The Maybrick Thread (For All Things Maybrick)

[rjpalmer]

Hi Ike,

If you truly believe that you, Caroline, Keith, Jay, and James are the only ones seeking the truth, and that Orsam, Palmer, Banks, etc. are dissemblers and agents of chaos, then yes, I would agree you are wasting your time and you'd be better off forming a private email group far away from the white noise of our questions and commentary.

Best of luck to you.

Cheers.

[Iconoclast]

I guess that's what happens when you make a ridiculous argument like "Mike Barrett was never a journalist" or didn't think of himself as one.

Mike Barrett freely admitted that he submitted pieces to magazines, encouraged to do so by writing circles he had signed up to. If you want to call that professional journalism, career journalism, or just plain journalism, that's your call. It is clear that it is necessarily so in your mind in order to provide a balwark to support your key argument - that his sleepless terrors and worst fears were all coalescing in the form of Nick Warren making the same exaggerated claim that you are making in July 1994 thereby making it imperative that Mike got in there first, which basically means he simply brought forward the inevitable by a month (in your world) and denying himself any possibility of a reprieve by speaking out. I've ordered the July 9, 1994 Ripperana to see exactly what was said (which I assume Warren must have told him was coming), but it must have sent the horrors of hell down Mike's spine daily: "Oh God, they've found out that I submitted some very average interviews to some very average gossip rags some many years ago as part of a writing course I'd paid for so it's absolutely game up on my extraordinary shift to world's greatest forger and I may as well confess all now".

Of course he was between 1986 and 1988.

I don't believe Mike Barrett was ever a professional journalist. We differ.

Yet he deliberately kept this fact secret from his literary agent, of all people, and his supposed co-author, for a long period between April 1992 and June 1994, at which time he knew his secret was about to be publicly exposed by Ripperana.

As I say, the horrors of hell must have plagued him, eh? But, dear readers, please note how it was done deliberately apparently. It's important that it's done with intent to deceive because that smacks of a hoaxer. Anything less would not create the straw man Herlock wants you to throw stones at. And where is the evidence that Mike deliberately kept this earth-shattering secret secret? Well, Herlock says so. So it must be so, I guess.

You can stick your head in the sand as much as you want and live in total denial but these are the facts.

It's not a fact that Mike Barrett was a professional journalist, career journalist, or just plain journalist during those two years. He was a guy who placed around 20 articles in very accessible rags (it's not quite The Times we're talking here) for around £120 a pop (according to him). Nope, it's not a fact. It's simply your opinion which you need to spin as fact in order to pursue a specific agenda which is a very large castle built on sand.

And it's not a fact that he deliberately kept this fact secret from his literary agent, of all people, and his supposed co-author. I once scored a lovely headed goal from a corner playing for the Edinburgh University MBA team in 1988. It was a peach of a connection and I'm very proud of it. Now, I'm aware that I've never shared this fact with anyone here on Casebook before. Does that make it a secret which I deliberately withheld from my dear readers?

Where is your evidence that Mike Barrett deliberately set out to deceive Doreen Montgomery and Shirley Harrison? Clearly, just not mentioning it is not grounds for concluding there was a secret being deliberately withheld. If you answer, I think it is reasonable of me to ask you to avoid statements such as "It's obvious" or "What evidence do you have that he wasn't" - you know, the usual canards of those who have bought the Barrett-as-master-hoaxer story hook, line, and sinker.

[Iconoclast]

Hi Ike,

If you truly believe that you, Caroline, Keith, Jay, and James are the only ones seeking the truth, and that Orsam, Palmer, Banks, etc. are dissemblers and agents of chaos, then yes, I would agree you are wasting your time and you'd be better off forming a private email group far away from the white noise of our questions and commentary.

Best of luck to you.

Cheers.

But how will I protect my dear and very innocent readers from being contaminated by your clique's obfuscating and desperately implausible arguments?

Someone has to stand up to you all as you mix and mash your references to build a castle on sand - some hopelessly weak semblance of a provenance from bits here and bits there, plucking information like plooks out of cardigans and then attempting to knit them all together into a supposedly cogent whole.

The thing that I enjoy the most about this whole sorry escapade you and your ilk partake in is the confidence I derive from everything Mike Barrett ever did that tells me how banal your tired end-product always looks. I mean, I even love the fact that he was a professional journalist, forging a brilliant career as Scoop Barrett, investigating where no-one dared or could be arsed to. He was clearly crap at it otherwise he would not have been in the financial difficulties you need to identify a motive and therefore he would never have tried his hand at a ten-stretch by hoaxing a confession from one of the least-likely candidates of all time and yet he did and produced a document which thirty-plus years later cannot be unequivocally discounted as a hoax despite how patently incompetent he was at writing for a living or even just writing full stop. What sort of genius was he that he could turn such mediocrity to such genius over one wet weekend in Liverpool in the early 1990s?

[Herlock Sholmes]

Mike Barrett freely admitted that he submitted pieces to magazines, encouraged to do so by writing circles he had signed up to. If you want to call that professional journalism, career journalism, or just plain journalism, that's your call. It is clear that it is necessarily so in your mind in order to provide a balwark to support your key argument - that his sleepless terrors and worst fears were all coalescing in the form of Nick Warren making the same exaggerated claim that you are making in July 1994 thereby making it imperative that Mike got in there first, which basically means he simply brought forward the inevitable by a month (in your world) and denying himself any possibility of a reprieve by speaking out. I've ordered the July 9, 1994 Ripperana to see exactly what was said (which I assume Warren must have told him was coming), but it must have sent the horrors of hell down Mike's spine daily: "Oh God, they've found out that I submitted some very average interviews to some very average gossip rags some many years ago as part of a writing course I'd paid for so it's absolutely game up on my extraordinary shift to world's greatest forger and I may as well confess all now".



I don't believe Mike Barrett was ever a professional journalist. We differ.



As I say, the horrors of hell must have plagued him, eh? But, dear readers, please note how it was done deliberately apparently. It's important that it's done with intent to deceive because that smacks of a hoaxer. Anything less would not create the straw man Herlock wants you to throw stones at. And where is the evidence that Mike deliberately kept this earth-shattering secret secret? Well, Herlock says so. So it must be so, I guess.



It's not a fact that Mike Barrett was a professional journalist, career journalist, or just plain journalist during those two years. He was a guy who placed around 20 articles in very accessible rags (it's not quite The Times we're talking here) for around £120 a pop (according to him). Nope, it's not a fact. It's simply your opinion which you need to spin as fact in order to pursue a specific agenda which is a very large castle built on sand.

And it's not a fact that he deliberately kept this fact secret from his literary agent, of all people, and his supposed co-author. I once scored a lovely headed goal from a corner playing for the Edinburgh University MBA team in 1988. It was a peach of a connection and I'm very proud of it. Now, I'm aware that I've never shared this fact with anyone here on Casebook before. Does that make it a secret which I deliberately withheld from my dear readers?

Where is your evidence that Mike Barrett deliberately set out to deceive Doreen Montgomery and Shirley Harrison? Clearly, just not mentioning it is not grounds for concluding there was a secret being deliberately withheld. If you answer, I think it is reasonable of me to ask you to avoid statements such as "It's obvious" or "What evidence do you have that he wasn't" - you know, the usual canards of those who have bought the Barrett-as-master-hoaxer story hook, line, and sinker.

Yes, Ike, it's journalism. He was paid for it, so by definition it was professional journalism. He likely hoped for it to turn into a long-term career which didn't work out but it's irrelevant. It really is an incontrovertible fact that he was a journalist, which is all that matters. That's what he was obviously keeping secret from Doreen and Shirley. What type of writer doesn't tell their own literary agent about their previous published works?

When you receive the Ripperana article, you will see that it includes a sentence commencing: "Mr Devereux understood that Barrett was a journalist...."

Barrett was sent a draft of the article prior to publication and wrote to Nick Warren on 13th May 1994 to say:

"What you have written is defamatory....At 9 o'clock I will be seeing my Q.C. in order to take action against you....I particularly look forward to seeing you in court".

Your attribution to Barrett of the thought that Warren had merely found out that he'd written "some very average interviews to some very average gossip rags" is utterly ridiculous, He obviously wouldn't have thought of his own articles in this way, nor would he likely have thought of Celebrity and Chat, which were not gossip rags, as "average", but it doesn't matter. It's just the fact of him being a journalist and being paid for articles in two nationally published magazines, about which he'd kept secret, which is the key factor here.

I've no idea, incidentally, where you've now got the idea into your head that the articles published in Celebrity and Chat were "part of a writing course" that Mike had paid for. What is the evidence for this? If, as I rather suspect, it's the October 1993 statement, that's not what Mike said. He said he'd been encouraged to submit articles by writing circles he'd attended. That's totally different from those articles being part of a writing course. If you've started to invent things now, Ike, please stop.

I see in your response to my post that you've nothing to say about Shirley Harrison's comment that Mike "liked to call himself a journalist". Thus destroying your entire thesis in one fell swoop. You couldn't even bring yourself to quote it, let alone respond to it.

Nor do you deal with the fact that Barrett was evidently concealing from Scotland Yard in October 1993 his work for Celebrity and Chat.

And to repeat, it's utterly irrelevant how many articles Mike wrote or how much he was paid. It could have been a million articles for a billion pounds or 10 articles for a tenner a pop. It wouldn't make any difference. He kept it secret from Doreen and Shirley (and others) and that's the whole point. That was what was about to be exposed: the fact that Devereux understood he'd been a journalist. Nick Warren's article goes on to say that Devereux's family were "surprised to find his publishers describing him as an ordinary 'Liverpool bloke', scalesman at a firm of scrap-metal merchants". Exactly! The entire world had been misled about Barrett's history.

I've already given you the evidence that Barrett deliberately deceived Montgomery and Harrison. Firstly, yes it is good enough to say that he omitted the fact of his journalism. There is no way he could have told them about his life history and all his jobs without mentioning journalism. He couldn't possibly have forgotten it. He was obviously proud of it, telling Alan Gray he was the chief writer for Celebrity. There's no way he could accidentally not have mentioned it. Secondly, he obviously lied to them about when and why he had purchased a word processor. If you can't understand this it can only mean you're wilfully trying not to.

[rjpalmer]

Nor do you deal with the fact that Barrett was evidently concealing from Scotland Yard in October 1993 his work for Celebrity and Chat.

Hi Herlock -

Regarding Mike Barrett's dealings with Scotland Yard in October 1993, can I draw your attention to something Keith Skinner wrote to me back in 2018? It has considerable bearing on this unhappy discussion.




"Barrett's denial to the police in October 1993 that he owned a word processor."

The plot thickens.

Since Barrett did own a word processor and used it to submit articles to Chat and Celebrity and other magazines, the notion that Mike was entirely candid with Scotland Yard is no longer sustainable.

As you can read for yourself, this sin of omission is traceable to advice given to him by Paul Feldman.

What else Feldman knew of Barrett's journalistic career remains a matter of conjecture.

Regards.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Hi Herlock -

Regarding Mike Barrett's dealings with Scotland Yard in October 1993, can I draw your attention to something Keith Skinner wrote to me back in 2018? It has considerable bearing on this unhappy discussion.




"Barrett's denial to the police in October 1993 that he owned a word processor."

The plot thickens.

Since Barrett did own a word processor and used it to submit articles to Chat and Celebrity and other magazines, the notion that Mike was entirely candid with Scotland Yard is no longer sustainable.

As you can read for yourself, this sin of omission is traceable to advice given to him by Paul Feldman.

What else Feldman knew of Barrett's journalistic career remains a matter of conjecture.

Regards.

Hi Roger,

Yes, I don't know how anyone could possibly say that Michael Barrett's witness statement shows him being candid with Scotland Yard.

Another interesting thing to emerge from that witness statement is that it might well explain the curious statement to be found on page 172 of Caz's book in which it is stated that Anne Barrett is said to have told the authors that, "she had to tidy up the celebrity interviews he wrote for the children's magazine (for which the interviewees included Bonnie Langford, Kenneth Williams, Stan Boardman and Jimmy Cricket)". I don't know if the information that Celebrity was a children's magazine came from Anne (which would be extremely odd) or if it was something that the authors of the book assumed themselves, based on Mike's 1993 witness statement. If the latter, how ironic that Caz and her colleagues, of all people, were fooled by one of Mike's lies when it came to writing their book. Perhaps Caz will clarify for us why this statement ended up in the book.

Interestingly, Robert Smith may also have been deceived because in his 2017 book (first edition) he said that Barrett had not been an author but, "had only written a few puzzles for a children's weekly magazine, Look-in, which centred on ITV's television programmes". Even though by 2017 the fact that Barrett had written for Celebrity was common knowledge, having been included in Caz's 2003 book, somehow Smith, perhaps influenced by Barrett's October 1993 statement that he'd only written articles for a children's magazine, assumed that what he was saying was true but was actually referring to puzzles.

I don't think anyone even knew about his articles for Chat magazine until this was discovered in 2020 by someone whose name has already been mentioned enough on this forum.

[Iconoclast]

Yes, Ike, it's journalism. He was paid for it, so by definition it was professional journalism. He likely hoped for it to turn into a long-term career which didn't work out but it's irrelevant. It really is an incontrovertible fact that he was a journalist, which is all that matters.

I once - for one day - worked as a furniture removal chap. I was paid for my services - not in cash but as part of PAYE. I must remember to stick on my CV that I was a professional furniture removal technician because that, by your definition, is what I incontrovertibly was.

That's what he was obviously keeping secret from Doreen and Shirley. What type of writer doesn't tell their own literary agent about their previous published works?

I did - rather politely I thought - ask you not to reply with the scoundrel's 'obviously', but perhaps it's so ingrained in your thinking that you can't help yourself?

When you receive the Ripperana article, you will see that it includes a sentence commencing: "Mr Devereux understood that Barrett was a journalist...."

No idea what relevance this has to anything. Are we talking about what Barrett incontrovertibly was or what someone thought he was?

Your attribution to Barrett of the thought that Warren had merely found out that he'd written "some very average interviews to some very average gossip rags" is utterly ridiculous, He obviously ...

There's your favourite word again.

It's just the fact of him being a journalist and being paid for articles in two nationally published magazines ...

He published interviews. Let that sink in. He asked questions and he presumably scribbled down responses. He couldn't type it up but that's okay because his wife was a secretary and she did it for him. So at least Barrett managed to address an envelope during his brilliant career as a professional - erm - envelope-writer. Oh, she probably had to do that for him too.

... about which he'd kept secret, which is the key factor here.

Ooo, there's no getting past you, eh? He didn't mention a long-ago foray into creative writing and you see through his little ploy. Bang-to-rights-Barrett, we should call him.

I've no idea, incidentally, where you've now got the idea into your head that the articles published in Celebrity and Chat were "part of a writing course" that Mike had paid for. What is the evidence for this? If, as I rather suspect, it's the October 1993 statement, that's not what Mike said. He said he'd been encouraged to submit articles by writing circles he'd attended. That's totally different from those articles being part of a writing course. If you've started to invent things now, Ike, please stop.

Well, that's what's called being hoisted by your own petard. It's obvious that the writing circle encouraged nascent writers to place articles in the shittest rags whose level of discernment might be ever so slightly lower than real magazines. Obviously.

I see in your response to my post that you've nothing to say about Shirley Harrison's comment that Mike "liked to call himself a journalist".

I'm sure he did. He was in - for him - extremely exalted company all of a sudden. Do you think he preferred 'ex-scrap metal dealer', 'ex-convict', or 'journalist/writer [other sorts of literary roles are available]'?

Thus destroying your entire thesis in one fell swoop. You couldn't even bring yourself to quote it, let alone respond to it.

Taunting now, are we?

Oh, by the way, when you're droning on about imagined scenarios which miraculously only ever point the one way, try to make it interesting. Sometimes I have to skip your posts not because they are long but because they are so painfully repetitive.

Nor do you deal with the fact that Barrett was evidently concealing from Scotland Yard in October 1993 his work for Celebrity and Chat.

I know, I know. That whole writing thing that he simply had no choice whatsoever to admit to the boys in blue, eh? But he was smart, wasn't he? He admitted to having an interest in creative writing, mentioned his success with the young person's Look-In, but brilliantly kept schtum about the Pulitzer stuff in the cheap gossip rags. Bonesy must be kicking himself looking back, eh? He had the man in his hands and he let the greatest forger in history slip through them.

And to repeat, it's utterly irrelevant how many articles Mike wrote or how much he was paid. It could have been a million articles for a billion pounds or 10 articles for a tenner a pop. It wouldn't make any difference. He kept it secret from Doreen and Shirley (and others) and that's the whole point. That was what was about to be exposed: the fact that Devereux understood he'd been a journalist. Nick Warren's article goes on to say that Devereux's family were "surprised to find his publishers describing him as an ordinary 'Liverpool bloke', scalesman at a firm of scrap-metal merchants". Exactly! The entire world had been misled about Barrett's history.

Look, we are genuinely getting very close to the point where we don't respond to one another's posts so can I just ask a quick question? Do you genuinely believe any of the stretched-out fantasies you got from David Barrat or are you just here in between other threads about the colour of Mrs Puddleduck's socks on the night of the 'double event'? I can't decide whether you believe any it and - obviously - I find it hard to believe that otherwise intelligent people can be so fooled by such a fool (that fool being Barrett, not Barrat, obviously).

I've already given you the evidence that Barrett deliberately deceived Montgomery and Harrison.

I genuinely find it hard to believe that you think this is logical which is why I doubt you can genuinely mean what you say. You have not given me evidence of any such thing - all you have done is what you have learned at the knee of the Dark Lord, namely how to twist perfectly innocent circumstances into something obviously nefarious. You know what, it might work on the simple-minded so maybe that's good enough for you, I don't know.

Firstly, yes it is good enough to say that he omitted the fact of his journalism. There is no way he could have told them about his life history and all his jobs without mentioning journalism.

He was on invalidity benefit and taking money from some shitty pieces in the cheap, gaudy gossip rags so there's very likelihood he didn't want too mention it to anyone. Now, if you were to show us the evidence that he was employed under PAYE or that he was self-employed and duly declared his earnings so that he could pay his taxes, I'd be chanting your name in the Leazes End in a couple of week's time, but that would be real evidence, not twisted reasoning to suit a particular agenda and you only have the latter, don't you?

He couldn't possibly have forgotten it. He was obviously proud of it, telling Alan Gray he was the chief writer for Celebrity.

Context is everything [thank you, Keith Skinner]. Why was he bragging to Alan Gray?

There's no way he could accidentally not have mentioned it.

You're slipping. Surely there's obviously no way he could accidentally not have mentioned it?

Secondly, he obviously lied to them about when and why he had purchased a word processor.

And there it is - it's back! I kinda missed it for a moment there. Now, this one does appear to have been an incontrovertible lie. But I offered you a reason why he might have done that in a post earlier today so my interpretation neither trumps nor is trumped by yours. 'Thus destroying your entire thesis in one fell swoop. You couldn't even bring yourself to quote it, let alone respond to it.'

If you can't understand this it can only mean you're wilfully trying not to.

I am honestly wilfully trying to dedicate my little spare time to a review of the actual evidence (to the best of my ability and finances) which I have given freely and will give freely, but I keep having to correct faulty (that's the politest word I could use) logic which attempts to pigeonhole Mike and Anne Barrett into authorship of the Maybrick scrapbook whilst it wilfully manhandles everything that doesn't suit its argument to get there. Can you and I just call it a day and not respond to one another's posts. please? You know, just agree to absolutely disagree? I actually enjoy jousting with RJ - despite his advancing years and his complete works of The Seekers, he still has a sense of humour even if not all his own teeth. I really have no desire to take myself as seriously as you appear to take yourself. I get no pleasure from it and I can't imagine that you get any either. I really don't have time for these long-winded responses where I have so many false claims and premises to endlessly counter. It literally wears me down but I know my dear readers need to be protected from such scurrilous twisting of the innocent facts. In truth, I can only do so much and still produce my brilliant and remarkable works.

Ike

[Iconoclast]

... used it to submit articles to Chat and Celebrity and other magazines, the notion that Mike was entirely candid with Scotland Yard is no longer sustainable. As you can read for yourself, this sin of omission is traceable to advice given to him by Paul Feldman. What else Feldman knew of Barrett's journalistic career remains a matter of conjecture.

Oh gawd - here we go again ...

[Iconoclast]

Hi Roger,

Yes, I don't know how anyone could possibly say that Michael Barrett's witness statement shows him being candid with Scotland Yard.

Another interesting thing to emerge from that witness statement is that it might well explain the curious statement to be found on page 172 of Caz's book in which it is stated that Anne Barrett is said to have told the authors that, "she had to tidy up the celebrity interviews he wrote for the children's magazine (for which the interviewees included Bonnie Langford, Kenneth Williams, Stan Boardman and Jimmy Cricket)". I don't know if the information that Celebrity was a children's magazine came from Anne (which would be extremely odd) or if it was something that the authors of the book assumed themselves, based on Mike's 1993 witness statement. If the latter, how ironic that Caz and her colleagues, of all people, were fooled by one of Mike's lies when it came to writing their book. Perhaps Caz will clarify for us why this statement ended up in the book.

Interestingly, Robert Smith may also have been deceived because in his 2017 book (first edition) he said that Barrett had not been an author but, "had only written a few puzzles for a children's weekly magazine, Look-in, which centred on ITV's television programmes". Even though by 2017 the fact that Barrett had written for Celebrity was common knowledge, having been included in Caz's 2003 book, somehow Smith, perhaps influenced by Barrett's October 1993 statement that he'd only written articles for a children's magazine, assumed that what he was saying was true but was actually referring to puzzles.

I don't think anyone even knew about his articles for Chat magazine until this was discovered in 2020 by someone whose name has already been mentioned enough on this forum.

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.

[rjpalmer]

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?

Good God, Ike. The real question is whether you even bothered to read Keith Skinner's post before writing this screed.

Go back and read it this time. Keith states that Paul Feldman suggested before the Scotland Yard interview that Barrett should deny owning a word processor.

And considering that Keith confirms that Barrett did indeed 'deny' owning one, I think that even a child of ten can work out that yes, he must have been specifically asked about it.

So why had Bonsey asked? We don't know what all Bonsey knew, but we do know that he had previously interviewed the Devereux sisters, and at least one of the sisters knew Barrett to have been a journalist, so that might be part of the answer.

And Keith seems to have been more concerned about Barrett's lie than you are, Ike, writing that he considered Feldman's advice "the most crass and idiotic thing Paul [Feldman] could have done."

You're in denial of agreed upon facts--even when they come from people you trust, such as Keith and Shirley.

Now go and reread page 7 of Shirley's first edition and see if you can spot the obvious lie traceable to Barrett.

[rjpalmer]

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.

[Herlock Sholmes]

I once - for one day - worked as a furniture removal chap. I was paid for my services - not in cash but as part of PAYE. I must remember to stick on my CV that I was a professional furniture removal technician because that, by your definition, is what I incontrovertibly was.



I did - rather politely I thought - ask you not to reply with the scoundrel's 'obviously', but perhaps it's so ingrained in your thinking that you can't help yourself?



No idea what relevance this has to anything. Are we talking about what Barrett incontrovertibly was or what someone thought he was?



There's your favourite word again.



He published interviews. Let that sink in. He asked questions and he presumably scribbled down responses. He couldn't type it up but that's okay because his wife was a secretary and she did it for him. So at least Barrett managed to address an envelope during his brilliant career as a professional - erm - envelope-writer. Oh, she probably had to do that for him too.



Ooo, there's no getting past you, eh? He didn't mention a long-ago foray into creative writing and you see through his little ploy. Bang-to-rights-Barrett, we should call him.



Well, that's what's called being hoisted by your own petard. It's obvious that the writing circle encouraged nascent writers to place articles in the shittest rags whose level of discernment might be ever so slightly lower than real magazines. Obviously.



I'm sure he did. He was in - for him - extremely exalted company all of a sudden. Do you think he preferred 'ex-scrap metal dealer', 'ex-convict', or 'journalist/writer [other sorts of literary roles are available]'?



Taunting now, are we?

Oh, by the way, when you're droning on about imagined scenarios which miraculously only ever point the one way, try to make it interesting. Sometimes I have to skip your posts not because they are long but because they are so painfully repetitive.



I know, I know. That whole writing thing that he simply had no choice whatsoever to admit to the boys in blue, eh? But he was smart, wasn't he? He admitted to having an interest in creative writing, mentioned his success with the young person's Look-In, but brilliantly kept schtum about the Pulitzer stuff in the cheap gossip rags. Bonesy must be kicking himself looking back, eh? He had the man in his hands and he let the greatest forger in history slip through them.



Look, we are genuinely getting very close to the point where we don't respond to one another's posts so can I just ask a quick question? Do you genuinely believe any of the stretched-out fantasies you got from David Barrat or are you just here in between other threads about the colour of Mrs Puddleduck's socks on the night of the 'double event'? I can't decide whether you believe any it and - obviously - I find it hard to believe that otherwise intelligent people can be so fooled by such a fool (that fool being Barrett, not Barrat, obviously).



I genuinely find it hard to believe that you think this is logical which is why I doubt you can genuinely mean what you say. You have not given me evidence of any such thing - all you have done is what you have learned at the knee of the Dark Lord, namely how to twist perfectly innocent circumstances into something obviously nefarious. You know what, it might work on the simple-minded so maybe that's good enough for you, I don't know.



He was on invalidity benefit and taking money from some shitty pieces in the cheap, gaudy gossip rags so there's very likelihood he didn't want too mention it to anyone. Now, if you were to show us the evidence that he was employed under PAYE or that he was self-employed and duly declared his earnings so that he could pay his taxes, I'd be chanting your name in the Leazes End in a couple of week's time, but that would be real evidence, not twisted reasoning to suit a particular agenda and you only have the latter, don't you?



Context is everything [thank you, Keith Skinner]. Why was he bragging to Alan Gray?



You're slipping. Surely there's obviously no way he could accidentally not have mentioned it?



And there it is - it's back! I kinda missed it for a moment there. Now, this one does appear to have been an incontrovertible lie. But I offered you a reason why he might have done that in a post earlier today so my interpretation neither trumps nor is trumped by yours. 'Thus destroying your entire thesis in one fell swoop. You couldn't even bring yourself to quote it, let alone respond to it.'



I am honestly wilfully trying to dedicate my little spare time to a review of the actual evidence (to the best of my ability and finances) which I have given freely and will give freely, but I keep having to correct faulty (that's the politest word I could use) logic which attempts to pigeonhole Mike and Anne Barrett into authorship of the Maybrick scrapbook whilst it wilfully manhandles everything that doesn't suit its argument to get there. Can you and I just call it a day and not respond to one another's posts. please? You know, just agree to absolutely disagree? I actually enjoy jousting with RJ - despite his advancing years and his complete works of The Seekers, he still has a sense of humour even if not all his own teeth. I really have no desire to take myself as seriously as you appear to take yourself. I get no pleasure from it and I can't imagine that you get any either. I really don't have time for these long-winded responses where I have so many false claims and premises to endlessly counter. It literally wears me down but I know my dear readers need to be protected from such scurrilous twisting of the innocent facts. In truth, I can only do so much and still produce my brilliant and remarkable works.

Ike

Ike, you just told me that you once "worked as a furniture removal chap". Those are your own words. I'm saying that over a period covering three years Mike Barrett worked as a journalist. There's no difference.

I've no idea what the hell a "professional furniture technician" is but the fact of the matter is that Michael Barrett worked in a freelance capacity as a professional journalist for some years. There is no doubt about it. It is undeniable and incontrovertible. It's just a fact of history that you cannot change, however much you'd like to.

I love the way you claim ignorance about the significance of Tony Devereux thinking that Mike was a journalist. It was only yesterday that you told me point blank that: "Evidently, Barrett didn't think of himself as a journalist." If that was the case, why did his best friend think he WAS a journalist? Why did Shirley Harrison later say that Mike "liked to call himself a journalist"? Now you say "I'm sure he did" which is the complete opposite of what you told me yesterday. Your nonsense has been exposed by evidence, and you know it.

No-one, least of all me, is saying that Barrett was a Pulitzer prize winning journalist. I'm not even saying he was necessarily a good journalist. But he was having articles accepted by a nationally distributed magazine published by D.C. Thomson and edited by David Burness who started his career in The Weekly News before moving to Celebrity and subsequently The Sunday Post. In saying that it was Anne's work, you continually miss the point. It literally doesn't matter whether it was Mike or Anne who was doing it. But it was Mike's name on the articles. Your continued attempts to undermine the quality of the work are both futile and funny. You just don't seem to get it. The argument I'm making now is not that Mike must have had the skills to write the diary because he had been a journalist. It's that he kept the fact of his journalism hidden from his own literary agent but that this secret was soon to be revealed, so it didn't matter how good a journalist he was, just the mere fact that he had been one.

The only person hoisted by his own petard, Ike, is you. You said that the articles were "part of a writing course". That's not true. You seem to accept this by your change of tack whereby, now, writers were encouraged to submit (not "place" because that's impossible) articles to magazines. So what? The description of the magazine edited by David Burness as one of the "shittest rags" reflects your own middle class prejudices. Back in September 2022 (#37 of "A Very Inky Question" thread), I see you mentioned the name of another Celebrity writer, James Green, who also wrote for the Evening News and who was mentioned in Kenneth Williams' diary. Was James Green a journalist, Ike? Are people who write for the Sun, Daily Star, Daily Express and Daily Mirror, often described as "the gutter press", journalists?

As for what Mike told Scotland Yard, what explanation do you put forward as to why he didn't mention Celebrity? What I'm going to suggest is that the police might already have found out something about Mike having submitted articles to a magazine, perhaps from the Devereux family, and, to underplay this, Mike pretended it had only been articles for a children's magazine. Although you might today like to portray Celebrity and Chat as "cheap gossip rags", reflecting your own prejudices, I suspect that Scotland Yard in 1993 would have understood them to be high quality nationally distributed tabloid magazines published by a very reputable publisher.

So the new theory is that Mike didn't mention his journalism from FOUR YEARS earlier to Doreen and Shirley because of undeclared income? Tell me how it was possible for him not to pay taxes on money that would have been paid to him by cheque by a reputable publisher, almost certainly accompanied by a tax invoice, as opposed to cash in hand? But, what are you saying: he paid his taxes on his Look-in income so he was happily able to mention that to Scotland Yard? But not his taxes on his Celebrity income? Is that what you're saying. And he paid all his taxes while working as a scrap metal dealer, chef and on an oil rig? Don't be so silly, Ike. That's not the reason he didn't mention his journalism to his own literary agent, for sure.

I've just checked and, contrary to your claim, I can't find you saying anything about why Mike processed a word processor in any post from you earlier today and I quoted everything you posted. If that's wrong, please identify the explanation.

It seems to me that you are well on your way to what I assume to be your ultimate goal of arguing that black is white and that 2 + 2 = 5. You really can't be far off achieving this now. So well done.

Oh and if, as you suggest, I'm saying "ridiculous" a lot it's only because you continually say ridiculous things. How else can I describe them? If you give me a better word, I'll happily use it next time.

[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?

[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.

[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