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** This is an archived, static copy of the Casebook messages boards dating from 1998 to 2003. These threads cannot be replied to here. If you want to participate in our current forums please go to https://forum.casebook.org **
Archive through April 05, 2001
Casebook Message Boards: The Diary of Jack the Ripper: General Discussion:
College course tackles the Diary:
Archive through April 05, 2001
Author: Karoline L
Wednesday, 04 April 2001 - 04:18 pm |        | Paul wrote:
"With the greatest respect, if you take the time and trouble to trawl back through the posts on this Board you will find alternatives to most if not all of the emboldened arguments
you have made. I don’t think they need be repeated over again."
Paul,
What I posted in my emboldened list (see above anyone interested) were not arguments but facts -and what I will find if I trawl through the back posts are various arguments put forward to suggest why these facts might not be quite as damning as they first seem.
I admit there might be reasons why these facts which seem at face value to sign and seal the Barretts' involvement in the forgery, are not as conclusive as they appear - but so far no one has produced any.
Until they do, don't you agree that the balance of probability favours the simple and obvious answer - they look involved and guilty, because they are?
Paul wrote:
It has been shown that Ann Graham received a cheque. For all you know it was deposited in Mike’s account and Anne never received a penny. Therefore you cannot say that Anne has
profited.
If the cheque was made out in her name then it couldn't possibly be paid into any account but hers, could it? Absent any reason to suppose otherwise, the most reasonable inference is that the money went to her, she kept it and spent it.
Again isn't that what the balance of probability means?
Paul writes:
"We are not suffering any semantic difficulties, as you will
see if you re-read my post in which I showed that I had qualified my statement and how I had qualified it".
I have read it several times, please trust me on this I think we are alas having serious semantic difficulties. For which see below.
Paul wrote:
"You asked Caz and myself to set out the arguments favouring
an old forgery. I explained... "Everyone is
agreed that the ‘diary’ is a modern forgery and we are trying to ascertain who forged it" You have now changed the context of those words, turned ‘agreed’ and turned into
‘believes’ and then misrepresented me.
Well, I am most certainly not trying to misrepresent you, I am trying to arrive at a mutual understanding with you. I apologise if I am failing.
So, you are presently saying that you all are "agreed" it is an old forgery, but no one "believes" it is?
I think this is another example of our mutual semantic difficulty. To me your words represent an almost dislocating contradiction, but if they don't for you then so be it.
Still, if we are all agreeing (whether or not we believe) the thing is a modern forgery, then I will go along with that since I am inclined to agree with the majority here that there is virtually no reasonable case to be made for the thing being old.
This means, as Paul said yesterday that AG's story about the diary's provenance in her family is "an invention". And of course the fact that she seems to have made up this spurious story must increase the probability of her complicity in the fraud.
Does this make sense?
best wishes to you
Karoline |
Author: Karoline L
Wednesday, 04 April 2001 - 04:41 pm | | I wrote
"The only hard evidence provided so far is that a four figure sum of money was paid to her [Anne] as an advance against royalties."
Caz wrote
"I haven’t seen any such evidence yet, so I can’t comment. But I didn’t realise that Doreen had confirmed the assumption that the payment was indeed an advance against royalties, and explained why the full 50% went to Anne. I
think I’ll just wait and see if that’s okay with everyone.
Sorry to sound so suspicious.
Peter Birchwood posted the information that £3666 was payed to AG in December 1993.
I can add to that the following information, in the form of a statement from Rupert Crew Ltd. to Mike Barrett, dated January 7 1994, which reads as follows:
Statement from Rupert Crew Ltd, tax point 7 January 1994
DIARY OF JACK THE RIPPER
As schedule of payments dated 4/12/93
Amount due 5/1/94: £9742.19
Your 50% share: £4871.10 (less 10% commission) net £4383.99
VAT on our commission: £ 85.24
Cheque to Lloyds bank a/c M. Barrett: £3000.00
Cheque to Mrs Anne Barrett: £1298.75
There are other such statements that I know of for February and I believe for March of that year, all of which detail payments made separately to MB and to AG.
AG's total receipts up to February would total in excess of £5000.
I think to any reasonable person this makes it clear that AG did "profit considerably" from the diary.
I trust this helps.
I wrote:
"We have a bogus diary written with ink that was clearly put on the paper only a few months or years before the thing became public property.
Caz wrote:
"Clearly? I thought this was still disputed, otherwise why is everyone still here?"
When the ink was first tested it showed no sign of bronzing whatsoever. Now, some eight years on, it is well bronzed. It is physically impossible for the ink to have been on the paper for any length of time and exhibit no bronzing.
I suggest anyone who doubts this consults Melvin Harris' scholarly writings on the matter.
There are also the tests on the sighting agent that have been quoted by RJP.
These tests offer a high standard of evidence that has not been refuted or explained.
I wrote:
"We have the Barretts purchasing another old Victorian diary at around the time the forgery was being composed."
Caz wrote:
"If its indisputable that the forgery was composed around March 1992, ditto – why is everyone still here?"
I must apologise because I am not able to see what relevance this question has to the fact that the Barretts purchased another old diary just before the forgery first appeared in public.
As to Caz's concomitant suggestion that the mere fact people are debating something must a priori mean there is a legitimate question to be debated - I remind everyone that there are people still debating the possibility of a flat earth - does the mere fact they are doing so lessen the probability that it is round?
I wrote:
"We have the fact that the entire text of the forgery was on MB's word processor(!)"
Caz wrote:
"Couldn’t this have been typed up from the diary, after it came into Mike’s possession?"
Yes. it could. But is that the most probable explanation in the circumstances?
I wrote:
"We have the fact that both AG and MB tried to give the forgery a spurious provenance."
Caz wrote:
"But is it a fact that Mike didn't get the diary from Devereux? Mike initially claimed he did, and Anne later claimed this was true, except that she had given it to Devereux first. So, initially Anne was not ‘trying to give the forgery’ any provenance, spurious or otherwise. If it’s a fact that she tried to give it a spurious provenance in July 1994, er, why is everyone still here?"
Well if MB forged the diary, then he didn't get it from a man in the pub. And if he got it from a man in the pub - then he didn't forge it. Both his stories can't be true. So one of them is an invention.
And as for AG, I remind you of Paul's own words that her story of the diary's origins in her family is "an invention".
As to the poetically existential thread you seem to have started about why we are all here. I think maybe John Omlor is better qualified to go into that. Philosophy isn't my strongest discipline.
I wrote:
"We have the fact that it was MB who tried to place the forgery with a publisher."
Caz wrote:
"We have the fact that MB did place the forgery with a publisher. What we don’t have is the fact that MB knew it was a forgery when he did so."
The fact that he placed the diary and sought to profit from it clearly raises the probability that he was involved in its creation.
I wrote:
"We have the fact that MB has confessed to being complicit in the forgery."
Caz wrote:
"Ever heard of people making false confessions? Not as common (in both senses of the word) as people who make false accusations, no doubt, but the reasons are often as complex and difficult to get one’s head around. I, for one, cannot imagine why anyone would want to do the latter, but they do say there’s nowt so queer as folk."
Yes I have heard of people making false confessions, and it is perfectly possible that MB did so.
If you re-read my original post you'll note I very clearly state that none of the above prove the Barretts forged the document. But, as Paul himself pointed out right here:
"No historian can ever say what did happen... All he can say is what probably happened"
Looking for cast iron absolute proof is not a practicable methodology, and not, as Paul says, what history is about. History is about a balance of probability, and I suggest that balance is currently in favour of the Barretts as being complicit in this modern and not very impressive little piece of fraud.
best wishes
Karoline |
Author: John Omlor
Wednesday, 04 April 2001 - 05:08 pm | | Hi Karoline,
I'd like to take just one sentence from your post above and ask you about it, in the hopes that it might make more explicit some of what I was suggesting about where Ockham's logic might actually lead us.
You conclude above:
" And of course the fact that she seems to have made up this spurious story must increase the probability of her complicity in the fraud."
Let me stop for a moment and tell you what remains, for me, unclear here.
If it was clearly provable that Anne "made up this spurious story," it would also be clear that we first heard the story only after the diary was in the midst of its public reception and there was pressure from all sides about things financial and things legal and things relating to questions of truth.
We are now left to decide whether Anne "made up this spurious story" in response to those shifting events and powerful changes in her life, or whether she had planned to tell it before 1992.
Do you have any evidence in favor of or opposed to one of these two very specific and different propostions?
The reason this is important can be seen if we return to your sentence.
I repeat it, for the sake of clarity here:
"And of course the fact that she seems to have made up this spurious story must increase the probability of her complicity in the fraud."
Second question: by "the fraud," here, are you including the composing, writing and production of the volume (or even certain knowledge about the composing, writing, and production of the volume), or only the after-the-fact attempt to dissimulate its history for whatever reasons?
If it is the former you are including in your definition of the term "the fraud," then the "must" in your sentence is completely out of place.
Why does her telling a false provenance story necessarily "increase the probability," have to "increase the probability," exclusively "increase the probability," that she also participated in the creation of the diary prior to 1992?
I have seen no argument yet here explaining this "must."
Please note: this is not, in any way, a return to any call for epistemological certainty that we all agree is impossible. It is merely an observation that I can see no reason that Mike and Anne's behavior as described by you and occurring after the public reception of the diary in anyway "must" tell us anything at all about their ability to formulate and then execute the construction of this diary or their actually having researched and composed this diary. In fact, I'm not even sure, to return to your original sentence, that, "the fact that she seems to have made up this spurious story" in any way logically or necessarily even implies any "increase [in] the probability of her complicity in the fraud," if "the fraud" includes the process of composition and production or even necessary knowledge of the specific source and origin of the text.
If our propositions are
A: Anne is telling lies about where the diary comes from and it's history.
and B: Anne wrote the diary or Anne and Mike wrote the diary, or even Anne and Mike know who wrote the diary and where and when.
then I see no clear, evidentiary premise in anyone's work so far that leads us clearly from A to B.
The circumstances surrounding the red diary and the Sphere volume are small steps in moving from A to B, but are both problematized by various conflicting narratives.
What would be necessary is some evidence about Mike and Anne's knowledge and actions before they brought the diary public.
This still seems to me to be missing.
It is a gap, a silence that remains in this whole discussion and renders many of the arguments here fragmentary and the conclusions partial and somewhat belied by the finality of their rhetoric of revelation.
I hope that is a little bit clearer. I am moving very slowly, I know, and I apologize, but I want to think this thing through carefully.
Thanks again,
--John |
Author: Richard P. Dewar
Wednesday, 04 April 2001 - 06:03 pm | | Hi, John Omlor,
I think you have presented an excellent synopsis of what is known versus what is rumored about the so-called "Maybrick Diary."
I would slightly disagree with one conclusion you do make: that the diary was not authored by Maybrick.
I agree that it is unlikely but I do not believe anyone has proven definitively that it was not written by Maybrick. I know many will find this contentious. For all the arguments that Maybrick did not write it, there are explanations, admittedly sometimes far-fetched, why he could have.
What is certain is that Jack the Ripper is not the author of the diary. There are too many errors in the text about facts related to the crimes for it to be authored by the actual murderer. Tellingly many errors are repeated from press and book accounts of the crimes.
Ms. Harrison suggests the killer was so crazed that he accidentally copied errors in the press, forgetting exactly what he had done. Admittedly, I engage in a bit of theorizing myself in suggesting that such an explanation is hardly plausible.
In short, the "Maybrick Diary" is certainly not the work of Jack the Ripper. Who wrote it and when and for what purpose has yet to be determined - if it ever will.
Rich |
Author: John Omlor
Wednesday, 04 April 2001 - 06:25 pm | | Hi Rich,
Actually, if you go back and look at my original summary (the initial post from yesterday to which I believe you are referring), I was especially careful to mark a very explicit difference between my assertion of things known and my paragraph concerning Maybrick's authorship, which I deliberately began with the qualifying phrase and conditional sentence:
"I am fairly confident that this person was not James Maybrick."
And, after giving my reasons for this suspicion, was also careful to add at the end of the paragraph:
"None of these things are conclusive, of course."
In this way, I sought to differentiate this paragraph from those beginning explicitly with the words "I know" and thereby mark a difference between the facts as I thought they could be offered and my own interpretive conclusions, which I tried carefully to acknowledge represented a different sort of claim entirely and one that was only expressing a confidence (and my being only "fairly confident," at that).
I recognized the difference between the other claims and this one and so tried to make that recognition explicit.
I hope a quick revisit to the specific language in that post of Tuesday, April 03, 2001 - 10:42 pm as it appears above will demonstrate my care here.
Hope that answers your question,
--John |
Author: Richard P. Dewar
Wednesday, 04 April 2001 - 07:06 pm | | John,
You are absolutely correct. I apologize for misstating your position. It was quite unintentional.
Again, congratulations for an excellent summary.
Rich |
Author: Madeleine Murphy
Wednesday, 04 April 2001 - 07:15 pm | | Hi John!
Thanks for that very lucid and clear distinction. I think it touches on something very useful: while it's reasonable to argue that the Barretts *profited* by the diary, and also to thus argue that makes them good candidates for having created it, there really *are* other plausible interpretations. If I found something in the family, or bought something at a junk store, that turned out to be briefly considered a big-time earner, I might well try to claim it as an authentic document by any means possible, as Malcolm X has it.
No apologies for moving slowly through evidence. Moving slowly is the only way to move.
snail-like madeleine |
Author: Martin Fido
Wednesday, 04 April 2001 - 07:46 pm | | I can't say how much pleasure I get from John and Madeleine's bringing fresh, educated and intelligent thinking based on their wide, slow, and careful reading of the material, without either the parti pris stances affecting those of us who have become bent-backed by working in the salt mines for years, or the committed enthusiasms of those who have picked up one excitingly written Ripper book and judged everything else inadequate for failing to agree with it.
Martin Fido |
Author: R.J. Palmer
Wednesday, 04 April 2001 - 10:01 pm | | John--As always, I enjoyed your post...but....
Though I don't have any major disagreements with your analysis, and even accept most of it, particularly in relation to what constitutes Anne's 'complicity' (but see below), I have to admit that in following your thread I was reminded of the little fit that Dr. Johnson performed when he was faced with Bishop Berkeley's metaphysical mumbo-jumbo: he struck a stone with his walking stick and cried out "I refute it thus!" (or some such phrase).
I utterly deny that it has not been proven that the journal was not written by James Maybrick --certainly in respect to what any reasonable person would admit constitutes historical, legal, or even moral proof. If a host of respected document examiners tell us the handwriting is not James Maybrick's --and we can see with our own eyes that it doesn't even slightly resemble it--, if a respected gentleman hired by the publishers of the diary tells us that the ink 'gave up color' while he watched, if a host of experts agree that the ink had no bronzing, if the journal contains glue and a corner of a photograph and square impressions which are the same size of photographs that the Kodak company tells us weren't even manufactured until 1912, and the journal itself uses a phrase from a police list that is not available to the public until the 20th Century, then I submit that Sam Johnson, Bishop Berkeley, and David Hume would all agree that the diary could not have been written by James Maybrick.
As for Anne's subsequent actions not proving that she was complicit in the writing of the diary: I utterly agree, (epecially since my own crack-potted theories admittedly based on specious arguments, wild speculations, and downright hunches!) insists that she had nothing to do with writing the diary. But I can't help but comment that my own ethical view is very broad about what constitutes a fraud or, at least, whar constitutes nonsense. If Madame X sells a bed pan to someone claiming that it is Hercules' shield, then I consider her guilty of nonsensewhether she actually took a sheet of tin and a ball-peen hammer and built the bed pan or not. IF (please note the if) IF Feldman and/or Anne manufactured the 'in the family for years' provenance, and have no documentation to back-it up, (I rather think they did) then in my muddled and not overly examined system of ethics they are complicit in promoting \b nonsense} (don't wish to use the legal term 'fraud') whether they had anything whatsoever to do with writing the diary or not. Call it independent nonsense if you will, but it is nonsense nonetheless.
But don't mind me, carry on. Someday maybe we'll all talk about Kafka.
Best wishes,
RJ Palmer |
Author: Karoline L
Thursday, 05 April 2001 - 04:16 am | | Richard P. Dewar wrote:
I agree that it is unlikely but I do not believe anyone has proven definitively that it was not written by Maybrick. I know many will find this contentious. For all the arguments
that Maybrick did not write it, there are explanations, admittedly sometimes far-fetched, why he could have.
Hello Richard,
I am not sure you are right there.
For example has anyone produced any explanation at all of how, if the thing was composed in 1888 it had previous to that date contained photographs of a size not manufactured until 1912?
I'll leave that with you, or perhaps Mrs Harrison has an answer.
But broadly I agree with you, such arguments have been put across to try and throw doubt on the seemingly cut and dried case that the diary is a fraud.
One such is the suggestion that Maybrick had a multiple personality disorder that made him write the diary in a handwriting totally unlike the one he used for every other document he is ever known to have composed.
As a suggestion it can't of course be disproved (it being impossible to prove a negative), though it does undoubtedly conform to most people's conception of "far-fetched".
But the trouble is that once you accept that any argument, however improbable must be considered valid until actually proven false, you will never be able to arrive at a sensible conclusion about anything.Because it is largely impossible to disprove impossible suggestions.
Lets' look at an assertion that most people would regard as obviously true:
The earth revolves round the sun.
Well, 'for all the arguments that it does, there are explanations, admittedly sometimes far-fetched", why it might not:
Maybe God is deluding us deliberately to test our faith. Or perhaps our astronomical observations are faulty because of laws operating in the universe we presently know nothing about.
None of these suggestions can be proved false - so should we accept them as valid and the question of the earth's orbital field to be still in doubt?
Using such undisproveable assertions as "maybe he was mad and it changed his writing"or "maybe Elvis became a Buddhist monk and moved to Bhutan", it's possible to keep any question open into eternity.
But it is an intellectually bankrupt exercise which panders to man's least attractive instincts. It can sometimes have painfully horrific results (witness the recent attempts to argue that the holocaust didn't happen).
As Paul has so wisely said right here, "No historian can ever say what did happen... All he can say is what probably happened".
History is not about absolute proof - indeed there is very little in human affairs that can yield this kind of substantiation. History, legality, even science, is about a balance of probability.
Richard, as a clearly educated and thoughtful man - what do you think the balance of probability is here? That Maybrick had MPD, that the Poste House wasn't a bad mistake, that the diary only seems to have contained 20th C pics - or that someone else made this thing up?
best wishes
Karoline |
Author: Paul Begg
Thursday, 05 April 2001 - 04:54 am | | Karoline
What I posted in my emboldened list (see above anyone interested) were not arguments but facts -and what I will find if I trawl through the back posts are various arguments put forward to suggest why these facts might not be quite as damning as they first seem.
I admit there might be reasons why these facts which seem at face value to sign and seal the Barretts' involvement in the forgery, are not as conclusive as they appear - but so far.
Until they do, don't you agree that the balance of probability favours the simple and obvious answer - they look involved and guilty, because they are?
I do not agree with your reasoning. Your emboldened statements may be facts but they are facts without meaning. That Mike Barrett had the text of the ‘diary’ on his word processor tells us nothing except that Mike Barrett had the text of the ‘diary’ on his word processor. To give this information meaning it has to be interpreted. You clearly intend an interpretation because you see the information as damning. Your interpretation – or argument, if you like – is evidently that the text was on Mike’s word-processor because Mike Barrett used his word processor to compose the text of the ‘diary’. But an alternative and equally valid interpretation is that Mike transcribed the text from the ‘diary’ onto his word processor. This interpretation isn’t damning at all. So your list of ‘facts’ is meaningless without interpretation and if reasonably and validly interpreted differently from yours the list isn't damning at all.
You also seem to be self-contradictory, saying on the one hand that if you trawl back through the posts you will find ’various arguments put forward to suggest why these facts might not be quite as damning as they first seem’ yet in the following paragraph you say that whilst ‘there might be reasons why these facts which seem at face value to sign and seal the Barretts' involvement in the forgery’, you say that ‘no one has produced any’. But they have. That's what you'll find if your trawl back through the posts.
‘I think this is another example of our mutual semantic difficulty. To me your words represent an almost dislocating contradiction, but if they don't for you then so be it.’
There is no contradiction in my words except the one you create by misunderstanding the concept of a group of people agreeing to a basic premise so that they can debate a topic, as in the case of a group of people agreeing that the ‘diary’ is a modern forgery so that they can debate and evaluate the evidence for and against the various people suspected of having forged it. |
Author: Paul Begg
Thursday, 05 April 2001 - 05:00 am | | John
As usual, an excellent presentation.
The only real discussion I can immediately recall about Mike and Anne’s actions before they made the ‘diary’ public concerns dates and the probability or otherwise of Mike having received the ‘Diary’ from Tony Devereux. According to Mike’s original story, he was given by the ‘diary’ by Tony Devereux in March 1991. The only evidence we have in support of this claim, if ‘evidence’ isn’t to give it greater dignity than it deserves, is that Mike’s daughter recalled him bringing it home and that Tony Devereux possessed a copy of Richard Whittington-Egan’s book. In August 1991 Tony Devereux died. In February 1992 Mike took the ‘diary’ to Rupert Crew.
None of this proves that the ‘diary’ wasn’t executed after August 1991 and Tony Devereux used as a convenient scapegoat. On the other hand, in his most detailed confession, when I think under the wing of Alan Grey, Mike said the materials were bought and the forgery executed in January/February 1990, thus extendingthe gap between creating the forgery and taking it to the literary agent by a further year (and I stress executed, meaning written, not researched; the research would presumably have been done prior to January, probably late 1889). On July 4 1999 Shirley Harrison reported on these Boards a telephone call from Mike in which he said “You must say that Anne wrote the diary - she wrote it with Billy Graham. When Anne left me I turned around and said 'I know you wrote the diary, love, but I will take all the blame.' I took all the blame because I didn't want to see her go to prison and my Caroline not have a mother.” So what we can believe from Mike is open to question.
About the only consistent feature of Mike’s story is that he received the ‘diary’ from Tony Devereux. It is also in Anne’s story. Whether or not we conclude that Mike actually did get it from Tony Devereux to a great extent depends, I think, on how we interpret the lack of detail in his first confession to Harold Brough, whether Outhwaite and Litherland’s rejection of Mike’s story of having bought the ‘diary’ from them is accurate, and whether we think Mike’s general inability to give a clear and coherent account of how the ‘diary’ was conceived and executed is a result of his alcoholism and health or a reflection of genuine ignorance |
Author: Paul Begg
Thursday, 05 April 2001 - 05:43 am | | Hi RJP
I’m interested in your statement that you don’t think Anne had anything to do with writing the ‘diary’. What, then, do you think was her part? Just the wife of Mike, who forged it, and who kept out of it until circumstances (whatever they were) caused her to tell her ‘in the story for years’ story? Or do you think that she genuinely didn’t know where the ‘diary’ had come from? Do you think she believed it came from Tony Devereux?
Cheers
Paul |
Author: Richard P. Dewar
Thursday, 05 April 2001 - 07:31 am | | Hi, Karoline,
I agree with you that the weight of evidence heavily favors the view that Maybrick did not author the diary in question. I also concur with Paul Begg that accepted points of history are frequently universally accepted although never definitively proven.
It is not my intent to quibble over semantics. The point I tried to make, perhaps not as artfully as I should have, is that James Maybrick's authorship of the diary has not been ascertained factually one way or the other.
Of course some of these questions are a matter of judgment and degree. I agree that the overwhelming evidence suggests that Maybrick did not author the diary. But, as of yet, that has not been definitively proven.
I don't believe the arguments of the serious proponents of the diary are as incredible and ludicrious as some of the analogies you cited.
If I could cite a comparison: there is debate about whether Catherine Eddowes was a victim of Jack the Ripper. I believe the overwhelming evidence suggests that she was. And, the vast majority agree with my opinion. However, I would concede that those who feel Eddowes was not a victim of the Ripper have a plausible position.
What saddens me about this entire Maybrick case, and one sees it starkly on these message boards, is the fanatical attachment people have to their own ideas and theories about the authorship of the diary. I sincerely fear that as long as ideology is the driving force in analysis of the diary and its many issues, a generally accepted conclusion to this matter may never be attainable.
Karoline, I dont attach any motives to your point of view. We actually appear to share the same view of the authenticity of the diary. We merely disagree as to the matter of degree that our views have been proven.
Rich |
Author: Caroline Anne Morris
Thursday, 05 April 2001 - 07:34 am | | Hi All,
Hi Karoline,
I think we may be doing that old juggling apples and oranges trick again here. Balance of probability has a great place in any argument, but only, in my opinion, if it is arrived at from facts and truths that are indeed beyond dispute (and not just our own individual perceptions of the truth), and if we have exhausted all the possibilities of digging out more facts to confirm or reject some of the probabilities. In other words, why saddle our great-grandchildren with history based on mere balance of probability if the answers are there for the taking in the here and now?
Thanks very much for giving us the information about payments to Anne before July 1994. Now you have kindly provided these details we can continue to wonder – if we so wish, and until we hear more - what the payments were actually for, what share Anne was officially entitled to and if that is what she got, and even whether the amounts were enough to keep her in French knickers and cling-wrap. As I’ve said repeatedly, whether she has profited considerably, or very little, or has been giving the lot to the Knotty Ash Cats’ Home, all it shows is a potential motive for inventing Formby/Yapp links, elaborate yarns about late 1960s discoveries of dusty old family articles in trunks, and persuading her dying father to get in on the act, presumably because she guessed Feldy would fall for it hook, line and sinker, and thought he would be able to help secure more cash for her via future film deals etc.
But as Peter has said over on the Maybrick Diary board:
This shows that she received money from the diary right from the very start and this continues.This is not to say that the receipt and conveyance of her share of the diary monies has anything to say about whether she did or did not forge the diary, just that she made money and had an interest in continuing to do so..
Thanks Peter.
I gather that the specialists involved in tests on the diary ink were simply asked to test for signs of bronzing. They were not asked to comment on whether the bronzing process would have begun from the moment the ink was put on the paper, regardless of whether the diary had been kept open or closed after the last entry was written. This may be nit-picking, and I would like to take your word for it that ‘it is physically impossible for the ink to have been on the paper for any length of time and exhibit no bronzing’, but I’m not as au fait as you are with how Melvin’s scholarly writings compare with his scientific knowledge on the subject – I freely admit it’s all a closed book to me.
We have the Barretts purchasing another old Victorian diary at around the time the forgery was being composed.
The Barretts purchased another old diary just before the forgery first appeared in public.
Thanks for your kind acknowledgement that, since no one has been able to tell when the forgery was being composed, your former statement was not one of indisputable fact, and thanks for correcting it so graciously.
Your point about the flat earth debate amused me. Were you joining in with that debate during your absence from these boards by any chance? I do wonder about such people, with the time and inclination to actually formulate an argument against the one which says the earth is flat. I can see the fleeting entertainment value of listening in on such a debate, but no point whatsoever in joining in with the inmates if I thought there was no legitimate question being debated. Again, there’s nowt so queer as folk.
To answer your question, though, no – you are quite correct - the mere fact we are debating the dreaded diary here does not lessen any probabilities. But I was not addressing your probabilities at that point. I was addressing what you referred to as indisputable facts, and suggesting that we wouldn't still be here if they were. Do you see my point about keeping our apples separate from our oranges, at least until we have enough to make a decent fruit salad?
The comment I made about Anne’s spurious provenance was all mine. You have pointed out a contradiction by quoting someone else’s words back at me – in this case, Paul Begg’s.
Looking for cast iron absolute proof may not be practicable methodology, and not what history is about. The balance of probability may or may not be currently in favour of the Barretts as being complicit in a modern fraud. I’m simply suggesting that by continuing to ask more questions, while those who may be in a position to give us more of the answers are still alive, we may be able to shift that balance even further in the right direction. I apologise if you think this is not in any way practicable or desirable, but if so, I’d be interested to know why not.
Incidentally, you haven’t said yet if you agree in principle with Shirley’s request for Melvin to pass on her letter to the newspaper editor. Or do you think Melvin is quite right to assume the editor’s decision for him, without giving him the chance to tell Shirley himself? I really would appreciate your opinion on this one.
Love,
Caz |
Author: Paul Begg
Thursday, 05 April 2001 - 07:39 am | | Hi Rich
What saddens me about this entire Maybrick case, and one sees it starkly on these message boards, is the fanatical attachment people have to their own ideas and theories about the authorship of the diary.
I couldn't agree more. |
Author: Paul Begg
Thursday, 05 April 2001 - 08:27 am | | Hello Caz
The comment I made about Anne’s spurious provenance was all mine. You have pointed out a contradiction by quoting someone else’s words back at me – in this case, Paul Begg’s.
Are you referring to my statement quoted by Karoline that Ann'e 'in my family for years' story is 'an invention'? If so, I couldn’t be bothered to get into a lengthy explanation of this but Karoline couldn’t understand why presenting the evidence that the ‘diary’ is an old forgery wasn’t relevant to a discussion about who was responsible for executing a modern forgery. I sought to explain the reason to her and in that context tried to point of that accepting that Anne’s story was “an invention” did not mean it was her invention (but could have been a story she believed to be true). I went on to make the point that if we cannot pin the tail of the forger onto the donkey of any of the likely candidates, then and only then might we have to consider Anne’s story as true and examine the possibility of an old forgery. I'm afraid that the overall context of my words is missing and 'an invention' is being used rather more boldly than I'd intended or would have wished for. |
Author: John Omlor
Thursday, 05 April 2001 - 08:53 am | | Hi there, RJ
It seems to me that we are not in very much disagreement here at all.
The qualifications in my paragraph concerning Maybrick's authorship, and highlighted in my post to Rich for the sake of responding to his specifically expressed concern, were not intended to suggest that I was still entertaining the notion that Maybrick wrote the diary. I am not.
I merely wished, for the sake of care and clarity, to make it very explicit that my knowledge that James Maybrick did not write the diary is a different sort of knowledge than my knowledge that Mike Barrett showed Doreen Montgomery a diary in 1992. That there are some things, such as the fact that the diary now has sixty-three pages of prose and failed poetry that suggest that James Maybrick was Jack the Ripper, that I am willing to claim as knowledge of a different sort than the conclusion that we both have come to that Maybrick did not write this book -- although I believe both of these assertions entirely, the latter one precisely for many of the compelling reasons you advance in your post. My distinction was made in the name of care, but not in the name of the strength of my belief.
And I think Johnson, Berkeley, and Hume would agree with our conclusion, but I think that they might also agree with my contention that it is a different type of conclusion than the one that asserts that Mike and Anne possessed the diary in March of 1992. One is an induction (albeit based on overwhelming evidence) and the other is a more direct rendering of available experience. A good empiricist like Hume would especially want to at least note this distinction before moving on with the analysis and with the nonetheless quite convincing and at this point necessary assumption that Maybrick did not, in fact, pen these pages. [We can, of course, take issue with his speculative desire to mark this difference (I think Kant might; I'm fairly sure Heidegger would), but that is not necessary for our purposes here and I'm afraid my own sympathies in this case would actually lie with Hume's penchant for caution.]
We are not at all in disagreement either about the conditionals you establish concerning the purveying of nonsense. Indeed, I was expecting someone to raise the ethical question soon. I completely agree that:
"IF (please note the if) IF Feldman and/or Anne manufactured the 'in the family for years' provenance, and have no documentation to back-it up, (I rather think they did) then in my muddled and not overly examined system of ethics they are complicit in promoting \b {nonsense} (don't wish to use the legal term 'fraud') whether they had anything whatsoever to do with writing the diary or not. Call it independent nonsense if you will, but it is nonsense nonetheless."
And one of the implications to be found in several moments of my analysis, I think, was precisely this conditional indictment of behavior after-the-fact. If Anne is deliberately and knowingly telling lies about the history of this book, even if she does not have any idea where this book originated, then she is telling lies and doing so in a public forum and doing so, it would appear, with intent to dissimulate and manipulate the reception of at least two books. This is a serious and troubling ethical issue.
But you and I also agree that it says nothing, in and of itself, about the history of the document.
It is that scene of writing -- the composition and the the execution -- that still interests me as a reader and as someone fascinated by the uncertainties surrounding how this thing was put together and by the mystery of its unknown origins.
I think we are very close here to coming to some genuine terms of agreement and I hope that is a sign of making progress in this little exercise in group reading and the interpretations of a text and its accompanying narratives.
I'm a bit of a sap, I suppose, but this makes me happy. 
Thanks,
--John |
Author: John Omlor
Thursday, 05 April 2001 - 09:47 am | | Hi Karoline,
You write, in your post to Richard, after discussing the certainty with which we know about the orbit of the earth and the experience of the Holocaust, and warning about the danger of keeping "any question open into eternity":
"History is not about absolute proof - indeed there is very little in human affairs that can yield this kind of substantiation. History, legality, even science, is about a balance of probability."
Indeed. There is no longer any question of absolute proof -- or absolute knowledge for that matter. I do not think that anyone, with the obvious exception of certain unquestioning idealogues, writing seriously and carefully in the world of history and the history of philosophy has used the term unselfconsciously since Hegel. Even Marx avoided it. Its residue remains, of course, throughout the history of 20th Century thought. But in nearly every case, its ghost-like re-emergence proves to be extremely dangerous (the absolute knowledge of Aryan destiny, for instance).
That being said, I believe that the establishment of probability through the act of interpretation is a tricky business and must proceed in a very careful manner. And yes, this means sometimes mentioning the ridiculous such as the sun going around the earth or the Holocaust having never happened precisely because we need to constantly see again and again exactly how we clearly establish in an important and reliable fashion the obvious; how we know that the earth goes around the sun and that the Holocaust was a nightmare with which we still must come to terms and which haunts us every day and which still has serious ramifications in contemporary policy and contemporary thinking about the limits of human thought and the limits of human assumptions. In fact, it is this constant re-consideration of the obvious that strengthens our case concerning what we know, that the unthinkable horror did happen for instance, in the face of the revisionist claims of the deniers. The deniers actually gain strength when we stop being obsessively and meticulously self-conscious about constantly re-examining and re-establishing our own claims to knowledge and fall back on the too-easy claim that "everybody knows." This vigilance -- this constant willingness to entertain the impossible as a way of demonstrating the inevitability of the necessary, is our best safeguard against those who would rewrite history; it is not a threat to the writing of history or to the strength of the claims of the probable. In fact, it is their greatest ally.
I believe this is very important.
That is why when someone like Richard approaches us with a question to which we already think we have an established answer, I would not want to too quickly reply with remarks concerning the impossibility of absolute certainty and simply claim that some things have been already clearly established and are now known.
Perhaps they are. But it seems to me that the act of repeatedly considering the impossible and the unthinkable carefully, even when -- indeed precisely when -- it is repugnant and offensive, is anything but, as you say, "an intellectually bankrupt exercise." It is finally, in fact, what allows the memories of the victims in history to continue to resonate with the force that their story demands, what makes possible the emergence of the voices of victims that unquestioned, too-comfortable assumptions left previously unheard (Native Americans' voices, more recently, in the history of my own country), and I suspect it is ultimately a mark of the intellectual vigilance that makes responsible history possible.
At least that is how I see things here, now.
--John |
Author: Karoline L
Thursday, 05 April 2001 - 11:09 am | | John,
I do see where you are coming from, and I support your view entirely.
We can never afford to fall back on stale certitudes. Of course we must always be prepared to question, to probe, to doubt - it is our safeguard against dogma. Open-mindedness, rationality and intellectual honesty are all we have to save ourselves from our more bigoted and irrational selves.
But I'm sure you will agree with me (since I sense you have a sensitive mind for subtle gradations) - there is an important difference between reasonable questioning and unreasonable questioning.
It is entirely reasonable for us to ask for evidence to show that the earth goes round the sun. It's reasonable to question that evidence closely.
But it's not reasonable to employ spurious and unfalsifiable arguments to try and overturn that evidence in order to create or maintain a sterile debate.
It would be quite justifiable to ask for the hard evidence that the Second World War happened - but it would not be justifiable to argue that all that evidence should be discounted because no one could prove WW II wasn't a mass hallucination deliberately created by aliens from Vega.
Such an argument would, I suggest be wholly bankrupt both morally and intellectually.
I think the argument that claims the reason the Maybrick diary is not in Maybrick's hand is because he could have had MPD, is another such bankrupt case.
It is as barren of reason as the suggestion of aliens from Vega; there is no data of any description to support it. But, of course, like the aliens, like the possibility that Elvis went to Bhutan, or the moon is made of ice cream, it can't be conclusively disproved - because one can't prove a negative.
So, it lends itself easily to exploitation and can be employed, in the face of all reason and all respect for historical truth, for as long as anyone, with an interest in keeping a dead argument alive, might choose to do so.
John, I don't think this is the kind of questioning or the kind of enquiry that furthers human understanding, do you? I suggest the only thing that is served by such a proceeding is the sad cause of human unreason.
but I'm sure you will have your own interesting take on this question
best wishes
Karoline |
Author: John Omlor
Thursday, 05 April 2001 - 11:45 am | | Hi All,
In the interest of sketching out more precisely my disagreement with some of what has been written here about the passage from complicity in after-the-fact manipulations and direct knowledge of or involvement in the creation of a forgery, I thought I'd offer this morning one more small bit of close reading.
In a post from Wednesday, April 04, 2001 - 05:26 am, Karoline offers an interesting set of assumptions concerning Anne and Mike's knowledge that have, hidden within them, a movement that I think is important to make explicit.
Karoline writes:
"Paul suggests that AG might still be innocent. He suggests she did not make up the bogus provenance story she told Feldman - but simply repeated in all innocence a story told her by another member of her family.
For this to be true, the diary would have to have been forged presumably by a member of Anne's family, before 1969 (when Anne claims she first saw it), yet not long enough ago to be considered an old forgery (since this is ruled out as a possibility)."
There is a dangerous slip of meaning and logic approaching at this point. It begins with the first appearance of the term "innocent." It must be made very clear: innocent of precisely what?
Forgery?
Not yet.
Karoline's paragraph is explicit as it summarizes it's reading of Paul's claim:
"she did not make up the bogus provenance story she told Feldman - but simply repeated in all innocence a story told her by another member of her family."
Clearly, Anne's innocence or guilt concerning making up the provenance story is what is being discussed here.
And in the next paragraph the discussion continues
"For this to be true, the diary would have to have been forged presumably by a member of Anne's family, before 1969 (when Anne claims she first saw it), yet not long enough ago to be considered an old forgery (since this is ruled out as a possibility)."
On the surface this looks clear enough. But I want to make it explicit once again that all that is being discussed here so far is whether Anne made up the provenance story, not whether she was involved or knew about the forgery.
Now something interesting happens in the post.
Going back to where we left off:
"For this to be true, the diary would have to have been forged presumably by a member of Anne's family, before 1969 (when Anne claims she first saw it), yet not long enough ago to be considered an old forgery (since this is ruled out as a possibility).
"The forgers would then have had to simply sit on their creation and do nothing about.
"They would also have had to tell AG the falsd story deliberately to mislead her - so that when the diary eventually became public property, she would be able to unwittingly give it spurious support.
"I can't prove this didn't happen - but, friends - is it likley?
"The question must be - as I said last night - is this a more reasonable inference than that Mike and AG were simply involved in constructing and placing the forgery themselves?"
But, these are clearly not the only two likely alternatives. They are not even all of the simplest alternatives. It is, as I have argued elsewhere, just as simple perhaps to advance the possibility that the diary was forged in the late eighties not by a member of Anne's family or by Anne and Mike and that Mike and Anne's actions once they gained possession of it and got caught up in the mess of its publication and reception raise ethical concerns about their behavior but prove nothing at all "beyond a reasonable doubt" about their role as forgers or even their knowledge of the identities of the forgers.
However, and this is most important, nothing at all in the first part of this lengthy and careful citation from Karoline's post above leads, in any way, logically to its conclusion concerning the likelihood that "Mike and AG were simply involved in constructing and placing the forgery themselves."
Where has this even entered the discussion? All that was discussed above was the evidence for and against Anne making up the provenance story and the consequences of either possibility.
Yet Karoline rather triumphantly concludes:
"All things being equal the fact of Mike and AG as complicit in this forgery - either as co-creators with a third party or on their own - is established beyond a resasonable doubt."
But she has not even argued this point, let alone offered evidence about Mike and Anne's involvement in the actual creation of the document. She has merely demonstrated the fact that, as she sees it, Anne's provenance story must be a lie. Then, as far as I can see, she has strangely and inexplicably jumped from this conclusion to an entirely different one about Mike and Anne's "complicit[y] in this forgery - either as co-creators with a third party or on their own" without a single detail in support of this second specific and particular charge and without any of the logical steps necessary to move from her first premise concerning the truth of Anne's story to this claim to knowledge about the actual composition and production of the text prior to 1992.
This is the leap into conviction "beyond a reasonable doubt" of an act of specific, deliberate, physical forgery that I have still seen no particular evidence to support.
I hope that makes certain differences clearer.
Thanks,
--John |
Author: Paul Begg
Thursday, 05 April 2001 - 11:57 am | | | Er, um, I’ve been busy and probably not paying attention, but where did MPD or any like argument creep into this discussion? I don’t recall anyone recently offering anything remotely like that in defence of a proposition. In fact, I don’t recall anyone recently suggesting that Maybrick could have been the ‘diary’ author. And whilst I am positive that John recognises the distinction between reasonable and unreasonable questioning, I’m not clear where the subject of unreasonable questioning entered his argument, which seems to me to have been a gentle general disagreement with Karoline’s reasoning. |
Author: Paul Begg
Thursday, 05 April 2001 - 12:14 pm | | Hello John
Thank you. I thought the point I'd made was a simple one, advanced not as a belief but as a proposition for consideration. It was that if Anne’s ‘in my family for years’ story was bogus, this would raise ethical questions about her behaviour but would not in itself be proof that she was the forger or even that she knew the ‘diary’ was a forgery. I appreciate your clarification. |
Author: John Omlor
Thursday, 05 April 2001 - 12:20 pm | | Hi Karoline,
We were writing simultaneously. You were responding to my post about investigations and vigilance and the maintenance of a constantly reinvigorating skepticism and I was responding to an earlier post of yours about Mike and Anne's involvement in the production of the diary.
Yes, I think we are not far off. My warning about the importance of keeping issues open for eternity -- since the state of knowledge is ever-changing and the rewriting of history is constantly occurring -- was a response to a rhetoric of "this issue is decided" that I found in your response to Richard.
But when you suggest that,
"It is entirely reasonable for us to ask for evidence to show that the earth goes round the sun. It's reasonable to question that evidence closely.
But it's not reasonable to employ spurious and unfalsifiable arguments to try and overturn that evidence in order to create or maintain a sterile debate."
then of course I agree with you completely, as long as we are willing to continue to redefine, as knowledge changes and as history -- like that of the Native American experience in this country, say -- is rewritten, what constitutes "spurious and unfalsifiable arguments." What would have been considered "spurious and unfalsifiable arguments" in the world of American History in 1910 or in Russian History in 1945 or in Chinese History in 1965 might not be considered "spurious and unfalsifiable arguments" about the history of texts and events there these days.
I also agree completely with what you say about what it seems justifiable to argue (concerning aliens, etc.) and to conclude. You then suggest that these arguments are for you similar to the one that suggests that Maybrick wrote the diary and had MPD, and that this is similarly bankrupt. Perhaps. Like you, I certainly have no doubt at the moment that this suggestion is false.
You then suggest, concerning this argument that,
"it lends itself easily to exploitation and can be employed, in the face of all reason and all respect for historical truth, for as long as anyone, with an interest in keeping a dead argument alive, might choose to do so."
And indeed it does. And indeed many such "bankrupt" arguments remain in this way and I think we have no choice, unfortunately, but to allow at least for their remaining (even as bankrupt), if only to make sure that we don't mistakenly banish one not so bankrupt argument with the others. This makes history more difficult and more frustrating, but it also makes it more careful and more adaptable and more likely to rewrite its mistakes and its unfortunate moments. Besides, as I suggested above, I think that often our re-examination of the cases against the obviously bankrupt arguments -- as in the case of the Holocaust deniers, for instance -- actually keeps our position strong and this is important since we know that the deniers will always return no matter what we do.
Finally, you ask me a very good question,
"John, I don't think this is the kind of questioning or the kind of enquiry that furthers human understanding, do you?"
Strangely, sometimes, I do. I am not trying to be difficult here, but just trying to remember the history of history. There are, there have been, rare moments, I think, when the impossible, the incredible, and the easily dismissed finally happen to become the necessary, the inevitable, the valuable and the documented. It takes great time and it always surprises everyone, but I am still not simply willing to dismiss all the currently, apparently insane alternatives in the name of some rather egocentric claim of "human reason." In fact, sometimes I think history, and art, and literature and culture actually advance "in the name of human unreason" as well as human reason and that this is not always a bad thing. But that's just me and I have long been in favor of a careful, studied, and patient re-examination of the history of "the principle of reason," in any case.
I do understand your point, though, about being clear concerning what constitutes reliable evidence in the immediate present and about considering that evidence and making rational judgments concerning what alternatives to discard. I just want to be very careful that in the name of this I don't accidentally discard something that might have later proved to be of significant value.
That is why I responded to your post to Richard the way I did and why I think we must always be willing to keep our ears open whenever we read and whenever we interpret and whenever we create meanings that are bound to exceed our own intentions.
-- John |
Author: Karoline L
Thursday, 05 April 2001 - 12:58 pm | | Paul, you wrote (to John)
Thank you. I thought the point I'd made was a simple one,advanced not as a belief but as a proposition forconsideration. It was that if (my empahasis) Anne’s ‘in my family for years’ story was bogus, this would raise ethical questionsabout her behaviour but would not in itself be proof thatshe was the forger or even that she knew the ‘diary’ was a forgery. I appreciate your clarification.
But actually, in defence of myself and the conclusions I drew from your original words, that wasn't what you said at all.
What you actually said was:
Anne’s ‘in thefamily for years’ story is an invention, but is it her invention or is it a story she believes because it was told
to her by someone she trusts (her father for example)?
Note you don't say "If it is an invention", as you now claim to have done, you said it "is an invention," with no qualifier applied at all.
So, I suggest it isn't too wrong of me to have taken you at your word and accepted that you believe Anne's story "is an invention" - though I apologise unreservedly and totally if I have offended you by doing so.
John,
an interesting post as usual. Yes, I think we are really mapping out agreed territory here!
best wishes
Karoline |
Author: Karoline L
Thursday, 05 April 2001 - 01:19 pm | | Paul writes:
"Er, um, I’ve been busy and probably not paying attention, but where did MPD or any like argument creep into this discussion? I don’t recall anyone recently offering anything remotely like that in defence of a proposition. In fact, I don’t recall anyone recently suggesting that Maybrick could have been the ‘diary’ author. And whilst I am positive that John recognises the distinction between reasonable and unreasonable questioning, I’m not clear where the subject of unreasonable questioning entered his argument, which seems to me to have been a gentle general disagreement with Karoline’s reasoning.
I do apologise for not making it clearer to everyone - I was replying to Richard's post wherein he argued that all the points in favor of Maybrick not being the author of the diary had been answered, though admittedly in what he termed "far-fetched" ways.
Oh gosh, is there really a "general disagreement" with my reasoning?
That's a slightly intimidating thought! Ihad hoped there were one or two here who rather saw things my way - are there not?
I shall feel very lonely if there aren't.
best wishes
Karoline |
Author: John Omlor
Thursday, 05 April 2001 - 01:37 pm | | Hi Karoline,
I think it is possible, even likely, that Paul meant "general" in the sense of you and I having a general disagreement about reasoning as opposed to you and I having a specific disagreement about reasoning. Not, as you read it, "general" in the sense of "we have here a general agreement" meaning nearly everyone agrees.
"General," that is, like vague, or "in general" -- not particular or specific.
Not "general" as in collective.
There is here an innocent multiplicity of possible meanings, I think, and our own reading is of course always informed by our own fears and desires. I know mine is. But I just wanted to try and clear up this little case of meaning exceeding intention before it becomes the cause for a greater misunderstanding.
Also, even if what you say about Paul's initial remark is true, I'm still not sure I understand how you move from even a thoroughly successful critique of Anne's family provenance story to any claim about her as possible forger. Surely, one can lie about a book and not have actually written the text of the book about which one is lying. And this possibility would remain as a similarly simple scenario.
Thanks,
--John (probably practicing his alliteration) |
Author: Caroline Anne Morris
Thursday, 05 April 2001 - 02:31 pm | | Hi All,
I think this is the point I've been trying to get at. The whole purpose of this debate, or so I thought, was to try to examine our modern suspects to find which ones actually knew the diary was created in modern times or were actually involved in its creation. We only need to tie one of these people with some hard and fast evidence to the document and we can all say ta ta and go down the pub.
Proving that Anne and Mike have lied about the diary after it came into their possession doesn't by itself, as Paul and John have said, do the job. It only shows that they are generally untrustworthy people. But that's not the purpose of us all being here.
If Anne told the truth in her July 1994 story, however unlikely that appears to be to nearly everyone here now, then clearly no one, not even Melvin, will be able to tie anyone, no matter how dishonest they have proved to be in the past, to anything.
All we've got is a likelihood that Anne's story in July 1994 was false, which then allows for the possibility that either Anne or Mike, or Billy, or Devereux or poor old citizen Kane knew the diary was a post-1987 fake, or were somehow involved in forging it.
So, instead of having a more or less cut and dried fact, based on the balance of probability, what we actually appear to have is a series of possibilities based on a likelihood.
Love,
Caz |
Author: John Omlor
Thursday, 05 April 2001 - 03:01 pm | | Hi Caroline,
I just want to echo your language here, because I like the clarity of the formulation.
You write:
"All we've got is a likelihood that Anne's story in July 1994 was false, which then allows for the possibility that either Anne or Mike, or Billy, or Devereux or poor old citizen Kane knew the diary was a post-1987 fake, or were somehow involved in forging it."
To be precise, we have
A: "a likelihood that Anne's story in July 1994 was false"
and
B: "either Anne or Mike, or Billy, or Devereux or poor old citizen Kane knew the diary was a post-1987 fake, or were somehow involved in forging it."
Indeed, as you say, A. "only allows for the possibility" of B.
A. does not imply B.
A. does not even directly suggest B.
A. certainly does not prove B. "beyond a reasonable doubt."
In fact, A. is not even evidence of B., in and of itself.
And this remains true even if A. is rewritten as a certainty "that Anne's story in July 1994 is false."
Of course, if A. is true, then Mike and Anne remain as suspects in the forgery, since they had the diary in 1992. But then they were suspects anyway, and we have actually gotten no closer to any real knowledge of the identities of the writers.
I know I am repeating what you were saying. I'm sorry about that, but this helped make it obvious in my own mind so I thought I'd share it with others who, being less dim or less slow than myself, perhaps didn't need the extra voice.
--John |
Author: Scott Nelson
Thursday, 05 April 2001 - 03:58 pm | | | Maybe there's more than one version of the diary involved in this brief little history (sorry to but in...) Hi Caz! |
Author: Richard P. Dewar
Thursday, 05 April 2001 - 04:01 pm | | Hi, all,
What muddles the waters in the Maybrick Diary debate is how proponents and critics sieze upon information that could be interpreted in more than one way as "proof" of their theory about the origins of the diary.
Paul Begg makes an excellent point in citing the fact that the text of the diary appeared on a word processor and how this fact is subject to varying interpretations.
Some conclude this proves that the diary was initially written on a word processor and later transcribed into the diary.
Others state that the diary text was later entered into the word processor.
Obviously, either scenario is plausible. While we all might have our reasoned opinions about the likely scenario, neither view is proven.
Unfortunately, all too often, some accept whatever interpretation conforms to their view of the diary's origins and discount any competing interpretation.
Historical facts are always subject to competing interpretations. And Karoline's suggestion that many advocates of particular theories have outlandish rationalizations for their points of view is undoubtedly true.
However, let me suggest, that in most points of historical agreement, it is not the rival advocates who settle established fact - they simply make the argument. What forms consensus, correctly or incorrectly, are the open-minded who are eventually swayed to one position or another.
Rich |
Author: Paul Begg
Thursday, 05 April 2001 - 04:10 pm | | Karoline
I was saying that John was disagreeing with your reasoning in a broad or general sense and I was wondering where the topic of reasonable and unreasonable questioning had sprung from as it didn’t seem to have any bearing on what John had been saying.
You are perfectly correct that I didn’t say ‘if’, but you were making the point that if the ‘diary’ cannot be an old forgery then Anne’s ‘in my family for years story’ is untrue and, as you expressed it, ‘her credibility is all but destroyed.’ My inelegantly expressed point was accepting your argument that the story was bogus, but was pointing out that it could be one she believed because it had been told to her by someone she trusted (in which case her credibility would not be shot to pieces). But this was said in the context of trying to identify the forger and I went on to state quite clearly: ‘If the process of elimination doesn’t focus on someone and also isolate the most pertinent questions that that person should be asked, we may eventually have to consider the possibility of an old forgery. We are a long way off that, in my opinion.’ I had also earlier stated: ‘IF it should by chance transpire that Anne's 'in the family for years' story is true, then - and only then - will it become necessary to consider 'old forgery'. These references to Anne’s ‘in the family for years’ story being true should have made it clear that I was leaving open the door to such a possibility and not stating as accepted fact that the story was bogus. I’m sorry if this confused you. |
Author: R.J. Palmer
Thursday, 05 April 2001 - 05:07 pm | | from Sunday Times November 13, 1994:
Producer backs Ripper film despite fake diary evidence
A FILM costing 20m pounds about the life of Jack the Ripper, which is to be made on fog shrouded sets in the East End of London next summer, is based on a diary first exposed as a fake by The Sunday Times last year.
Jack Nicholson or Sir Anthony Hopkins are both being considered to play the Ripper. Demi Moore or Jodie Foster will appear as his young American-born wife.
The film, which is being directed by William Friedkin of The Exorcist fame, was given the go-ahead after a new provenance for the diary was provided by Paul Feldman, a British video producer who had paid 150,000 pounds for the original film rights.
However, fresh scientific evidece obtained by The Sunday Times has established that the ink used to write the 9,000 word "confession" of the serial killer was not available until 1974.
The producers inisisted yesterday that they would still go ahead with the project. Richard Saperstein, executive vice-president of production at New Line Cinema which is owned by Ted Turner of CNN, said: "It doesn't matter if it is true or not. So long as it's a great story."
The diary purports to be the confession of James Maybrick, a Liverpool cotton merchant, to the murders of five prostitutes in the East End in 1888. In August 1889 Florence, his American-born wife, was convicted of poisoning him with arsenic.
Michael Barrett, a former scrap-metal dealer in Liverpool, had claimed that the 63-page diary was handed to him by a friend before he died.
Last year The Sunday Times, which had been offered serialisation rights for 75,000 pounds subjected the diary to forensic, handwriting and language tests. The handwriting did not match that of Maybrick and some of the expressions used were not in usage until this century. A test on the ink used suggested that it was of modern origin, but was inconclusive.
This summer Barrett finally admitted that he had forged the diary and named a shop where he had bought the ink he used.
However, in August Paul Feldman produced a tape recording of Anne Barrett, Michael's wife, in which she claimed that her father, William, had been given the diary in 1950. Feldman's research concluded that William was Florence Maybrick's illegitimate grandson.
In an effort to solve the mystery, The Sunday Times agreed to co-fund a new ink test with Melvin Harris, an investigative author who has written three books on the Ripper, and Nick Warren, a surgeon who publishes a magazine on Ripperology.
Analysis for Industry, a firm of independent consultants, conducted tests on dots of ink removed from the diary. The tests showed traces of chloroacetamide, a product first used in ink manufacture in 1974. The shop named by Barrett has confirmed that it sold a special ink containing chloroacetamide.
However, Feldman refuses to give way to the detractors. "I say categorically that this diary is genuine," he said.
Admittedly, the above doesn't have much to say about the current conversation, but it might shed some light on some issues raised in the past.
--Best wishes. RP |
Author: Karoline L
Thursday, 05 April 2001 - 06:17 pm | | Paul wrote to me:
You also seem to be self-contradictory, saying on the one hand that if you trawl back through the posts you will find’various arguments put forward to suggest why these facts
might not be quite as damning as they first seem’ yet in the following paragraph you say that there whilst ‘there might be reasons why these facts which seem at face value to sign
and seal the Barretts' involvement in the forgery’, you conclude that ‘no one has produced any’.
Hi Paul, let me try and explain.
I'm sure you agree that an "argument" need not necessarily contain any facts at all.
Take your suggestion that AG can't be assumed to have profited from the diary, because though we have proved she received regular royalty payments, we haven't proved she didn't give them all away again.
This is certainly an argument, and one you have put forward several times right here - yet it contains no facts to support it at all. It's merely your suggestion of what might be.
My impression is that most, if not all, the "arguments" invoked against the complicity of the Barretts or in favour of the 'old forgery' or whatever are similarly based on unsubstantiated hypothesised possibilites rather than on data.
Ergo, we have had many arguments - but few if any facts.
best wishes to you
Karoline |
Author: Karoline L
Thursday, 05 April 2001 - 06:28 pm | | Caz wrote:
"Balance of probability has a great place
in any argument, but only, in my opinion, if it is arrived at from facts and truths that are indeed beyond dispute (and not just our own individual perceptions of the truth)..."
I think this really goes without saying, I certainly intended it to be implicit in everything I said.
Caz wrote:
"why saddle our great-grandchildren with
history based on mere balance of probability if the answers are there for the taking in the here and now?"
Because as Paul has remarked so well, history can never be about those sort of perfectly certain answers.
All history is a balance of probability - which is why it can so easily become a sophistry and an evasion to invoke the absence of 'proof' as a reason for refusing to accept the overwhelming probabilities in any given situation.
Caz wrote:
"Thanks very much for giving us the information about payments to Anne before July 1994."
You are welcome. I believe there are more such details if they are needed - though I am not sure how many.
Caz wrote:
"Now you have kindly provided these details we can continue to wonder – if we so wish, and until we hear more - what the payments were
actually for."
There is no need to wonder about that.
The statement as printed and quoted above makes it clear they are royalty payments from the sale of the Diary, made separately to MB and AG via their agent Rupert Crew Ltd.
Caz wrote:
"... what share Anne was officially entitled to and if that is what she got, and even whether the amounts were enough to keep her in French knickers and cling-wrap."
She received more than £5000 between December 1993 and February 1994.
Thus she profited - considerably - from the sale of the diary.
Caz wrote:
"As I’ve said repeatedly, whether she has profited considerably, or very little, or has been giving the lot to the Knotty Ash Cats’ Home, all it shows is a potential motive for inventing
Formby/Yapp links, elaborate yarns about late 1960s discoveries of dusty old family articles in trunks and persuading her dying father to get in on the act..."
It shows that AG was profiting from the sale of the diary - which answers a question you and Paul have asked here many times.
Paul - you haven't commented on this latest discovery, does it change your views at all?
Caz wrote:
"Your point about the flat earth debate amused me. Were you joining in with that debate during your absence from these boards by any chance? I do wonder about such people, with the time and inclination to actually formulate an argument
against the one which says the earth is flat. I can see the fleeting entertainment value of listening in on such a debate, but no point whatsoever in joining in with the inmates if I thought there was no legitimate question being
debated. Again, there’s nowt so queer as folk."
No, I wasn't joining in a flat earth debate, I was rather ill with a liver virus.
Does the above passage of yours conform to your interpretation of the rules of mature, polite and helpful conversation?
Caz wrote:
"I’m simply suggesting that by continuing to ask more questions, while those who may be in a position to give us more of the answers are still alive, we may be able to shift that balance even further in the right direction."
Well, that depends on the kind of questions you mean.
Forgive me for suggesting this, but to date you seem to be asking the wrong things of the wrong people.
Instead of asking me or Peter or RJP to do impossible things like "prove" how AG spent the money she was sent (how on earth can anyone do that without unrestricted access to her bank account?) - I suggest you turn your attention to the central character in the drama - AG herself.
She is the one who needs to be questioned if you are really serious about looking for hard answers.
If people seriously think she might have given away all her royalty money then the only way to find out is to ask her, and politely request she substantiate any answer with account details.
If people seriously believe she might be telling the truth about the diary's origins in her family, then the only way to convince the more sceptical of us is to ask her if she can produce some evidence to back it up.
If probabilities aren't enough for you Caz, where can you go to find your proof but the horse's mouth?
best wishes
Karoline |
Author: R.J. Palmer
Thursday, 05 April 2001 - 07:02 pm | | Paul-- Hello. To answer your question from this morning. Yes, I think you & John have a solid point that Anne's actions after-the-fact don't suggest much (or anything) about Anne's 'complicity' in the creation of the diary. They might, however, suggest whether or not she is credible. Without raking Anne over the coals, or brow-beating a single-mother, etc., I think it is fair to say that, since her provenance story has changed, it is impossible for us to guess which story --or even whether if either story-- is true. Thus, we need to base our reasoning on the forensic & textual evidence. Which to me is completely compelling in suggesting that the diary is a recent forgery.
I also think it is entirely reasonable to say that we diary critics don't even need to entertain the idea that the diary is an old document unless some further information is provided by Anne or by Paul Feldman. If no information is forthcoming, then, I'm afraid, I'll have to call it a day. I have to agree with Karoline's general point that there is little reason in trying to travel from Point A to Point B by taking a long and rambling route through Helsinki & heaven-knows-where & back, nor in answering every strange objection before settling the matter of whether the Maybrick diary has any claim to being a historical document or not. Either there is some proof of its provenance or their isn't. If there isn't, then that, unfortunately, settles the matter.
Of course, that doesn't settle the matter of who forged it. I've said for sometime that I don't think this needs to be settled in public. It's unfortunate that certain unpleasant suggestions have to be made when examining the provenance, but this is largely due to the fact that the diary investigators allowed Mike & Anne to be part of the research teams, which has greatly muddied the waters. This isn't said to lay blame. People are people, and people tend to interact and make friendships. The spice of life, of course. Unfortunately, it made for rather a complex muddle in regards to the diary. When all is said and done, I still can say that though I disagree with Shirley and Keith and Caz's assessments, I think they're fine people and have a great deal to offer. I think Shirley is pretty brave to publically claim she believes the diary is genuine when all us skeptics are howling from the rooftops.
Yes, I have a couple of hunches. One of them is that there might well be some indication that Anne was never involved in the creation of the diary. I don't have any compelling evidence for this claim, and it doesn't mean that I don't agree with the main points made by Chris, Karoline, Peter, or others that have argued that this is a modern forgery, and have their own views. I think they've all made sound and completely reasonable arguments. I just tend to favor the idea that this was something Mike dragged home, ie., that Melvin's scenerio makes the most sense to me. I don't think Mike was ignorant of it being a forgery. Why? The Red diary. The fact that he immediately challenged the electricians that claimed to have found the diary at Battlecrease (suggesting that he knew the true origins of the diary). The Sphere guide. The research notes (which seem to avoid all the obvious sources that the forger would have used). A few other weak indications. Somewhat specious, yes, but convincing to me.
I think perhaps Caz & I demonstrate why the debate has reached a stalemate. I think Sugden's & Melvin's textual & forensic arguments are compelling and there is no reason even to further examine the diary unless the provenance story is given some back-up. Caz doesn't find any of the various scenerios compelling, and thinks there is little point in proceeding unless Melvin or Peter can nail the forgers to the wall. Thus, I think many of us on either side have reached the end of the line.
Best wishes,
RJ Palmer |
Author: Paul Begg
Thursday, 05 April 2001 - 07:47 pm | | Karoline
It must be clearly apparent to everyone that you have the greatest difficulty in understanding almost anything I say and unfortunately I am unable to express myself more clearly. I hope, therefore, that John Omlor will generously translate my meaning in the event that I don’t make myself understood this time round.
You said that by trawling back through the posts on these Boards you would find ‘arguments put forward to suggest why [the facts you listed] might not be quite as damning as they first seem’. But in the next paragraph you cautiously acknowledge that whilst there might be reasons why your facts don’t sign and seal the Barratts’ fate, no one has produced any. Now, if you say (as you said in your first paragraph)that you would find arguments, you can’t very well say in your second paragraph that no one has produced any. There is an obvious contradiction here. What I suspect you are saying in fact is that people have produced arguments but that you don’t accept them and therefore they don’t count, so no arguments have been advanced.
As I said, your emboldened statements may be facts but they are facts without meaning - that Mike Barrett had the text of the ‘diary’ on his word processor tells us nothing except that Mike Barrett had the text of the ‘diary’ on his word processor – and they don’t get a meaning until you attach one to them. The meaning you have attached to Mike Barrett having the text of the ‘diary’ on his word processor is that Mike Barrett used his word processor to compose the text of the ‘diary’.
But as far as I am aware you have no evidence to support this. It is, to use your words, an unsubstantiated hypothesised possibility. “It contains no facts to support it at all. It's merely your suggestion of what might be”. An alternative possibility is that Mike transcribed the ‘diary’ to the word processor. This, too, is an unsubstantiated hypothesised possibility. Thus we have two unsubstantiated hypothesised possibilities and the only difference between them is that you don’t favour one of them.
So, your argument really seems to boil down to all the arguments in favour of the Barretts having forged the ‘diary’ being facts while all the alternative interpretations are unsubstantiated hypothesised possibilities. |
Author: Richard P. Dewar
Thursday, 05 April 2001 - 08:48 pm | | Hi, Paul,
Thanks for expressing much more artfully and precisely the point I have been trying to make to Karoline.
With regard to all issues related to the Maybrick Diary, certain partisans see information in a light only favorable to their interpretation of the diary's origins.
Rather than any semblance of objectivity, some insist that any interpretation of facts supportive of their opinion is "truth" while any interpretation contrary to their opinion is unsubstantiated surmize.
An individual who is wedded to any particular theory is more likely to ignore or dismiss information that may undercut their theory - despite its potential validity.
The problem plaguing this discussion is that there are those who insist their opinion is true simply because it is more probable. In any form of research, that is a dangerous assumption that can prevent discovery of the real truth.
Thanks again,
Rich |
Author: R.J. Palmer
Thursday, 05 April 2001 - 11:04 pm | | Actually, I think Karoline makes a great deal of sense, and I'd like to give an opposing view.
I don't think she is saying anything particularly outlandish. Consider the following points.
1. We are faced with a spurious document. And it is a spurious document because it is not in James Maybrick's handwriting. (It is also not in the handwriting of the 'Dear Boss' writer and it has never been shown to ever have been in James Maybrick's possession). This is not being disputed.
2. We don't know where the document came from other than it was brought to London by Mike Barrett in 1992. This is not being disputed.
3. We also (sadly) cannot rely on the credibility of either Mike, nor Anne, because they both have changed their stories about the diary's provenance. This is in the public record. (Furthermore, in an objective sense, neither is a 'disinterested' witness, since they have both been shown to have been profitting from the diary).
Thus, with this information alone, (even without considering all the other doubts) Karoline sees no need to seriously consider the historic value of the Maybrick diary. It is a spurious document with a spurious provenance. (Jump in Karoline if you disagree).
So all the various ramblings about who might have had what motive or who might have said what to whom are futile and (to use Karoline's phrase) "unreasonable". History has no need to bother with the Maybrick document unless we first determine whether:
a) the diary is indeed in James Maybrick's handwriting and/or was in his possession.
or
b) Anne's provenance story is true and the diary is therefore an old document.
Yet since one 'entity' (for lack of better word--I don't wish to use the word 'side') seems to have no desire of meeting their obvious burden (ie., demonstrating that a or b is true) there is little reason to pretend that we are debating. I'm personally not really seeing that Karoline is so much disputing all the various arguments that are being made so much as she is pointing out that the entire debate itself is absurd and "unreasonable" unless certain fundamental burdens are met. We cannot consider metaphysical conceits at the price of forgetting the fundamental facts that: 1)the diary is not in James Maybrick's handwriting; 2) it has no provenance, and 3)the key players' statements cannot be considered due to a lack of credibility.
It seems ridiculous to me that we should first focus on some point such as 'what did Mike know?' (Oh, I admit, such questions make enjoyable discussions for the pub or for the fireside, but I imagine that they are rather nerve-wracking to Karoline, the historian).
Therefore, with due apologies to the opinions of the other posters, I think Karoline is in her right to sit in the shade and sip tea and scoff and claim that the diary is an obvious fake and that everyone else is merely rambling and that other 'entities' need to show her their proof that the Maybrick document is even remotely interesting to the serious historian.
Or so it seems to me.
RP |
Author: John Omlor
Thursday, 05 April 2001 - 11:58 pm | | Hi RJ,
Two quick notes before bedtime:
1. You write,
"I think Sugden's & Melvin's textual & forensic arguments are compelling and there is no reason even to further examine the diary unless the provenance story is given some back-up."
Unless a closer reading of it might continue to offer us insight into and evidence concerning the identities of its composer(s). It remains possible that continuing to look at the structure and the rhetoric and the writing and erasures and even the forensics might still, it seems to me, eventually get us closer to saying more things with confidence about who the actual writers might be and where and when the thing was composed. In fact, I suspect this, along with carefully investigating the movements of all involved between, say 1985 and 1990, might be a good start towards making some real progress here -- perhaps even more effective in the long run in terms of relevance to the scene of the diary's writing than examining the behavior of people after its publication.
2. You also write, concerning Karoline,
"I think Karoline is in her right to sit in the shade and sip tea and scoff and claim that the diary is an obvious fake..."
Yes, if that was all she was claiming. But she also claimed, concluded, in point of fact, much more than that and I'm afraid, much more than she had in any way logically established considering the historical premises that she offered.
She claimed at one point, without clarification, that "of course the fact that [Anne] seems to have made up this spurious story must increase the probability of her complicity in the fraud."
Why must A "increase the probability" of B here? This still needs some sort of logical explanation, especially if "fraud" here means, as she suggests in her post, original knowledge of or participation in the diary's creation.
She also claimed, to be precise, that she had arrived at a conclusion "beyond a reasonable doubt" that "Mike and AG were simply involved in constructing and placing the forgery themselves."
These are her exact words from an earlier post. She uses the word "constructing." This is not just a claim but a charge, and I still see no evidence to support this particular and specific charge. It is not a charge simply about reliability or about truthfulness or about provenance but about writing and creating this document, about "constructing" it, about forgery, and I have not yet heard her discuss why in particular the Barrett's are, as she says, "beyond a reasonable doubt" guilty of this specific act.
If she chooses to make the charge and let it linger in the air for dramatic effect, independent of specific material evidence, then I suspect her writing remains open to at least a certain set of critical readings.
But let me cite your entire sentence:
"Therefore, with due apologies to the opinions of the other posters, I think Karoline is in her right to sit in the shade and sip tea and scoff and claim that the diary is an obvious fake and that everyone else is merely rambling and that other 'entities' need to show her their proof that the Maybrick document is even remotely interesting to the serious historian."
Well, I'm not sure how I convince anyone that this document is "interesting." Even "remotely interesting." And if that is all that is at stake then I am perfectly happy to acknowledge her opinion that it is not. But she has also been saying that, interesting or not, she wishes to make claims, she has already made claims, concerning who wrote it. This is something I do find interesting and it is a set of speculations for which, I think, she needs to offer not necessarily proof but at least some physical or experiential evidence (not of duplicity or dissimulation, but of forgery), such as would be the responsibility of any serious historian, if they were interested. I still believe a good deal of care and a respect for thoroughness are required here.
But perhaps I, myself, am presuming too much about other readers' interest. I have gone on too long and it no doubt has waned by now.
In any case it's late and I'm just home from a fairly awful "musical" production of Shakespeare in the Park and I would now much rather be talking about Kafka.
'Night,
--John |
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