The Maybrick Thread (For All Things Maybrick)

[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.

[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?

[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.

[Iconoclast]

Why couldn't it have come from DS Thomas?

We’ll soon find out.

[rjpalmer]

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

[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

[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].

[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.

[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.