly reasonable of me to challenge the evidence for the claim that Mike Barrett had denied to DS Thomas that he owned a word processor.

Now that I have, Keith Skinner - with his usual prodigious memory for all things Maybrick - has pointed me in the direction of Shirley Harrison's 1998 paperback, The Diary of Jack the Ripper, pages 259 to 260, in which Shirley wrote:

"Anne has since described that day as the worst in her life. She prepared refreshments and hardly said a word while Detective Sergeant Thomas grilled Michael who kept asking for beer. In the middle of it all Anne's father , Billy Graham, turned up and Michael asked Detective Sergeant Thomas to pretend he was the insurance man rather than admit his true identity. Among other things Michael denied that he had a word processor."

So Keith got it from Shirley who had got it from Anne Barrett. I can't see any obvious reason for why Anne would lie about Mike denying the word processor so I have to accept that he did deny it. Of course, we know why he did - Paul Feldman gave him the rather poor advice that he should deny it if asked which Barrett appears to have duly done. I'm personally struggling to see what the link is between a man having an Amstrad word processor in 1992 and an old book with a handwritten confession in; but what I do know is that Barrett's stupid denial gave Kenneth Rendell the opportunity to make a huge drama of the 'sinister development' that a word processor had been found with a typescript of the diary contents on one of its discs.

Mike Barrett, the gift that just keeps giving. One of life's born fools.

"Enough" [thank you, Richard Curtis].

[Iconoclast]

My Dear Readers,

If there is one thing that recent exchanges have shown it is that we must always:

1) Aim to establish the truth-basis of any claim;
2) Avoid the temptation to draw unreasonable or patently-skewed inferences from events in order to give the illusion that there is evidence to support our views.

What may seem 'obvious' to you may not be obvious to someone else. 'Obvious' needs to be tautologous the moment the actual agreed-upon evidence has been provided. What may seem well-established to you may turn out to be ambiguous, unproven, or just plain wrong.

If we can do the first and avoid the second, the fog will lift considerably and we can possibly start to see what inferences are reasonable to draw rather than simply convenient to draw.

I do not believe for one moment that Mike Barrett had anything whatsoever to do with the creation of the Maybrick scrapbook. I say this because there is no evidence to support it. Yes, he was the first to produce it (in London on April 13, 1992) and - yes - he later claimed he had created it as part of a hoax designed to help him pay his crippling mortgage. The first claim we can reasonably accept as true: no-one has ever come forward and claimed that they had seen that specific document prior to April 13, 1992. The second claim we cannot reasonably accept as true: Mike Barrett proved to be a chronic liar and thereby sacrificed his right to be taken at face value as an honourable person.

And that's where we are with Barrett. And I'm absolutely done with Barrett. In my remarkable Society's Pillar 2025 (no hope, by the way), I have to spend half the document talking about Mike Barrett. And here on the Casebook, I have to keep reminding everyone that there is zero evidence that Mike Barrett had any involvement whatsoever in the creation of the Maybrick scrapbook.

I fully understand that those who - not unreasonably - have the gravest concerns regarding the authenticity of the scrapbook would home in on Barrett. I imagine I might be tempted to do the same because he's a very easy foil to fall back on in the rather stark absence of any other plausible candidates for a hoax.

I don't believe in the Cottingley Fairies and I like to think I am not naive enough to fall for such hoaxes. I am strongly convinced that Lee Harvey Oswald did not fire on John Kennedy on November 22, 1963, and therefore I am strongly drawn to the possibility that he was killed as part of a conspiracy. And I genuinely believe that the Maybrick scrapbook is authentic. I - perhaps as much as anyone - can articulate the reasons we should rightly have for not believing this, but I believe that there is sufficient reason to keep digging for now. The reliance on Mike Barrett being the creator of a scam gives me hope because he can be so easily seen through. A stronger candidate for a hoax would possibly tilt my sails in another direction altogether, but in the absence of a credible case against Barrett, I retain my confidence in Maybrick.

I don't want to talk about Barrett any more than I already do in SocPill so I'm going to attempt to ignore him until such time as the evidence is overwhelming that he created the text of the Maybrick scrapbook and had that text written-up into the document itself. This will mean that I have to bite my tongue many times when his name comes up and someone says it's 'obvious' that this is true and that is true when it is no more than convenient conjecture based upon a need to have someone to fall back on in the absence of a proven hoaxer. It won't be easy, but I am done with Barrett so let's see how I get on.

PS I will seek to finish the Barrett denial of his word processor discussion and then he and I will attempt a trial separation and I can get on with SocPill with fewer tedious interruptions.

Ike

[rjpalmer]

While we wait, here are some little-known photographs of Florence Maybrick and her mother, the Baroness.

[Iconoclast]

Why couldn't it have come from DS Thomas?

We’ll soon find out.

[Iconoclast]

Hi Ike,

Is it possible that this a really good example of you jumping to a wrong conclusion?

Why do you assume that Keith was referring to Barret's witness statement?

Why would Keith ask Feldman out-of-the-blue why Barrett denied owning a word processor unless he had positive information that this had happened?

How does that make sense?

Couldn't it have been something Barrett had said while be interviewed by Scotland Yard rather than something that had not appeared in his witness statement?

But I agree--why guess? Why not ask Keith for clarification?

Hasta la vista, baby.

A wrong conclusion? I believe I am right in saying that neither Paul nor Keith were present when Barrett meet with DS Thomas so I am of the opinion that Barrett must have reported his denial which - at the time - would have been rightly taken as truthful. Keith wrote his post in 2018 when we all knew long since what Barrett’s reliability was like so maybe he did have solid documentary evidence to support it or else it has not occurred to him in the moment of typing that he was reporting hearsay.

Keith bring Keith, he’ll soon clarify the truth of the matter for me.

We cannot rely on the truthfulness of Mike Barrett, I think we can all agree with that.

[rjpalmer]

I don't see how he could have known either way and may have simply been relying on a verbal report afterwards from Barrett himself.

Why couldn't it have come from DS Thomas?

[rjpalmer]

This is a really good example of how facts can be twisted to suit an argument. What Paul Feldman advised Mike Barrett not to do and what Keith Skinner believed Mike Barrett had intentionally avoided mentioning have absolutely no bearing whatsoever on what Mike Barrett said or did not say during his interview with DS Thomas.

Hi Ike,

Is it possible that this a really good example of you jumping to a wrong conclusion?

Why do you assume that Keith was referring to Barret's witness statement?

Why would Keith ask Feldman out-of-the-blue why Barrett denied owning a word processor unless he had positive information that this had happened?

How does that make sense?

Couldn't it have been something Barrett had said while be interviewed by Scotland Yard rather than something that had not appeared in his witness statement?

But I agree--why guess? Why not ask Keith for clarification?

Hasta la vista, baby.

[Iconoclast]

Dear Readers,

I can read surprisingly well, I think.

I have just had a quick flick through Mike Barrett's Scotland Yard witness statement and I can see no reference to a word processor. Maybe I flicked too fast, but I couldn't see one.

Is not mentioning something a denial? It seems rather evident that there is no evidence whatsoever that Barrett was asked whether he owned a word processor during his police interview. Paul Feldman may well have advised Barrett not to mention his word processor, and Keith Skinner may well have referred to Barrett denying to the police that he had a word processor, but I can't see the words 'word processor' in Barrett's witness statement so what sort of denial has taken place by Barrett? Where does he say, "I do not own a word processor"? Where is the evidence that he was ever asked the question? (And I'm not looking for some tangential inference from something someone may have said.)

This is a really good example of how facts can be twisted to suit an argument. What Paul Feldman advised Mike Barrett not to do and what Keith Skinner believed Mike Barrett had intentionally avoided mentioning have absolutely no bearing whatsoever on what Mike Barrett said or did not say during his interview with DS Thomas.

I'm sure that Keith will tell me on what basis he concluded that Barrett had denied owning a word processor but - for now - I don't see how he could have known either way and may have simply been relying on a verbal report afterwards from Barrett himself.

Ike

[Herlock Sholmes]

Hi Herlock -

You are your own man and can do as you please, but it might be asked whether there is any point in trying to convert someone like Ike.

I recently read that there are people in Yorkshire who still believe in the Cottingley Faries. I know this is something of a sore subject with you, since your namesake was a believer in those entities, but would there be any value in going to Yorkshire and trying to convince these people that fairies don't exist?

They clearly want to believe, and that's the end of the matter.

Ike must be one of the only people left who still believes in the authenticity of Maybrick's confessional photo album. I don't think there is much chance of him turning the tide and deceiving the public. I currently reside in a country where misinformation about vaccines, etc., is spread all over the place, so Ike's delusion seems mild in comparison. I don't agree with Caz's assessment that Ike is 'persecuted' but I do agree with her that he's in a tiny minority.

We could even think of Diary Believers as akin to the last Ivory-billed woodpecker or snow leopard---not as something to destroy, but to nurture and to study. Whereas the evangelicals would go into the Amazon to convert the natives, the anthropologists went to observe and to learn the whys and wherefores of their creeds and their beliefs, but not to change them.

Something to consider, perhaps.

Take care.

Hello Roger,

Thanks for the advice. Trying to get straight answers is like trying to juggle live fish.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Everyone was deceived by Mike Barrett, the professional mental terrorist! Everyone! That man couldn't lie straight in bed [thank you, Caz]. But failing to mention to Bonesy of the Yard that he was one of the hundreds of thousands of people in 1992 who owned an Amstrad word processor is not a deception nor an omission but rather a sign - 'evidence' in your world - that he was perfectly sanguine about his background because he knew that he had a document which seemed for all the world to him to very probably be the record of Jack the Ripper's thoughts. What did he have to fear and why would he feel the need to mention his word processor? Was he even asked if he had one? And whether he did or he did not own a word processor, what would that inform anyone regarding the author of an obviously hand-written scrapbook?

Now, on that note, I'm done with this we've-got-a-witch persecution of the hapless Mike Barrett. This is a thread and a website dedicated to James Maybrick, whether you want to admit it or even realise it or not. Honestly, I think I'd rather discuss the colour of Mrs Puddleduck's socks on the night of the 'double event' than debate whether the man who made Walter Mutty blush was determined that Bonesy of the Yard was not to know that he might have a master criminal in his hands.

This time, 'Ciao' means 'Ciao'. It's an ex-parrot, lads. Give it up, man.

As Roger has already pointed out, it's not a case of Mike "failing to mention to Bonesy of the Yard" that he owned a word processor. It's about what Keith Skinner described as Mike's "denial to the police, in October 1993, that he owned a word processor". Can you not read anything properly, Ike?