The Maybrick Thread (For All Things Maybrick)

[Herlock Sholmes]

Keep up, Wheato. Under the unbearable pressure of a Warrenlike expose, I have acknowledged myself that - in principle at least - the Barretts could have authored the Maybrick scrapbook so you don't need to keep saying it anymore even if it is somewhat more interesting than 'Ridiculous post'.

For the record, however, I'm personally unaware of any evidence whatsoever that shows they did author the Maybrick scrapbook.

Tell me something for the record, Ike. Are you personally aware of any evidence whatsoever that shows that anyone authored the Maybrick diary?

If so, what is it?

If not, how meaningful is it that you are not personally aware of any evidence whatsoever that shows that the Barretts authored the diary?

I would suggest that if we are in a situation where there is no evidence at all pointing towards authorship by anyone, the absence of any evidence pointing towards any particular individual is irrelevant. Someone, after all, must have authored it and, as I believe you are fully aware, there is a strong case to be made that it was authored by Michael and Anne Barrett.

[rjpalmer]

RJ,

Due of the hard factual information which I have received during these recent exchanges (which is not mine to disclose), I am satisfied that I can comfortably qualify whether or not Mike thought of himself as a journalist and what his motivations may have been (if he had any at all) for not discussing his contributions to Celebrity and Chat with anyone outside of his personal circle. I'm happy to read your thoughts on this but I may as well draw a line under addressing it any further until SocPillWhatever is completed.

Cheers,

Ike

I'm at my desk today, Ike, so I can reply immediately, but I'm not sure what you're asking or suggesting. How can I give my thoughts on "hard factual information" if you can't disclose it?

Do you intend to send it privately?

Or do you want me to respond to your theory that Barrett didn't disclose his contributions to Celebrity & Chat due to the fear that his income hadn't been declared while receiving disability payments?

I'm sorry to hear about Shirley, but I figured that she must be getting on in years and I noticed that she hadn't responded to emails for quite a long time.

It's a pity that Anne Graham more or less hung up the phone on Shirley some years back when she made one last stab at getting Anne to talk about the diary.

RP

[Iconoclast]

RJ,

Due of the hard factual information which I have received during these recent exchanges (which is not mine to disclose), I am satisfied that I can comfortably qualify whether or not Mike thought of himself as a journalist and what his motivations may have been (if he had any at all) for not discussing his contributions to Celebrity and Chat with anyone outside of his personal circle. I'm happy to read your thoughts on this but I may as well draw a line under addressing it any further until SocPillWhatever is completed.

Cheers,

Ike

[Iconoclast]

It's becoming quite obvious that Mike Barrett wasn't the bumbling idiot he's portrayed as by some. And he along with Anne could quite easily have written the diary.

Keep up, Wheato. Under the unbearable pressure of a Warrenlike expose, I have acknowledged myself that - in principle at least - the Barretts could have authored the Maybrick scrapbook so you don't need to keep saying it anymore even if it is somewhat more interesting than 'Ridiculous post'.

For the record, however, I'm personally unaware of any evidence whatsoever that shows they did author the Maybrick scrapbook.

[John Wheat]

It's becoming quite obvious that Mike Barrett wasn't the bumbling idiot he's portrayed as by some. And he along with Anne could quite easily have written the diary.

[Herlock Sholmes]

On September 19, 1993, The Sunday Times (never a rag to be easily fooled), published its vainglorious 'FAKE!' piece.

Now, this was the same month that Howells interviewed Nancy Steele and a full month before Bonesy met with Mike Barrett. In their piece, they stated:

The Saddle pub, situated on a street corner half-way between the Liverpool and Everton football grounds, looks very much today as it did in Victorian times. It was here that Barrett, a kidney patient living on £68-a-week invalidity benefit, met the man he says gave him the Ripper's diary. He and Tony Devereux, 60, a retired printer from the Liverpool Echo, would idle away an hour over a pint of bitter before Barrett left to meet his daughter from school. Barrett's career as a journalist had not taken off, apart from devising word puzzles and writing about Kylie Minogue for Look-in, a children's magazine.

Barrett's career as a journalist had apparently not taken off apart from devising word puzzles and writing for Look-In. So, there we have - I think - one of the first mentions of Barrett as a potential journalist (his 'career' at it didn't take off, it seems).

When is a secret not a secret? Well, when it is secreted about various places prior to becoming generally known. Nancy Steele knew that Mike had said he dabbled in the dark arts, and - Lordy - the mighty Sunday Times on a crusade of truth and integrity clearly knew about Mike's previous aspirations and published it nationally!

So what was Nick Warren hoping to crack wide open in his fairly innocuous little piece almost an entire year later?

And if this was what motivated Barrett to confess that he was the world's greatest forger in June 1994 ahead of Warren's big reveal, he must have been completely ignorant of the fact that his embarrassing attempts at writing for a career in the 1980s were already long since out there, secreted for all to see.

He must have been suffering the horrors of hell, though, at the thought that Warren was going to eviscerate his magnificently-preserved secret as the world's greatest forger with his crippling announcement that, and I quote just to maximise the piss-take:

MUCH publicity has been given to the owner of the alleged Diary, Mr. Mike Barrett of Liverpool, while the testimony of the man who is supposed to have given him the item, Tony Devereux, has largely been suppressed. Ripperana is now pleased to set the record straight.

It didn't bode well, did it? Apparently Tony Devereux's testimony had largely been suppressed. Ooh - that bloke who died over six months before anyone ever heard of the Maybrick scrapbook had had his testimony deliberately suppressed! Clearly something nefarious going on. Ripperana are about to set the record straight - yes, at last, the truth!

Mr. Devereux understood that Barrett was a journalist (he had certainly contributed features to magazines) and the family were subsequently surprised to find his publishers describing him as an ordinary 'Liverpool bloke', scalesman at a firm of scrap-metal merchants.

There it is (if you didn't spot it), the greatest secret in the world was finally and sensationally being published at last just a mere ten months after The Sunday Times casually slipped it in to their half-arsed attempt to imply that chicanery had been at work in the Barrett household.

No wonder Barrett in late June 1994 had crumbled and fallen like a very broken man into the arms of a rather bemused Harold Brough. His terrible secret that everyone could have read about in one of the nation's largest-selling newspapers the previous year was about to be revealed! 'Mr. Devereux understood that Barrett was a journalist (he had certainly contributed features to magazines)' and - worse, far far worse, than that - the Devereux girls had therefore been confused why Barrett was being described as an ordinary 'Liverpool bloke'!

No wonder Barrett caved-in under that sort of intolerable pressure!

Well, Ike, you say that The Sunday Times was never a rag to be easily fooled but they wereeasily fooled by Barrett weren't they?

The statement that "Barrett's career as a journalist had not taken off, apart from devising word puzzles and writing about Kylie Minogue for Look-in, a children's magazine" is completely untrue, isn't it? It's the same thing as he falsely told Scotland Yard in October 1993. It's the same thing as Shirley Harrison inserted into the 1994 paperback edition of her book. They all have one thing in common. Barrett had only ever written for a children's magazine. It's a complete lie. It was hiding the fact that Barrett had written for Celebrity between 1987 and 1989.

And, no, Warren's article of July 1994 wasn't repeating what the Sunday Times had published in September 1993. It was saying the opposite. The Sunday Times was saying that Barrett wasn't a journalist. Warren's article was saying that he was a journalist.

It was only after Warren's article that Shirley appears to have discovered the truth about Celebrity, which had been hidden from her for well over two years, because she made contact with David Burness in or shortly before November 1994 to ask for confirmation that it was true that Barrett had authored articles for his magazine. He reaction when she received such confirmation is unknown but, by this time, of course, Barrett had confessed to the diary being a forgery so the context was very different.

Barrett's lie about just writing for a children's magazine (something which Shirley Harrison didn't even know about while she was writing the first edition of her book) when the truth is that he wrote multiple articles for a nationally published magazine for adults during a period spanning three years and thought of himself as a journalist is just one more thing that points very heavily towards him being one of the forgers of the diary.

[Herlock Sholmes]

There doesn't need to be a trap, RJ. You aren't hunting quarry here. There's no need to draw inferences from thin air the way you and your sort do. What do we know? Well, Nancy Steele said to Martin Howells that her father had told her that Mike told her father that he used to write for children's magazines. Somewhere amongst that convoluted route, there was a small degree of Chinese Whispers going on. The truth is he was at home on invalidity benefit having joined a writing circle which encouraged their participants to gain their first commissions by targeting articles in the lower-ranked (i.e., easier to sell to) publications so he sent in puzzles to Look-In, a children's magazine, and submitted celebrity interviews to Celebrity and Chat, two national - though primarily 'gossip' - magazines. That's what we know. By the way, I too signed-up to a writing circle in the early 1980s and so I know that that is what they encouraged their participants to do. Personally, I didn't, but I do recall that that was what they promoted aspiring writers to do to get in print for the first time.



And did your mysterious correspondent inform you of the relevance of this statement because it is eluding me?

And you mustn't use the leading term 'professional journalist' because it is untrue (and you know it). Barrett was on invalidity benefit: he was therefore unemployed. He 'earned his living' from benefits paid to him by the state. Invalidity benefit was an enhanced benefit paid to unemployed people whose GP had signed them off as unable to seek employment due to various infirmities. When my dad was laid off in the early 1990s, he went to see his GP and - lo and behold - he was suddenly on invalidity benefit which topped up his unemployment benefit by about 20%. When his state pension kicked-in in February 1996 (you have to wait a month before being able to claim it), he lost all of his other benefits but he had at least 'survived' financially as he called it. So Mike Barrett was on state benefits in the 1980s and he illegally topped-up his income with around twenty articles in lower-ranked magazines. In those days, you could not earn additional income on top of your benefits (as you can now). His invalidity benefit would have been in the region of £2,500 a year (plus housing benefit, child benefit, etc.) so what paid the way was his benefits, nothing else. His occasional articles would have provided useful boosts of income but far from enough to live on and therefore give up his benefits and become a 'professional journalist'. If he had tried, he'd have soon felt the impact in his pocket.



Nancy Steele is not on the record in 1993 as describing Barrett as a 'journalist'. Why would you type this if it was just inference on your part to make Barrett look like a professional writer who was therefore capable of hoaxing a Jack the Ripper confessional?

But what is the big deal about her mentioning her father had said Barrett had said he wrote articles for children's magazines? What purpose here does this serve? I'm not sure you and your correspondent have thought this one through. What does it matter what Nancy Steele thought everyone else knew?



So Nancy Steele learned that professionally Barrett had been a scrap metal dealer. So what? She already knew that her dad had claimed that Barrett wrote for children's magazines. Now she knew he had previously been a scrap metal dealer. She probably read this article and thought, "Oh, that's interesting - he can't have been much of a writer, then". Maybe she did. Maybe she didn't. But again - what does it matter what Nancy Steele thought about Mike Barrett's occupations?



And maybe she then thought, "Oh, there's further evidence that Mike exaggerated his abilities by telling me dad he wrote for children's magazines".



No s**t, Sherlock. If Barrett had exaggerated his writing prowess to impress her dad, then - yes - the family would have been surprised to find that Tony had been led up the garden path somewhat.



His 'journalism' was common knowledge amongst those people Mike had told his exaggerated tales to. He evidently had not told his exaggerated tales to the professional writers, researchers, publishers, police, media, etc., that he was suddenly exposed to. You and I can only surmise why he did not brag to them, but I feel confident that my guess is a reasonable one - he knew his bragging would be shot down in flames barely before he got started.

A few scoops of ale later, he finds himself in 1999 and he's telling an audience the key ingredients of a successful writer. Oh, how the irony must have dripped off the walls.



Shirley has just turned ninety in the last few days and lives in a nursing home now. I had dinner on Sunday (May 4) with her ex-husband's first wife who informed me that Shirley's memory of these events was no longer very good. So what is the point of your correspondent posing unanswerable questions like this unless the aim is to help you build your inferential castle in the sand?



And this matters why? It was a throw-away comment: why call them 'revelations'? I'll tell you why - because it leans in to your inferential narrative that a huge cover-up was being carried out by Mike Barrett who must therefore have been the world's greatest forger.



Not necessarily known by Feldman, no. We do not know for certain that he watched Nancy Steele's entire interview so let's not leap from my helpful suggestion of yesterday to a cast-iron truth. For all we know, Feldman may have been totally unaware that Mike had topped-up his state benefits five years or so earlier with some kids' puzzles and some celebrity interviews typed-up by his wife, apparently.

Your ever more desperate attempts to portray Barrett as an amateur non-writer, Ike, do not sit well with what the editor of Celebrity told Shirley Harrison in November 1994. According to Caz's book (page 150), he said, "Mike was always very reliable in the time he worked for me". So he worked for David Burness, which means he worked for Celebrity.

I have no idea why you think it makes any difference that Mike had been encouraged to submit articles to Celebrity in the first place while doing a writing course. Isn't that the whole point for people who want to be journalists?

Isn't the fact of the matter that you don't know how much Barrett earned while working for Celebrity? You've done a back of envelope calculation on the basis of an assumed fee per article and an assumed total number of articles but isn't it true that you don't know how many articles of his were published because you don't know if he submitted many articles which were published without his name in the byline?

And how do you know what disability benefit Barrett claimed in the period 1987 to 1989? Do you have his financial records from this period?

Ultimately, though, his earnings are a complete red herring because when the news emerged in July 1994 that Mike had been a journalist, no-one would have known what he had earned and for which publications he had written. The very fact of him having described himself as "a journalist" to Devereux in the early 1990s, prior to the emergence of the diary, as Ripperana revealed, would, in itself, have surely been a massive shock and red flag to the diary researchers. Barrett would surely have known this when he read the draft of Warren's article in May 1994, and would have known that he would have some tough questions to answer as to why he'd never mentioned it before.

[Iconoclast]

On September 19, 1993, The Sunday Times (never a rag to be easily fooled), published its vainglorious 'FAKE!' piece.

Now, this was the same month that Howells interviewed Nancy Steele and a full month before Bonesy met with Mike Barrett. In their piece, they stated:

The Saddle pub, situated on a street corner half-way between the Liverpool and Everton football grounds, looks very much today as it did in Victorian times. It was here that Barrett, a kidney patient living on £68-a-week invalidity benefit, met the man he says gave him the Ripper's diary. He and Tony Devereux, 60, a retired printer from the Liverpool Echo, would idle away an hour over a pint of bitter before Barrett left to meet his daughter from school. Barrett's career as a journalist had not taken off, apart from devising word puzzles and writing about Kylie Minogue for Look-in, a children's magazine.

Barrett's career as a journalist had apparently not taken off apart from devising word puzzles and writing for Look-In. So, there we have - I think - one of the first mentions of Barrett as a potential journalist (his 'career' at it didn't take off, it seems).

When is a secret not a secret? Well, when it is secreted about various places prior to becoming generally known. Nancy Steele knew that Mike had said he dabbled in the dark arts, and - Lordy - the mighty Sunday Times on a crusade of truth and integrity clearly knew about Mike's previous aspirations and published it nationally!

So what was Nick Warren hoping to crack wide open in his fairly innocuous little piece almost an entire year later?

And if this was what motivated Barrett to confess that he was the world's greatest forger in June 1994 ahead of Warren's big reveal, he must have been completely ignorant of the fact that his embarrassing attempts at writing for a career in the 1980s were already long since out there, secreted for all to see.

He must have been suffering the horrors of hell, though, at the thought that Warren was going to eviscerate his magnificently-preserved secret as the world's greatest forger with his crippling announcement that, and I quote just to maximise the piss-take:

MUCH publicity has been given to the owner of the alleged Diary, Mr. Mike Barrett of Liverpool, while the testimony of the man who is supposed to have given him the item, Tony Devereux, has largely been suppressed. Ripperana is now pleased to set the record straight.

It didn't bode well, did it? Apparently Tony Devereux's testimony had largely been suppressed. Ooh - that bloke who died over six months before anyone ever heard of the Maybrick scrapbook had had his testimony deliberately suppressed! Clearly something nefarious going on. Ripperana are about to set the record straight - yes, at last, the truth!

Mr. Devereux understood that Barrett was a journalist (he had certainly contributed features to magazines) and the family were subsequently surprised to find his publishers describing him as an ordinary 'Liverpool bloke', scalesman at a firm of scrap-metal merchants.

There it is (if you didn't spot it), the greatest secret in the world was finally and sensationally being published at last just a mere ten months after The Sunday Times casually slipped it in to their half-arsed attempt to imply that chicanery had been at work in the Barrett household.

No wonder Barrett in late June 1994 had crumbled and fallen like a very broken man into the arms of a rather bemused Harold Brough. His terrible secret that everyone could have read about in one of the nation's largest-selling newspapers the previous year was about to be revealed! 'Mr. Devereux understood that Barrett was a journalist (he had certainly contributed features to magazines)' and - worse, far far worse, than that - the Devereux girls had therefore been confused why Barrett was being described as an ordinary 'Liverpool bloke'!

No wonder Barrett caved-in under that sort of intolerable pressure!

[Iconoclast]

I think you might be falling into the "hindsight is 20/20" trap.

There doesn't need to be a trap, RJ. You aren't hunting quarry here. There's no need to draw inferences from thin air the way you and your sort do. What do we know? Well, Nancy Steele said to Martin Howells that her father had told her that Mike told her father that he used to write for children's magazines. Somewhere amongst that convoluted route, there was a small degree of Chinese Whispers going on. The truth is he was at home on invalidity benefit having joined a writing circle which encouraged their participants to gain their first commissions by targeting articles in the lower-ranked (i.e., easier to sell to) publications so he sent in puzzles to Look-In, a children's magazine, and submitted celebrity interviews to Celebrity and Chat, two national - though primarily 'gossip' - magazines. That's what we know. By the way, I too signed-up to a writing circle in the early 1980s and so I know that that is what they encouraged their participants to do. Personally, I didn't, but I do recall that that was what they promoted aspiring writers to do to get in print for the first time.

A correspondent has pointed that when Martin Howells interviewed Ms. Steele in September 1993, Shirley's book was not yet out; unless she was clairvoyant, Nancy Steele could have had no way of knowing that Barrett's occupation as a professional journalist wouldn't be included in the book.

And did your mysterious correspondent inform you of the relevance of this statement because it is eluding me?

And you mustn't use the leading term 'professional journalist' because it is untrue (and you know it). Barrett was on invalidity benefit: he was therefore unemployed. He 'earned his living' from benefits paid to him by the state. Invalidity benefit was an enhanced benefit paid to unemployed people whose GP had signed them off as unable to seek employment due to various infirmities. When my dad was laid off in the early 1990s, he went to see his GP and - lo and behold - he was suddenly on invalidity benefit which topped up his unemployment benefit by about 20%. When his state pension kicked-in in February 1996 (you have to wait a month before being able to claim it), he lost all of his other benefits but he had at least 'survived' financially as he called it. So Mike Barrett was on state benefits in the 1980s and he illegally topped-up his income with around twenty articles in lower-ranked magazines. In those days, you could not earn additional income on top of your benefits (as you can now). His invalidity benefit would have been in the region of £2,500 a year (plus housing benefit, child benefit, etc.) so what paid the way was his benefits, nothing else. His occasional articles would have provided useful boosts of income but far from enough to live on and therefore give up his benefits and become a 'professional journalist'. If he had tried, he'd have soon felt the impact in his pocket.

Further, since Nancy only knew of Barrett as a journalist, she would have assumed that everyone else knew it, too, hence her passing reference to Barrett writing for a children's magazine---something she just said naturally and not as a 'big reveal.'

Nancy Steele is not on the record in 1993 as describing Barrett as a 'journalist'. Why would you type this if it was just inference on your part to make Barrett look like a professional writer who was therefore capable of hoaxing a Jack the Ripper confessional?

But what is the big deal about her mentioning her father had said Barrett had said he wrote articles for children's magazines? What purpose here does this serve? I'm not sure you and your correspondent have thought this one through. What does it matter what Nancy Steele thought everyone else knew?

But on October 5th, the Daily Liverpool Post referred to Barrett as an "ex-scrap metal dealer." This was most likely Nancy's first exposure to the alter ego of the man her father had referred to as a journalist.

So Nancy Steele learned that professionally Barrett had been a scrap metal dealer. So what? She already knew that her dad had claimed that Barrett wrote for children's magazines. Now she knew he had previously been a scrap metal dealer. She probably read this article and thought, "Oh, that's interesting - he can't have been much of a writer, then". Maybe she did. Maybe she didn't. But again - what does it matter what Nancy Steele thought about Mike Barrett's occupations?

And when Shirley's book hit the bookstores in Liverpool, Nancy would have seen that Mike was being portrayed only as a cook, an ex-merchant marine, and scrap metal dealer.

And maybe she then thought, "Oh, there's further evidence that Mike exaggerated his abilities by telling me dad he wrote for children's magazines".

This no doubt explains why she later told Nick Warren in 1994 that the Devereux family was "surprised to find his publishers describing [Mike] as an 'ordinary Liverpool bloke,' scalesman at a firm of scrap-metal merchants."

No s**t, Sherlock. If Barrett had exaggerated his writing prowess to impress her dad, then - yes - the family would have been surprised to find that Tony had been led up the garden path somewhat.

Mike's journalism was not the common knowledge that you pretend it to be.

His 'journalism' was common knowledge amongst those people Mike had told his exaggerated tales to. He evidently had not told his exaggerated tales to the professional writers, researchers, publishers, police, media, etc., that he was suddenly exposed to. You and I can only surmise why he did not brag to them, but I feel confident that my guess is a reasonable one - he knew his bragging would be shot down in flames barely before he got started.

A few scoops of ale later, he finds himself in 1999 and he's telling an audience the key ingredients of a successful writer. Oh, how the irony must have dripped off the walls.

My correspondent writes: The text of Shirley's 1994 paperback was sent to the printers on 6th August 1994 (as stated on p.234 of the book) so the big question is whether the sentence highlighted in yellow in the paperback about the children's puzzles was inserted before or after Mike's confession of 28th June.

Shirley has just turned ninety in the last few days and lives in a nursing home now. I had dinner on Sunday (May 4) with her ex-husband's first wife who informed me that Shirley's memory of these events was no longer very good. So what is the point of your correspondent posing unanswerable questions like this unless the aim is to help you build your inferential castle in the sand?

I don't think we can assume that Shirley was privy to Feldman's research or Martin Howell's transcripts or video footage. I assumed, perhaps wrongly, that Shirley had learned of Nancy Steele's revelations in September 1993, but she might have only learned of Barrett's journalistic efforts in late June 1994.

And this matters why? It was a throw-away comment: why call them 'revelations'? I'll tell you why - because it leans in to your inferential narrative that a huge cover-up was being carried out by Mike Barrett who must therefore have been the world's greatest forger.

Which would only further intensify my belief that Mike's past 'flirtation with the writing world' was a well-kept secret---though evidently known by Feldman.

Not necessarily known by Feldman, no. We do not know for certain that he watched Nancy Steele's entire interview so let's not leap from my helpful suggestion of yesterday to a cast-iron truth. For all we know, Feldman may have been totally unaware that Mike had topped-up his state benefits five years or so earlier with some kids' puzzles and some celebrity interviews typed-up by his wife, apparently.

[Herlock Sholmes]

What I meant by 'irrelevant is the excitement which seems to have self-generated around a) Mike having a WP and b) Feldman advising him to deny it if asked. To me, it plays no part in the history, which is now thirty-plus years older.



It just doesn't seem to have been the secret you're trying to make of it so I can't tell you a year's worth of who-told-what-to-whom. All I know is that it wasn't any kind of drama to anyone - and certainly not to Nick Warren in his Ripperana of July 1994. I can't get excited about this. It's all just supposition that we can never clarify or confirm.



As I said above, I can't tell you a year's worth of who-told-what-to-whom but what I can say is that the vast majority of water cooler moments are not recorded so hoping to find out is optimistic in the extreme, I'd say. It's all just supposition now.



Quite possibly one or both but neither amounted to the revelation of a career in journalism which you need it to be to be of any consequence whatsoever. I will never yield on this point: a few celebrity interviews in the crap rags whilst actually having a career on invalidity benefit is just not worth escalating. When there's a breeze on a sunny day, RJ, do you record it in your Victorian scrapbook as 'a typhoon hit us today'?



This I think could well have been what happened, but no-one will ever know. Feldman saw the Howell's film and thought, 'Whoa, this boy has submitted some stuff to a children's magazine - I didn't know that'. Whether that would be enough for him to advise Barrett to deny he had the Amstrad, no-one knows. It's now just supposition.



Possibly. I don't have the chronology before me. It's possible that the girls said to Bonesy that Mike thought of himself as a writer and that Bonesy therefore touched on it during his interview with Barrett in 12 Goldie Street, but only the witness statement and Anne's account of that meeting survive and neither confirms what you are suggesting. So, yet more supposition, I guess.

I'm baffled, Ike, by your statement that the revelation of Barrett's journalism was "certainly not" any "kind of drama" to Nick Warren. I cannot think on what basis you can possibly say this.

It seems to me to have been a very important part of the short article that Tony Devereux knew Barrett as a journalist. Further, the part that you have yet to even acknowledge exists in the article, is the part which says that the Devereux family were "surprised to find his publishers describing him as an ordinary 'Liverpool bloke', scalesman at a firm of scrap-metal merchants". What do you think this means? Surely what Warren was saying there, in effect, was that everyone, until then, had been lied to about Michael Barrett. He wasn't an ordinary working class bloke who'd stumbled across Jack the Ripper's diary, he was a journalist who had contributed features to magazines. Pretty earth-shattering.

Just stop to consider what effect that would have had in July 1994 in Ripper-world had Barrett not already confessed to forging the diary by that time.

Warren evidently didn't know any more than he'd been told by the Devereux family. He obviously didn't know about Celebrity or Chat. Clearly Shirley Harrison found out about Mike's work for Celebrity by November 1994 which is when Caz's book tells us she received confirmation from the editor, David Burness, that Barrett was a "valued contributor" who was "always very reliable" when he worked for Celebrity. Perhaps you could use your contacts, Ike, to discover exactly when and by whom Shirley was told that Mike had worked for Celebrity.

Also, now that you've had a bit of time to read the July 1994 issue of Ripperana, you'll have seen a reproduction of Mike Barrett's letter to Nick Warren of 13th May 1994 threatening to sue him for defamation. What part of Warren's short article do you think Barrett regarded as defamatory?

[rjpalmer]

To be clear here: at no point in that transcript did Nancy Steele refer to Michael Barrett - either directly or indirectly - as a journalist. That comment was reported by Nick Warren almost a year later. I guess it is possible that this (the September 1993) comment was heard by Feldman once Howells returned to London and this triggered a concern in his mind which prompted him to suggest that Barrett deny - if asked - that he owned a word processor.

I think you might be falling into the "hindsight is 20/20" trap.

A correspondent has pointed that when Martin Howells interviewed Ms. Steele in September 1993, Shirley's book was not yet out; unless she was clairvoyant, Nancy Steele could have had no way of knowing that Barrett's occupation as a professional journalist wouldn't be included in the book. Further, since Nancy only knew of Barrett as a journalist, she would have assumed that everyone else knew it, too, hence her passing reference to Barrett writing for a children's magazine---something she just said naturally and not as a 'big reveal.'

But on October 5th, the Daily Liverpool Post referred to Barrett as an "ex-scrap metal dealer." This was most likely Nancy's first exposure to the alter ego of the man her father had referred to as a journalist. And when Shirley's book hit the bookstores in Liverpool, Nancy would have seen that Mike was being portrayed only as a cook, an ex-merchant marine, and scrap metal dealer.

This no doubt explains why she later told Nick Warren in 1994 that the Devereux family was "surprised to find his publishers describing [Mike] as an 'ordinary Liverpool bloke,' scalesman at a firm of scrap-metal merchants."

Mike's journalism was not the common knowledge that you pretend it to be.

My correspondent writes: The text of Shirley's 1994 paperback was sent to the printers on 6th August 1994 (as stated on p.234 of the book) so the big question is whether the sentence highlighted in yellow in the paperback about the children's puzzles was inserted before or after Mike's confession of 28th June. "

I don't think we can assume that Shirley was privy to Feldman's research or Martin Howell's transcripts or video footage. I assumed, perhaps wrongly, that Shirley had learned of Nancy Steele's revelations in September 1993, but she might have only learned of Barrett's journalistic efforts in late June 1994.

Which would only further intensify my belief that Mike's past 'flirtation with the writing world' was a well-kept secret---though evidently known by Feldman.

[Iconoclast]

Obviously, it WAS a secret--hence Shirely being forced to revise the relevant paragraph in the 1994 paperback.

Obviously, not obviously. Your use of 'a secret' is exactly the same as your use of 'career in journalism'. It is hyperbole of the most extreme kind and I cannot let it pass without reminding everyone that these are your suppositions - your interpretations of otherwise apparently very innocuous events.

Even then she doesn't bother to revise the part about Barrett allegedly buying the word process after Tony's death in 1991 ...

I'm taking a wild guess here that she didn't know it yet.

which is another relic of Barrett's deceptions because he had bought the WP years earlier in order to submit articles to Celebrity and Chat.

Again, though, enough of the 'Barrett's deceptions' already. You don't know he was actively deceiving Shirley regarding when he bought it. And - if it transpires that he was actively deceiving her, I did offer a likely explanation for this just the other day which your acolyte claimed could not be found: Barrett had a commitment to share the research costs with Shirley, so I would suggest it is possible that he wanted to offset the cost of the WP against those so that his contribution would be less and he would therefore receive more. Supposition, yes, but you force me into them to counter the barrage of them I face from you so routinely.

O, what a tangled web.

But one of your own making, Incy.

But as always, Ike, your reaction is to mutter "nothing to see here, folks!' as you turn again to the secret writings of 'James Maybrick'. Good luck in convincing your readers to share your myopia.

Left to my own devices, I am simply reporting the known. I only have to carefully tread the sticky web in retaliation to your enveloping, threatening, single-track imagination.

How about we try just talking about the known and avoid using supposition to explain what is not known? So, we say, 'Mike Barrett had not mentioned to anyone on the current record that he had submitted pieces to national children's and gossip magazines until his witness statement to the police in October 1993'. This would be considerably less contentious than, 'Mike Barrett deliberately hid from the world that he had a career as a professional journalist until he mentioned it in his witness statement to the police in October 1993'.

Can we do that, RJ, or is the known an unknown country to you?

[rjpalmer]

It just doesn't seem to have been the secret you're trying to make of it so I can't tell you a year's worth of who-told-what-to-whom.

Obviously, it WAS a secret--hence Shirely being forced to revise the relevant paragraph in the 1994 paperback.

Even then she doesn't bother to revise the part about Barrett allegedly buying the word process after Tony's death in 1991, which is another relic of Barrett's deceptions because he had bought the WP years earlier in order to submit articles to Celebrity and Chat.

O, what a tangled web.

But as always, Ike, your reaction is to mutter "nothing to see here, folks!' as you turn again to the secret writings of 'James Maybrick.'

Good luck in convincing your readers to share your myopia.

[Iconoclast]

Unless you're waxing philosophical while in the throes of your 'dark night of the soul,' how does the mere passing of time make Feldman's behavior 'irrelevant'?

What I meant by 'irrelevant is the excitement which seems to have self-generated around a) Mike having a WP and b) Feldman advising him to deny it if asked. To me, it plays no part in the history, which is now thirty-plus years older.

The public now learns for the first time that Barrett had had 'a brief flirtation with the writing world,' and Look In magazine is mentioned, but the impact of this revelation is lessened by a passing assurance that Barrett had submitted nothing more than 'simple word puzzles.'

It just doesn't seem to have been the secret you're trying to make of it so I can't tell you a year's worth of who-told-what-to-whom. All I know is that it wasn't any kind of drama to anyone - and certainly not to Nick Warren in his Ripperana of July 1994. I can't get excited about this. It's all just supposition that we can never clarify or confirm.

What trigged Harrison to add this new information between the hardback in September 1993 and the paperback in 1994?

As I said above, I can't tell you a year's worth of who-told-what-to-whom but what I can say is that the vast majority of water cooler moments are not recorded so hoping to find out is optimistic in the extreme, I'd say. It's all just supposition now.

I submit it was Mrs. Steele's revelation of Barrett's career in journalism. And Barrett's interview with Scotland Yard.

Quite possibly one or both but neither amounted to the revelation of a career in journalism which you need it to be to be of any consequence whatsoever. I will never yield on this point: a few celebrity interviews in the crap rags whilst actually having a career on invalidity benefit is just not worth escalating. When there's a breeze on a sunny day, RJ, do you record it in your Victorian scrapbook as 'a typhoon hit us today'?

I further submit Mrs. Steele's revelations are also what triggered Feldman's startling advice to Mike Barrett to deny he owned a word processor to the police.

This I think could well have been what happened, but no-one will ever know. Feldman saw the Howell's film and thought, 'Whoa, this boy has submitted some stuff to a children's magazine - I didn't know that'. Whether that would be enough for him to advise Barrett to deny he had the Amstrad, no-one knows. It's now just supposition.

Barrett did admit to Scotland Yard that he had a 'brief flirtation with the writing world,' as Shirley would later put it, but this by no means demonstrates that Mike did so willingly and without being prompted. Weren't the Devereux daughters interviewed by Scotland Yard before the police knocked on the door of Goldie Street?

Possibly. I don't have the chronology before me. It's possible that the girls said to Bonesy that Mike thought of himself as a writer and that Bonesy therefore touched on it during his interview with Barrett in 12 Goldie Street, but only the witness statement and Anne's account of that meeting survive and neither confirms what you are suggesting. So, yet more supposition, I guess.

[rjpalmer]

It all seems pretty irrelevant to me thirty-plus years later

Good afternoon, Ike.

Unless you're waxing philosophical while in the throes of your 'dark night of the soul,' how does the mere passing of time make Feldman's behavior 'irrelevant'?

Everything under discussion happened over thirty years ago. If you want to discuss the diary it is not irrelevant; if you want to retire to your rose garden and a stack of dusty old 18th Century novels you've been meaning to read before you shuffle off this mortal coil, then yes, it is all irrelevant.

Shirley Harrison's final draft must have been with the printers in September 1993, only days away from the book launch.

A look inside shows nary a hint of Barrett's journalistic career. He is an ex-chef, ex-scrap metal dealer, and ex-merchant marine.

As for Mike's word processor, Harrison has this to say on pg. 7:




Then, on the very eve of the hardback's release, Mrs. Steele is interviewed for Feldman's video.

And when Shirley's paperback version comes out the following year, 1994, the above paragraph is amended to read:




An interesting sentence has been added between 'the diary himself' and 'He spent hours.."

The public now learns for the first time that Barrett had had 'a brief flirtation with the writing world,' and Look In magazine is mentioned, but the impact of this revelation is lessened by a passing assurance that Barrett had submitted nothing more than 'simple word puzzles.'

Question.

What trigged Harrison to add this new information between the hardback in September 1993 and the paperback in 1994?

I submit it was Mrs. Steele's revelation of Barrett's career in journalism. And Barrett's interview with Scotland Yard.

I further submit Mrs. Steele's revelations are also what triggered Feldman's startling advice to Mike Barrett to deny he owned a word processor to the police.

Barrett did admit to Scotland Yard that he had a 'brief flirtation with the writing world,' as Shirley would later put it, but this by no means demonstrates that Mike did so willingly and without being prompted. Weren't the Devereux daughters interviewed by Scotland Yard before the police knocked on the door of Goldie Street?