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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 12, 2001
Casebook Message Boards: The Diary of Jack the Ripper: General Discussion:
College course tackles the Diary:
Archive through April 12, 2001
Author: Peter R.A. Birchwood
Tuesday, 10 April 2001 - 01:50 pm |        | "We have the fact that the entire text of the forgery was on
MB's word processor(!) But there is no evidence of when the
material was put on the word processor and Mike said he
transcribed the ‘diary’ (and a copy of his transcription was
sent to me when I first saw the 'diary' in 1992)." Paul Begg 4/4/2001
Paul, do you still have a copy of that transcription? I can hardly believe that none of the researchers compared the transcript to the diary: it surely would have been an obvious move even if they had no doubts as to the reality of the thing.
I believe Shirley mentions in a couple of places the wp. Would it be too much to hope that a disk or paper copy is still in someones hands?
Gentlemen:
My point about the word processor may have been misunderstood. I can see now that it could have been phrased better.
I believe that it is much more likely that the diary was composed on the wp thus giving the author the opportunity to get the feel of his/her subject and to redraft as many times as necesary. The finished script would then be handwritten into the Album. Paul Begg has suggested a scenario where Anne dictated the words and Mike typed them into the wp. That might explain some problems but not all. Shirley mentions that it was Anne who transcribed Mike's notes on to the Amstrad and not the other way round. There is no indication from Doreen Montgomery, Robert Smith or Shirley Harrison that they were shown the Amstrad transcript of the diary. All the indications are that they read the diary itself. There seems no reason why the diary itself would be typed into the Amstrad when it was perfectly legible otherwise. |
Author: Caroline Anne Morris
Tuesday, 10 April 2001 - 01:54 pm | | Hi All,
I wonder if Peter or Karoline know if anything has been done to check if Gerard Kane had any connection with the Barretts prior to March 1992 (apart from the fact that Mike's drinking companion, Tony Devereux, had his will witnessed by Kane in 1979)?
Melvin Harris has stated that neither Anne nor Mike faked the diary, but were handlers and placers of a document forged by others (plural).
We don't know exactly how Melvin links the suspected composer, penman, and handlers and placers. All we appear to know for sure is that the composer's work ended up on Mike's word processor, and that the penman's finished product ended up with Mike to place. But Melvin has also stated that the penman would have been outside the composer's immediate circle. Mike and Anne would therefore have to be in touch somehow with either composer or penman, but not necessarily both.
But then let's go with the suspicion, for one moment, that Kane is our penman and Devereux our composer. Since we know that Devereux died in the summer of 1991, his composition was presumably on Mike's word processor by that time. But had Kane already done his bit by then? If so, and Anne and Mike really were a couple of 'broke scousers', behind with their mortgage payments and hell-bent on fraud, why on earth did they wait so long to place the thing? And if Kane hadn't yet got his writing materials together, has anyone found any witnesses to confirm that Kane and the Barretts were in touch, after Devereux died, and before March 1992?
I wonder how much thought Peter or Karoline have given to Melvin's statements of fact, and how they might work out in practice? I ask because I can't quite get my head round the logic involved. If Devereux was a red herring, we are still left looking for a connection - any connection - between the witness to his will in 1979, and the Barretts, more than a decade later - not to mention the original composer.
I'm still trying to establish why Peter and Karoline's arguments don't appear to take into account all of Melvin's very clear statements. I sense I will only hear the old argument again that says, "What does all this matter? It's academic because we know the diary is a modern fake, therefore one or all of these people must be involved. What does it matter who, or how many? Mike has confessed, so he is not worthy of our concern. Likewise Anne, who has been shown to be deceitful to her husband, and making money out of a diary she must know is forged. But let's not go down the road of public and individual blame."
Well, I'm sorry, but I think we ought to do better than that. If only one of these suspected forgers knows nothing about the diary's origins, how can any of us be content to leave it at that?
Love,
Caz |
Author: Caroline Anne Morris
Tuesday, 10 April 2001 - 01:59 pm | | Hi again all,
Does anyone know who produced the transcript of the diary, as it appears in Shirley's book?
Love,
Caz |
Author: Paul Begg
Tuesday, 10 April 2001 - 02:04 pm | | Hello Peter
There seems no reason why the diary itself would be typed into the Amstrad when it was perfectly legible otherwise.
So that Mike could carry a copy with him when doing his research and not risk having the diary lost, damaged or stolen. So that it could be sent through the post if necessary. So that Mike could annotate the transcript. So that it could be read without handling the 'diary' to much. So that a copy could be left with and agent or publisher... |
Author: Paul Begg
Tuesday, 10 April 2001 - 02:15 pm | | Do I have a copy of the transcript? Yes, I do - somewhere.
I was sent a transcript of the ‘diary’ along with a photocopy of the ‘diary’ itself. I assume the transcript is the one made by Mike. I don’t know of anyone else making one, apart from myself. Maybe Shirley could say where this transcript came from and confirm it was Mike’s or not. |
Author: Christopher T George
Tuesday, 10 April 2001 - 02:38 pm | | Hi Peter:
I certainly would be interested in seeing the further copies of Gerard Kane's handwriting that you have seen, if you could post them here. Is it Gerrard Kane or Gerard Kane? I note that we were spelling it "Gerard" earlier but perhaps you have ascertained that the correct spelling should be "Gerrard"?
I have said all along that the writing in the Diary is very idiosyncratic, and consistently so throughout, and I would think that whomever wrote the document used that handwriting on a daily basis. You said before that you did not think the "A. Graham" who in 1979 witnessed Tony Devereaux's will along with Kane was Anne Graham. Do you have confirmation that it was not Anne? It is interesting that on witnessing the will, Kane listed his occupation as "Cabinet Maker"--a trade that requires some artistry. Could such a person have thought that forging the Diary was an artistic project? "Am I not a clever fellow?" to quote James Maybrick. 
Chris George |
Author: Richard P. Dewar
Tuesday, 10 April 2001 - 02:47 pm | | Hi all,
I ask the same question I have in the past because no one who states it is "probable" that the diary was composed on the pc prior to transcription into the diary has yet given an answer.
Why is this most probable? Assuming that the diary was forged by whoever entered the data on the wp, why is it more likely it was put in the pc first? Isnt an equally plausible scenario, assuming for a moment that Mike did forge the diary, that he wanted to save the text of his fraud on his pc after he forged the diary?
It seems to me that Mike's claim that he transcribed the text of the diary into the pc, whether he was involved in the forgery or not, is as likely as that he wrote up the text in the pc prior to transcribing into the diary. Yet it seems that some formulate the latter as a more likely conclusion for no other reason than that it is the interpretation most favorable to their position.
As Karoline states, this may be a distinction without a difference. Yet to make a case built upon inference laid upon inference is not good methodology.
Hi Paul,
Thanks for clarifying what I wrote earlier. Indeed, I did not write or intend to suggest that Karoline has maintained here that all of the supporting points for her positions are established facts.
My only complaint has been when specific circumstances, subject to varyingly equally plausible interpretations, are described as more or less probable in order to conform with a more general theory. That, in my opinion, is bad methodology.
Thanks,
Rich |
Author: Paul Begg
Tuesday, 10 April 2001 - 03:08 pm | | Hi Rich
It is bad methodology, which is the point I think we have all been struggling to make in our individual ways. The problem seems to be that it is not accepted that the alternative interpretations are equally plausible. It isn't that the theory that Mike and Anne forged the 'diary' is wrong. It's that it is based on a very shaky foundation, and as John has repeatedly warned, we need to make a slow and careful assessment of the evidence. This has never been more important than it is now because if Anne does agree to be interviewed it will probably be a one-off chance and we need to know what questions to ask and how to ask them. |
Author: Karoline L
Tuesday, 10 April 2001 - 04:57 pm | | Richard Dewar wrote:
"I ask the same question I have in the past because no one
who states it is "probable" that the diary was composed on
the pc prior to transcription into the diary has yet given
an answer."
Why is this most probable?
Hello Richard
When MB was asked by Shirley Harrison if he had a word processor, he denied ever having owned one.
Yet all the while there was one in his lounge with a copy of the diary on it.
Now, does that sound like the behaviour of an innocent man?
Given this staring fact, and given the other numerous indicators that MB was involved with the forgery of this document - don't you think it's a reasonable probability to assume the diary got on his wp in a less than honest way for less than honest reasons?
best wishes
Karoline |
Author: Karoline L
Tuesday, 10 April 2001 - 05:05 pm | | Hi Chris -
Re. Kane's handwriting, I can confirm there is a larger sample now available - but I don't think it's appropriate for any of us to comment on it until it is in the public forum. It isn't in my possession and neither Peter nor I have the power to post it here. |
Author: Karoline L
Tuesday, 10 April 2001 - 05:11 pm | | Paul,
wouldn't it be a good idea to make your copy of the diary transcript available for research? Can you ascertain for certain that it did indeed come from MB's computer?
if it did then it's quite important for it to be compared in great detail with the MS.
How extraordinary if no one has ever done this!
best wishes
Karoline |
Author: John Omlor
Tuesday, 10 April 2001 - 06:02 pm | | Hi again, Karoline,
You write to Rich,
"Now, does that sound like the behaviour of an innocent man?
"Given this staring fact, and given the other numerous indicators that MB was involved with the forgery of this document - don't you think it's a reasonable probability to assume the diary got on his wp in a less than honest way for less than honest reasons?"
So far, so good, except for the fact that we still have very few simple, hard, material "indicators that Mike was involved in the forgery." In any case, Mike's behavior -- lying about his name and his word processor, etc. -- sound like the behavior of someone who is not innocent, not, that is, telling the truth, and no doubt for some important and telling reasons.
Now it becomes necessary to discover precisely why Mike is not telling the truth about these things.
Why, that is, would he lie about his name and about having a word processor with the diary text on it?
Unfortunately, your representation of these events which we all seem to acknowledge and your somewhat unspecified use of the terms "innocent" (innocent of which specific charge? lying? misrepresenting himself? or, and this is still the question, writing a forged diary?) and "less than honest" (less than honest about what? his name and how he got this text and whether he has another copy of the words on his word processor? or, and this is still the question, writing a forged diary?), leave open the possibility for confusion.
To be clear, what you have told us about what exactly happened is, I assume, true. But it is not yet linked directly, by any data or evidence, to the physical act of creating the diary, only to its placement and to the act of seeking to gain personal advantage using the diary, whether it was acquired or authored by its placer. Not linked yet, anyway. Your suggestion of complicity in the act of authorship therefore remains an inference.
Now if Mike's files on the machine can be examined for encrypted dates of revision, we might learn something about the diary's whereabouts before 1992 and about where and how it was revised. This would indeed be hard data which would make it more likely that Mike or someone with access to his machine was the forger.
But his lies to agents once he has the completed document in hand, as Paul has carefully shown above, might still be accounted for in other reasonable and likely ways that still raise serious ethical questions about Mike's intentions but do not serve as hard data or evidence in establishing the identity of just who wrote this thing or where or when it was written.
Of course, if Mr. Kane's handwriting does match the diary text and Mike has the words of the diary on the machine and Mike himself has no connection whatsoever to Mr. Kane prior to 1992, then we are in a mess of trouble if we still want to argue that Mike composed the text on his word processor but that Mr. Kane wrote those same words in this book. The establishment of a known direct connection between Kane and the Barrett's that Caroline called for would thus seem to be very important.
Unless it's not Mr. Kane's handwriting.
So, then, I guess we are saying so far that Mike originally composed the words of the diary on his word processor, but then someone else (neither him nor Anne, since their handwriting doesn't match, either) took the words from his word processor and transcribed them into the book and then gave it all back to Mike who then left the words on his word processor, even after he had the final copy in hand written in the hand of a mysterious and unidentified other person, and went to an agent with an assumed name and with lies about owning a word processor even though he knew that he had one on his desk, on which he had left the complete text of the forgery he was now knowingly carrying to an agent for the consideration of publication.
Yes, and you are saying that this scenario makes just as much sense, is, in fact even a "more likely" or "more probable" scenario than the one that suggests that Mike acquired the book from someone already composed; thought about what to do with it; typed the text into his word processor, as Paul suggests, to have a copy other than the original book available for any number of possible purposes including future mailings, annotations, to make copies to show agents, to preserve the original etc.; and then went off to the agent lying about his name and his word processor because he was not at all sure what the hell he was getting into and because he is in fact, as a person, perhaps "less than honest."
I'm not sure where our friend William of Ockham is these days, but I invite him to come on over and have a look at what seem to me both to be still unlikely, incomplete, fragmentary, utterly unestablished and still largely hypothetical scenarios.
I suspect he would advise us not yet to choose in favor of either one and to keep on reading.
--John |
Author: Richard P. Dewar
Tuesday, 10 April 2001 - 06:25 pm | | Hi Karoline,
You have not answered my question - it has nothing to do with the veracity of Mike or the provinence of the diary.
My question on this fine and limited point is: why is it more "probable" that the diary was copied from the pc rather than vice versa - whether Mike forged the diary or not?
If Mike forged the diary, it seems to me, it is equally likely that he wrote the text on the diary or pc first.
I see no reason to suggest it came on the pc first other than that it more strongly bolsters the theory that Mike forged the diary.
I recognize this is a small point. I am trying to show the larger error of interpreting all ambiguous data in this case in the most incriminating way in order to comport with any theory.
Perhaps you are aware of some other information that makes your scenario more probable. Thus far, I am unaware of it.
Rich |
Author: R.J. Palmer
Wednesday, 11 April 2001 - 01:22 am | | Karoline--You wrote:
'When MB was asked by Shirley Harrison if he had a word processor, he denied ever having owned one.
Yet all the while there was one in his lounge with a copy of the diary on it.
Now, does that sound like the behaviour of an innocent man?'
To which John responded: "To be clear, what you have told us about what exactly happened is, I assume, true. But it is not yet linked directly, by any data or evidence, to the physical act of creating the diary, only to its placement and to the act of seeking to gain personal advantage using the diary, whether it was acquired or authored by its placer."
John-- First of all, I doubt that a video tape of someone actually forging the diary exists, so we're going to have to interpret the evidence a little. And second, I don't follow your logic here, so please clue me in if I don't understand. How would lying about owning a word processor speak to 'the placement or to the act of seeking to gain personal advantage'? Isn't there a subtle strain of bias in your interpretation here? I do think I understand what you are trying to say, and, for the most part you have been pitching a fairly reasonable argument. But here I think you are sounding a false note, and have stretched the logic very nearly to the point of absurdity. If the diary had been composed by others --or if Mike had nicked it from Battlecrease, or if he had bought it in a pawnshop, or if he had found it under a cabbage leaf-- then surely its existance on the word processor would have been more or less LEGITIMATE, ie., it would NOT 'speak to the placement', and it would certainly not speak to the 'personal gain' and Mike would have had no need to lie about it. In other words, if Mike had come through the diary by "other means" then, naturally, Mike WOULD have put it on the Amstrad for the reason he had claimed: so he could study it easier! But this explanation came after the fact---after Mike was discovered. (By the way, Mike also hid the Amstrad & his research notes from Scotland Yard, at least according to Shirley). So I have to agree with Karoline, that it seems pretty commonsensical and obvious that Mike would have had no logical need to obscure the fact that he had transcribed the diary unless he believed it implicated him in the composing of the diary. And, obviously, word processors are used primarily for processing words. How does any of this 'speak to the placement' or 'to the personal gain'??
Now, in regards to Richard Dewar's discussion, I think it would be fairly true to say that (a)Mike transcribing the diary for reading and (b)Mike using the word processor for forging are fairly equal in probabiliy----but only if we ignored everything else we know (like the Red diary for instance). But certainly Mike lying about the diary doesn't even slightly gell with him transcribing it for reading. So isn't it fair to say that Karoline is the one weilding Occam/Ockham/Hokum's razor here?
Best wishes,
R.J. Palmer
PS. John--I also have a smallish problem with the original premise of your analysis. Your original point was that 'Once the diary is in the hands of Doreen Montgomery and from there ventures into the hands of publishers and agents and film producers and analysts, everything changes and people's motives and desires and interests and opportunities all begin to develop & transform'. I tend to think that this is more of an interpretation than the absolute, logical fact that you suggest that it is. People's motives and desires sometimes transform. Sometimes they do not transform. Sometimes things are exactly as they appear to be, and, in my experience, they are nearly always exactly as they appear to be. Of course I'm certainly not saying your comment isn't a valuable observation. In fact, I actually think it is an insightful observation, and one that should make us qualify and examine our views. But I just happen to think that it is too sweeping of a statement and that it is very fair and reasonable for Karoline and others to argue that in some cases --and even in most cases-- subsequent actions do mirror, expose, and illuminate previous motivations. The present illuminates the past, and the past influences the future, etc. etc. Indeed, if this wasn't the case, history would be meaningless. So, all in all, I feel that it is just too simplistic to argue that all subsequent actions have nothing to tell us about past actions, nor do they give us any clue --through charcter analysis if nothing else-- to the (eek that word again!) various 'probabilities' of the people involved in a forgery. Don't you think this is a fair point? Finally, it is also a little hard for me to believe that you are arguing from a strickly disinterested/logical view when it seemingly is only Karoline's or Peter's or my scenerios that are illogical or worthy of lengthy deconstruction or have been 'problematized' (to use your word) by the other side of the aisle, and those scenerios offered by Paul or Caz are said to be 'reasonable' (the word you use in your last post above) alternatives. But never (that I can remember) the other way around. Is this a fair point? Or am I misunderstanding you? I'm not trying to be combative; this is my impression, and I would honestly like to know how you feel about it.
Best wishes. |
Author: Richard P. Dewar
Wednesday, 11 April 2001 - 02:07 am | | Hi RJ,
If you look back at my argument, I have never said that the pc was equally probable in being used for describing or forging. To suggest that is to misrepresent what I have stated.
I was trying to make a narrower point than that. Karoline has suggested that it is "probable" that the text was "first" composed on the pc and then transcribed to the diary.
I have maintained, even accepting for the sake of argument that the pc was used as part of the fraud, that it is equally probable that the text first appeared in the diary or the pc. The only reason I can see that people assume that the text first appeared on the PC prior to being transcribed to the diary is because this scenario is more damning to Mike's story and less open to ambiguous interpretation.
I recognize this is a narrow point and that I am susceptable to the charge of quibbling. However, it is a methodological error to build a theory based upon inferences.
The inference that the text first appeared on the pc instead of the diary, whether the document was forged or not, indicates a bias on the part of the observer.
So I will ask again:
If Mike forged the diary, why is it more likely he wrote it initially on the pc and then copied it to the diary versus writing in the diary first and then copying it onto the pc?
I submit the only reason to believe the material appeared first on the pc and then on the diary, even if we assume Mike forged the diary, is that it is the most convenient interpretation to implicate Mike. It is not more probable.
If those who believe Mike forged the diary concede that he just as likely could have forged the diary and copied the text onto the pc afterward, it renders the entire speculation about the pc as interesting but moot.
Mike's untruths about the pc are important - but the fact that the text appears on the pc really tells us nothing.
Rich |
Author: Karoline L
Wednesday, 11 April 2001 - 03:26 am | | Richard Dewar wrote:
If Mike forged the diary, why is it more likely he wrote it initially on the pc and then copied it to the diary versus writing in the diary first and then copying it onto the pc?
Okay, Rich -
Put yourself in the position of our forger.
You have only one old 'diary'. If you screw up with it, you might find it difficult and expensive to get a replacement. And you are on a tight budget.
Are you going to compose your text cold - straight onto its pages? (just trust to luck and correcting fluid if you get into trouble?)
Or are you going to compose it somewhere else first, then, when you are satisfied you have it right, transfer the text into the sacred old photo album?
Okay -
now suppose that you have an Amstrad word processor in your lounge.
Can you see where this is going......?
best wishes
Karoline |
Author: Karoline L
Wednesday, 11 April 2001 - 04:18 am | | Paul wrote:
...perhaps you would care to demonstrate where in this recent lengthy exchange a "speculative hypothesis devoid of data" has been seriously advanced other than by way of illustration and also substantiate your conclusion that this is done to foster ‘almost limitless guesswork’?"
Hi Paul,
Well, I don't really want to get embroiled in this side issue, but since you have asked me....
1.On these boards a few days ago, it was argued by one or two people here that we could not conclude that AG had profited from the diary - even though there was a royalty payment clearly stating she was receiving money - because she might subsequently have given all that money away.
This is a completely speculative hypothesis devoid of data.
Regrettably, this fact did not prevent one or two people claiming that Peter Birchwood should prove it didn't happen before anyone could conclude AG profited from the diary.
(an identical argument has today been put forward yet again by Shirley Harrison on the Maybrick Diary thread)
2. Recently it was argued that the diary could have been forged by a student for a prank and accidentally foisted onto the trusting Barretts who at first believed it genuine. Some considerable discussion ensued about this.
There is no evidence anywhere to support this hypothesis - which is therefore speculative and devoid of data
3.Quite recently on these boards you responded to my suggestion that AG had invented her 'in the family for years' story, by arguing that, even though there is no shred of evidence to support her story, it still might have some truth in it and be the 'kernel' of an old and therefore valuable family legend.
Not only is this a purely speculative hypothesis devoid of any data - it is an hypothesis that is directly refuted by much of the hard evidence surrounding the diary which points to its creation after 1987.
These are three recent examples - if we go further back:
a)On these boards in 1998, it was argued that the reason the writing in the the forged diary was completely unlike Maybrick's own hand, could have been because Maybrick had multiple personality disorder.
This is a speculative hypothesis devoid of and data. In fact it is a piece of crapulous nonsense of the first and ripest order. Yet it was discussed here on these boards with all the weight and gravitas accorded to a realistic possibility.
b)Similarly, on these boards from about 1998 and up to the present, it has been argued that the reference in the diary to the Poste House (a Liverpool pub that didn't have that name until modern times) doesn't prove the document a modern forgery, because - (what else?) - there could have been another Poste House somewhere in England in Maybrick's time, and he could be referring to that.
This is a purely speculative hypothesis devoid of all data and much sense.
Yet, as with the 'profit motive' it was even seriously argued (by you amongst others I think), that until someone had proved such an establishment didn't exist, we had to assume one might have done and give the document the benefit of the doubt!
I won't go any further into the previous claim by one contributor here to have 'proved' the diary was forged by the author of Diary of a Nobody - however I do think it's reasonable to point out, given the nature of your question, that this would meet most people's definition of an hypothesis devoid of data.
Now Paul, I don't really want to go further down this road, which is slightly divergent from the one we are supposed to be treading - so can we take the point as made?
best wishes
Karoline |
Author: Richard P. Dewar
Wednesday, 11 April 2001 - 04:48 am | | Hi Karoline,
Let me put to you a counter theory that is just as plausible as your's.
1. The forger researches the case by reading books and articles - making notes on paper
2. From these paper notes the forger writes the text of the diary
3. Finally, Mike transcribes the text of the diary onto his pc in the event he loses possession of the diary
The hypothesis I have forwarded is just as "probable" as your's. The only difference is that it doesnt necessarily implicate Mike in the forgery. It doesnt exclude him either.
In fact, the theory I have advanced seems to be more in accordance with the theory that I believe has been advanced by Melvyn Harris who claims to have inside information about the provinence of the diary - that Mike and Anne were not the forgers but placers.
Of course this is all speculation. And that is my point. Your view of the events is consistent with your theory, and it is plausible, but it is by no means "probable."
Based on the information available now, as Paul has stated, the fact that the text of the diary also appears on Mike's pc tells us nothing about which came first.
Rich |
Author: Paul Begg
Wednesday, 11 April 2001 - 06:16 am | | Hello Rich
Q: Is Mike Barrett guilty of forging the 'diary'?
A: Yes.
Q: Why?
A: Because he had the text of the 'diary' on his word-procesor.
Q: Couldn't this be explained by Mike not having composed the 'diary' but having transcribed it to his word processor to obtain a print out to give to prospective publishers?
A: Yes.
Q: So why is it more probable that it's there because Mike composed the 'diary' on his word processor?
A: Because he did.
Q: I see. On what evidence do you base this conclusion that Mike composed the 'diary'?
A: Because the text of the 'diary' is on his word processor.
Q: Couldn't this be.... |
Author: Caroline Anne Morris
Wednesday, 11 April 2001 - 06:35 am | | Hi Rich,
You make a very good point, and one which Karoline has consistently failed to address, regarding Melvin's information about the forgers and the placers. RJ has suggested that John is showing bias in his evaluation of the posts made by certain individuals. What I have noticed is something else. The staunch modern hoax theorists, RJ, Karoline and Peter, have all been completely ignoring Melvin's information, that neither Anne nor Mike faked the diary, and continue to wade in with their various 'probabilty' arguments for Mike and Anne having researched, composed, dictated, typed, retyped or handwritten the diary text. There can only be one explanation for this - they must believe that Melvin's information is worthless. How else could it fail to have any place in their 'balance of probabilities'? Chris George, I believe, is the one exception who doesn't conform to this "Melvin is right and doesn't have to pass on Shirley's letter" stance, while arguing that Melvin is in fact 'most probably' wrong! Bizarre, isn't it?
Love,
Caz |
Author: Caroline Anne Morris
Wednesday, 11 April 2001 - 06:40 am | | Hi Karoline,
You wrote:
I won't go any further into the previous claim by one contributor here to have 'proved' the diary was forged by the author of Diary of a Nobody - however I do think it's reasonable to point out, given the nature of your question, that this would meet most people's definition of an hypothesis devoid of data.
Ah, but who was the author? Have you managed to establish something I haven’t – which of the brothers actually composed this Diary? 
If, in my early enthusiasm, some two years ago now, I truly gave the impression that I’d actually managed to ‘prove’ anything, then I can only apologise. But since everyone else got the picture a very long time ago, I can only put it down to the same confusion you display when trying to make sense out of Paul’s very simple posts, with which my O level in English Language copes more than adequately (sorry Paul ).
But, since we are now in the realms of ancient history, even though you say that you don't really want to get embroiled in this side issue, and Paul was only asking you for examples from this recent lengthy exchange (is this down to your confusion over Paul’s writing again, or over what it is you really really do want to get embroiled in?), what about the very definite and unambiguous claim you made some two years ago, that I was sending you obscene private e-mails? I do think it's reasonable to point out, given the nature of such a claim, and the total absence of any retraction or apology, despite the fact that you knew the claim to be bogus, that this would meet most people's definition of an accusation devoid of data and decency.
Caz |
Author: Joseph
Wednesday, 11 April 2001 - 07:49 am | | Hello R.J.,
I've been observing some odd, yet interesting behavior here over the last few weeks or so, i.e. whenever Mr. Omlor addresses a post to Mrs. Leach involving critical thinking or conclusion support issues, she never wants to answer his post. Apparently, the responsibility always falls to you, or some other individual, to address the weightier issues raised by Mr. Omlor. Is this done by agreement? That would be unfortunate, because this arrangement makes it appear as if Mrs. Leach doesn't have the intellectual capacity to understand or respond to Mr. Omlor's statements, and you have to step in and carry the ball for her. I don't think that's fair to either party, or the Casebook readership in general; we want to know what Mrs. Leach is thinking on these subjects; after all, they are addressed to her.
I believe a wide majority of readers, including myself, share an interest in her response to the deeper, more intellectual thought organization issues, that Mr. Omlor raises with her; perhaps you might allow Mrs. Leach the primary response at the next opportunity.
Thanks for your time. |
Author: Caroline Anne Morris
Wednesday, 11 April 2001 - 07:49 am | | Hi Peter,
I’m surprised that Keith’s message to you over on The Maybrick Diary boards had to be brought to your attention, since you posted there yourself, the very next day. Wouldn’t it be a good idea in future, from your own point of view, to read at least a few of the directly preceding posts to any topic before adding to them yourself?
You have asked Keith to publish full details of the correspondence between you – highlighting both your suposed [sic] ‘innuendo’ and your supposed ‘hypocrisy’
If Keith declines to do this, you expect a public apology for his extreme and damaging words.
Well, you seem to be taking it for granted that Keith, who is not on the internet, will be in a position to agree to your request or decline to do so. I am gratified that you have so much faith in my trustworthiness in acting as your go-between in this matter, and passing on your message to Keith in the normal way. I wonder, however, what your reaction would be, if I told you I wasn’t prepared to play ball this time and failed to pass on your message promptly, if at all? You would then have good reason to accuse me of being untrustworthy, confirming what you have suspected all along, wouldn’t you? My non-co-operation would certainly be taken for deliberate and unreasonable obstruction, wouldn’t it?
So let’s see if we can make a deal here. I will be passing on your message to Keith, for which I do not require any acknowledgement or thanks from you for so doing. It’s all part of the service. That’s unconditional – I won’t let either of you down (even though I just forked out another £25 for printer ink at Dixons.) But what I would appreciate, in return, if it isn’t too much trouble, is if you will do me the simple courtesy of explaining to me here (Caz will do, if you are stuck for a name to use) why you think Melvin is acting reasonably if he still hasn’t passed Shirley’s letter on to the newspaper editor. I believe she even provided the postage for him.
Thanking you in anticipation, Peter.
Love,
Caz |
Author: Paul Begg
Wednesday, 11 April 2001 - 08:25 am | | Dear Karoline
1.On these boards a few days ago, it was argued by one or two people here that we could not conclude that AG had profited from the diary -even though there was a royalty payment clearly stating she was receiving money - because she might subsequently have given all that money away. This is a completely speculative hypothesis devoid of data. Regrettably, this fact did not prevent one or two people claiming that Peter Birchwood should prove it didn't happen before anyone could conclude AG profited from the diary.
I’m sure you can appreciate that it would help everyone if you accurately reported the actual argument being made, the argument in this case not being the rather silly one that Anne 'might subsequently have given all that money away’ but the altogether more serious and rational one that Anne might have given the money to Mike, whose money it was.
This argument was advanced because the December 1993 cheque appeared to have been for a full 50% share made out to Anne and which suggested that Anne had been paid a cheque that included Mike’s 25% as well as her own. Peter Birchwood commented on this anomaly several times and asked why. In an effort to explain why – and to also demonstrate that Anne need not have pocketed any money herself - it was suggested that Anne was paid the money because she had a bank account and Mike did not. This suggestion was based on the fact that Anne had had to pay for the red diary because Mike did not have a bank account from which he could draw payment himself.
Peter then pointed out that Mike had opened a bank account of his own a few months earlier. This still did not explain why a cheque for a full 50% share should have been paid to Anne. One explanation was that it was paid to Anne because the person who paid the cheque did not know that Mike had a bank account. How could this be? Well, it could be because when the publishing contract was drawn up Mike did not have a bank account (which apparently he didn’t) and because it was agreed that payment would be made to Anne, who did have a bank account. If Mike subsequently opened a bank account, which he in fact did do a few months before December 1993, and did not inform the literary agent so that the accounting records could be updated, then a subsequent cheque could also have been issued to Anne, which the December cheque for 50% look like being what happened.
Now, this is a perfectly reasonable suggestion advanced to explain an anomaly in the evidence (namely Anne being paid a full 50%), was based on a fact-based indication that Mike did not have a bank account, and offered an acceptable hypothesis based on known publishing practice. Hardly a suggestion plucked out of thin air for no purpose and offered up devoid of data.
2. Recently it was argued that the diary could have been forged by a student for a prank and accidentally foisted onto the trusting Barretts who at first believed it genuine. Some considerable discussion ensued about this. There is no evidence anywhere to support this hypothesis - which is therefore speculative and devoid of data.
John Omlor has already explained that his student prank suggestion was by way of illustration, but I’ll let him explain it again.
3.Quite recently on these boards you responded to my suggestion that AG had invented her 'in the family for years' story, by arguing that, even though there is no shred of evidence to support her story, it still might have some truth in it and be the 'kernel' of an old and therefore valuable family legend. Not only is this a purely speculative hypothesis devoid of any data - it is an hypothesis that is directly refuted by much of the hard evidence surrounding the diary which points to its creation after 1987.
Again, this is not an accurate representation of the argument. Your suggestion was not that Anne had invented her ‘in my family for years’ story but that the invention of this story suggested that she was party to forging the ‘diary’. I disagreed. As did John Omlor, who explained at such considerable length and in such detail why your reasoning did not stand up that I am frankly surprised to find you making this point. I’m sorry, but I really can’t be bothered to summarise all that was said in order to clarify something that on past evidence you will probably garble when repeating. If you return to the posts on this Board from my post of Saturday, April 07, 2001 - 05:37 am onwards you can re-read what was in fact being said. The introduction to the argument was begun with the following clear and, I think, precise accounting: “My opinion is that even if we investigate Anne’s ‘in my family for years’ story and prove it to be hogwash, this does not mean that she is the forger or even increase the probability that she is the forger. Anne could have lied for many reasons, not the least of them being the temptation of a lucrative film deal proposed by Feldman. As you have said, Anne lying would raise ethical questions, but would not make her the forger. I feel that alternative explanations for her story should be considered and be examined, but, as Rich has observed, there seems to be a rigid opposition to doing this from those who take the view that the provenance story is a lie, Anne is a liar, Anne is therefore more probably the forger. This does seem like common sense and it may even prove to be true, but it isn’t a logically progressive argument nor one that the cautious historian would be wise to follow. In fact, not only would proving Anne’s provenance story hogwash not only not make Anne the forger or bring us any nearer to knowing who the forger was, it may not even prove Anne’s ‘in my family for years’ story untrue.”
(a)On these boards in 1998, it was argued that the reason the writing in the the forged diary was completely unlike Maybrick's own hand, could have been because Maybrick had multiple personality disorder. This is a speculative hypothesis devoid of and data. In fact it is a piece of crapulous nonsense of the first and ripest order. Yet it was discussed here on these boards with all the weight and gravitas accorded to a realistic possibility.
Who suggested and supported this? Please cite the post.
(b)Similarly, on these boards from about 1998 and up to the present, it has been argued that the reference in the diary to the Poste House (a Liverpool pub that didn't have that name until modern times) doesn't prove the document a modern forgery, because - (what else?) - there could have been another Poste House somewhere in England in Maybrick's time, and he could be referring to that. This is a purely speculative hypothesis devoid of all data and much sense.
It has never to my knowledge been suggested that there could have been another Poste House somewhere in England in Maybrick's time, and he could be referring to that. If yhis isn't another misrepresentation by you of the argument below, please accept my genuine apologies for suggesting otherwise and be kind enough to support your argument by citing the posts in which this suggestion has been advanced.
A post house was an inn, hotel, or other location where post was left for collection and sometimes where travellers could rest and take refreshment. Although these establishments had their own name, such as ‘The Plough’. ‘The George’, ‘The Blue Angel’, they were also referred to as ‘the post house’. Now, it has been argued (by me) that Liverpool – not some nebulous place somewhere in England - would have had a post house (and probably had several) in 1888/9 and anyone writing at that time could and probably would have colloquially referred to the establishment as ‘the post house’. This isn’t a fact, but it isn’t entirely speculative either. It is an extremely reasonable deduction based on a knowledge of Victorian England, the postal service as it existed, a reading of Charles Dickens, who mentions such staging places several times, the fact that I have enjoyed a fair few pints of ale in such establishments as survive and that one is located opposite my home.
So to summarise this argument ‘devoid of data’: all major and many minor cities and towns had post houses and post houses also existed along the routes between major cities and towns; Liverpool, like London, would have had one or more post houses; post houses were called post houses even though they had their own names; someone writing in 1888/89 (or even someone writing post-87 and citing a post house of 1889 vintage) could have referred to ‘the post house’ or even ‘the Post House’ and not have meant the modern pub. Hardly an argument devoid of data. Rather chock full of the stuff.
Furthermore, the point I have repeatedly tried to make is that in all the argument about whether the diarist meant a Post House or the modern pub called Poste House, what is lost is the fact that the spelling, as I understand it, would not have been with an ‘e’; the ‘e’ is a recent affectation designed to given something a spurious antiquity and may in itself be a greater clue to the ‘diary’ being of late composition than any comparisons with modern pubs. But be that as it may, not only is the argument not devoid of data and not, in my opinion, devoid ‘of much sense’, it is also not the argument you have reported.
Yet, as with the 'profit motive' it was even seriously argued (by you amongst others I think), that until someone had proved such an establishment didn't exist, we had to assume one might have done and give the document the benefit of the doubt!
I don’t know about giving the document the benefit of the doubt, but if you are going to argue that there wasn’t a post house in 1889/90 that the diarist could have been referring to, it seems to me that it would be a good idea to first find out whether or not this was the case. After all, if there turned out to be a post house slap bang in the middle of Whitechapel, Liverpool, which the diarist, be he post-87 forger or not, was referring to, your argument tends to join the pigeons out the window.
I won't go any further into the previous claim by one contributor here to have 'proved' the diary was forged by the author of Diary of a Nobody - however I do think it's reasonable to point out, given the nature of your question, that this would meet most people's definition of an hypothesis devoid of data.
Jolly good. It’s regrettable that you chose to mention it at all.
Now Paul, I don't really want to go further down this road, which is slightly divergent from the one we are supposed to be treading - so can we take the point as made?
Now Karoline, this road is the one you introduced. If you recall, you reappeared on these boards to dismiss a hypothesis as a surreal wriggle. You are the person who maintained that eight facts as near as dammit proved Mike and Anne’s guilt. You are the person who variously claimed that no alternative suggestions had been offered, that offered alternative suggestions were the equivalent to Elvis is alive and well in Bhutan, that sensible suggestions were offered but without supportive data. You are the person who had made a large number of silly comparisons to diminish otherwise reasonable suggestions and who has misrepresented arguments and, incidentally, repeatedly attributed to me statements I never made (what did I say thatencouraged you to think I was involved in the Friedkin movie?). I sincerely and wholeheartedly agree that this road most definitely and absolutely is not the one we should be treading and it is a road on which I have already wasted far, far too much time, but it’s a road we’re on because you put us on it. Furthermore, it is not possible to get on any other road with you while you unfairly reject the validity of alternative points of view and misrepresent them when you report them, I’m afraid that the answer to your question is no, we very definitely cannot take the point as made. The point is wrong.
If you sincerely do want to debate this issue sensibly and help progress our overall understanding, then may I seriously suggest that we set aside all the foregoing posts and assess the information without pre-conceived conclusions in mind. Most importantly, if you disagree with an argument, state why you disagree with it - give reasons. Why not start by answering Rich? He has fairly asked you a very simple question: why is it more reasonable to suppose that Mike composed the ‘diary’ on his word processor than it is to suppose that he transcribed the ‘diary’ for some other purpose? Or answer Caz’s question about how Mike and Anne simply being placers, as argued by Melvin Harris, conforms with your idea that Mike composed the ‘diary’ on his word processor. I mean, we have a small but interesting accumulation of data here to suggest that Mike didn’t forge the ‘diary’ but was the unwitting patsy of those who did, and if Mike genuinely didn’t know the ‘diary’ was a forgery but was just given the thing to ‘place’, then you do have to explain how the text got on his word processor, don’t you? |
Author: John Omlor
Wednesday, 11 April 2001 - 09:32 am | | Hi RJ,
You make several fine points, and I will try and clarify my own position as succinctly as possible:
To begin with, you write:
"First of all, I doubt that a video tape of someone actually forging the diary exists, so we're going to have to interpret the evidence a little."
Yes, I am only asking that we continue to note the difference between the "evidence" and the "interpretation." I'm not sure this difference has always and in each case rigorously been made explicit and I think it needs to be in the interest of a fair investigation and in the interest of justice.
Then you read and ask:
"How would lying about owning a word processor speak to 'the placement or to the act of seeking to gain personal advantage'?"
Indeed, it doesn't, necessarily. As an act, it might speak to any number of things including simply lying as a pathetic initial attempt to stay out of a mess Mike did not understand or simply because his first impulse, when approaching Doreen with this strange document and a vague story about a mate in the pub, a story that perhaps even he thought sounded cheesy, was to lie. I don't know. I was merely responding to the idea that lying about owning the word processor might at least speak to the fact that the diary text was on it and that, as Karoline was suggesting, this somehow implied that Mike must have composed the diary rather than transcribed it. Honestly, I'm still not sure myself that I see exactly why Mike's lie necessarily implies one of these choices over the other. In fact, if he did compose the text on the word processor, then had someone else transcribe it into a book and give both the book and the files or word processor back to him, and he then carried the finished, final volume to the agent, I'm not at all sure why he would do that having left the complete files (of the very book he was now carrying to the agents) intact and still on his word processor, knowing he was about to submit a forgery which he had written. But maybe I'm not understanding your question.
You go on:
"If the diary had been composed by others -- or if Mike had nicked it from Battlecrease, or if he had bought it in a pawnshop, or if he had found it under a cabbage leaf -- then surely its existance on the word processor would have been more or less LEGITIMATE, ie., it would NOT 'speak to the placement', and it would certainly not speak to the 'personal gain' and Mike would have had no need to lie about it."
Ah. I see where you are going. Yes, I agree. But of course, saying Mike would have "no need" to lie about it is not at all the same as saying that Mike wouldn't have lied about it. From what I have read, this is not splitting hairs or stretching logic in the case of Mike and his behavior even when he is apparently not guilty of things. Mike himself might have had any number of what he thought were wise personal reasons for choosing at first his little cloak and dagger scenario when he approached Doreen, even if he knew the text on the word processor was typed by him. Of course, on the other hand, if he did compose the diary, then he might have decided to leave it on the word processor in case he somehow later lost the book, I suppose, so he could get another forgery produced. Otherwise, if he did compose it, why leave it there for all to eventually see? You are not suggesting, I trust, that perhaps he was one step ahead of us. If you believe that he composed the diary on the word processor and left the text there, you are not also saying that perhaps he figured that this would make him "look" innocent, because it made him look so guilty, that is, he left it there because no one would believe that he would do such a thing? Or perhaps he had already figured he could say that he wrote it there after he found the diary, for research purposes? Did he know whether the files could be dated? Or did he just never assume anyone would look? Or that his feeble attempts to hide it would be sufficient and that hiding it was somehow easier than simply trashing either the files or the machine. Again, I don't know.
My only argument remains that the many ways of reading the contexts and the possibilities behind Mike's lies help demonstrate that in and of themselves they are not yet "hard physical and material evidence" of forgery.
I am not asking for any videotapes, by the way, but material evidence or witness testimony concerning the whereabouts and actions of any and all involved before 1992 might at least help.
Finally you conclude with Karoline,
"it seems pretty commonsensical and obvious that Mike would have had no logical need to obscure the fact that he had transcribed the diary unless he believed it implicated him in the composing of the diary. And, obviously, word processors are used primarily for processing words. How does any of this 'speak to the placement' or 'to the personal gain'??"
Well, it doesn't necessarily. Unless we interpret that data and suggest his leaving it there and lying about it is evidence of his guilt as a forger, as Karoline is suggesting, and then I suppose it does. Or it does if we interpret the data and suggest that the text's appearance there is an indication that Mike had personal, commercial plans for this thing whether or not he wrote it and that as part of these plans he chose to hide this "other" copy of the diary text from all involved. Or that Mike lied becasue he naively wanted to minimize the appearance of his physical involvement with this text, either because he wrote it or because he had doubts about its authenticity but wanted to profit from it and wanted to keep the possibility of its authenticity alive as long as possible and decided that staying as far away from the text's traces of origin as possible would help him do this.
In the end, I have no idea about any of these possibilities. But I think that as they multiply they do begin to make clear why it might be dangerous to conclude, based on Mike's behavior once the diary is in his hand, anything too certain about Mike's role in either researching or composing the document before this. That's the point here, I guess. Yes, interpretations are necessary, but first we ought to have a scenario that is at least accompanied by physical or material or at least testimonial first hand evidence concerning actions during the time of composition before we make conclusions about the actual scene of composition and not about deceitful strategies and lies told after dissemination.
You write, and I cite again:
"Mike would have had no logical need to obscure the fact that he had transcribed the diary unless he believed it implicated him in the composing of the diary."
Perhaps, and he might still lie. Mike, for instance, would seem to have no need, if he composed the diary, to leave it on his word processor once he had the bound volume, the forgery, in his hand and had taken it to Doreen. But there it is. Whichever is the case -- Mike lied about it even though he did not write the thing and therefore didn't have to lie or Mike left the composed lines on the word processor even though he didn't have to once he had the completed forgery and knew the file could only get him into trouble -- whichever it is, Mike seems to have behaved in a way that neither of us apparently can explain in terms of common sense behavior. I am not surprised at this, of course, but I am not prepared, therefore, to draw any conclusions about guilt or innocence or complicity just yet. I suspect you are.
Finally, you ask:
"So isn't it fair to say that Karoline is the one weilding Occam/Ockham/Hokum's razor here?"
Nope. So far it seems both accounts are pretty much fragmentary, speculative, incomplete and unbelievable, and I suspect that Ockham would be hard pressed to decide.
I do want to again remind everyone though, that Ockham's razor is a philosophical fallacy that very often in the history of thinking about behavior and thinking about thinking has not worked and does not work at all (again, see for instance Luther's use of it leading him to some unfortunate and dangerous conclusions about Jews or Kant's demonstration of why it leads readers of Hume to miss productive avenues of investigation and response). I am willing to play with it here for the fun of the discussion, but it tells us nothing, in fact either logically or necessarily about what actually happened. We all know this already, right?
But, RJ, on to your PS, which I think is your strongest point and with which I, in part agree.
You write:
Your original point was that 'Once the diary is in the hands of Doreen Montgomery and from there ventures into the hands of publishers and agents and film producers and analysts, everything changes and people's motives and desires and interests and opportunities all begin to develop & transform'. I tend to think that this is more of an interpretation than the absolute, logical fact that you suggest that it is. People's motives and desires sometimes transform. Sometimes they do not transform.
Yes, I will agree with you here that there might in fact be cases where the make up of peoples' interest, desires and motives before the fact of publication might be much the same as it is after publication. But then, in our case, an unpredictable set of circumstances would begin to occur. The various different and uncontrollable public and expert receptions of the diary would take place and I guess what I was suggesting was that this would have to change people desires, motives, and interest, or at least that people would have to begin to adapt their own desires, motives, interests in response to the reception and the reactions and the consequences of those receptions and reactions for the future of the diary as a project or a set of projects. I am not suggesting anything at all about whether or how these changes might be read as indicative of before the fact guilt in forgery. In fact, I'm suggesting that the whirlwind and the subsequent developments and behaviors of all involved in the whirlwind make reading the behaviors of everyone at that time and looking for evidence in that behavior of guilt before the fact a difficult and dicey project at best and perhaps not the most reliable way to make a case for the identities of the forgers and for exactly where, when, how, or by whom this text was actually written. Your mirror seems to me likely because of circumstances to reflect any number of possible things and not tell you very much, I think, about what happened between say, 1988 and 1992. And this is what we are all after.
You conclude this point fairly, asking:
"So, all in all, I feel that it is just too simplistic to argue that all subsequent actions have nothing to tell us about past actions, nor do they give us any clue --through charcter analysis if nothing else-- to the (eek that word again!) various 'probabilities' of the people involved in a forgery. Don't you think this is a fair point?"
I do, with a warning. It seems to me that the only clues they might give us are indeed, about "character analysis" and, as I have tried to show elsewhere, we must be very careful what conclusions we draw based on the character of our suspects. My earlier response to Karoline's stripper hypothetical is relevant here as are, I hope, a few words I wrote to Peter about this. I believe I said this:
"Surely, establishing the authors of the diary rests not on the character and personalities of anyone, but on hard data and evidence of its production and the whereabouts of all involved and skills and opportunities of all involved. If we start allowing historical conclusions concerning the likely origin of events to actually "rest" simply on people's character and personalities, then were are going to end up with some very mistaken history and a great number of invalid and careless conclusions, many of which will eventually prove to be horrible misreadings influenced by 'character and personality' rather than careful readings based on texts, data, and rigorous interpretations, arguments and established conclusions."
I still believe this and I still am not willing to just assume that someone who lies about a book is simply more likely to have written it. I have been saying that I will wait for the discovery of material evidence concerning the writing, the composing, the researching, etc., all of which I suspect will in fact eventually begin to appear.
As it stands, I do not know who wrote this book, but I do know the case against Mike and Anne specifically for researching and composing these lines (on or off the word processor) has nowhere near been made even in terms of likelihoods or probabilities and that the scenarios offered by all involved remain so hypothetical and speculative at this point that not even Ockham would, I think, be willing to make a choice. And if he did, it could just as easily be the wrong one.
See, as far as I can tell, there seem to me two scenarios floating around, as I described earlier:
1.) Mike originally composed the words of the diary on his word processor, but then someone else (neither him nor Anne, since their handwriting doesn't match, either) took the words from his word processor and transcribed them into the book and then gave it all back to Mike who then left the words on his word processor, even after he had the final copy in hand written in the hand of a mysterious and unidentified other person, and went to an agent with an assumed name and with lies about owning a word processor even though he knew that he had one on his desk, on which he had left the complete text of the forgery he was now knowingly carrying to an agent for the consideration of publication.
2.) Mike acquired the book from someone already composed; thought about what to do with it; typed the text into his word processor, as Paul suggests, to have a copy other than the original book available for any number of possible purposes including future mailings, annotations, to make copies to show agents, to preserve the original etc.; and then went off to the agent lying about his name and his word processor because he was not at all sure what the hell he was getting into and because he is in fact, as a person, perhaps "less than honest."
Now, as far as I can tell, neither of these two scenarios seems very likely to be a complete or convincing account of what happened, precisely because both of them are sorely lacking in material or physical evidence yet to support their hypothetical assumptions and conclusions. They both seem, actually, slightly less than reasonable, and perhaps we still have it all wrong. I don't know. But as I have said repeatedly, the only responsible position I can see taking is that the case remains to be made, the evidence remains to be collected and interpreted and that, by any serious standards, we have barely begun to know anything about who wrote this book and where and when it was written.
Then RJ, you ask me a more personal question, to which I am happy to respond.
"Finally, it is also a little hard for me to believe that you are arguing from a strickly disinterested/logical view when it seemingly is only Karoline's or Peter's or my scenerios that are illogical or worthy of lengthy deconstruction or have been 'problematized' (to use your word) by the other side of the aisle, and those scenerios offered by Paul or Caz are said to be 'reasonable' (the word you use in your last post above) alternatives. But never (that I can remember) the other way around. Is this a fair point? Or am I misunderstanding you? I'm not trying to be combative; this is my impression, and I would honestly like to know how you feel about it."
Thank you for asking this. I too have been worried about this and I do want to make this clear.
First, please believe me that I remain completely disinterested here. I have no sympathies whatsoever with Mike and Anne or with anyone who might simply want to get them off the hook for whatever reason. I would be just as happy to see the case against them proved and the mystery solved as I would to see their exoneration and the mystery remain.
But, I have in fact been responding directly to those of you who have been making the case for an increase in the likelihood or probability of complicity in forgery based on actions after 1992 and not on either physical, material, or testimonial evidence of anything prior to 1992; and I have not been responding in the same way to others. There is a reason for this. It seems to me that Caroline and Paul and Rich have been asking questions and arguing in favor of slowing down the movement towards likely or probable conclusions and have been skeptical of interpretations that favor one reading over other similarly reasonable alternatives without a clear and established evidentiary case being made for this preference. I have found myself sympathetic with this skepticism and with this desire for thoroughness of consideration and with keeping all ears open. I must say that I do not find any particular, offered scenario very satisfying, and as far as I can tell, I think this is also Caroline's position. Because of this, I am afraid it might seem that I am attacking you or Peter or Karoline and I promise you I am not. If it has seemed that way I apologize. On two instances, once when Karoline suggested we might need to maintain a separation or a difference between philosophical and logical and epistemological inquiry and knowledge and the knowledge available through common sense, and that the former might not be what we need in this case; and once when Peter suggested that what I was doing here was somehow "High Literary Criticism" and offered an example of this that seemed an outdated and irrelevant caricature, I reacted directly against what I thought were not only mistaken but possibly dangerous descriptions and distinctions. I apologize also if my reaction to these two moments that attempted to characterize my own work in what I thought were unfortunate ways seemed harsh. There, I am afraid I did have something at stake and became an ideologically and personally interested party. But in all other cases, my reading of your posts and those by Karoline and more recently Peter has been careful I hope and has taken a critical turn because I sense a rush to judgment in the rhetoric and in the reading of "evidence" and of character and behavior after the fact, that I do not think is wise or necessary.
It no doubt seems as if I have been less critical of Paul and Caroline and Richard. This, I suspect, is because they too are troubled by conflicting evidence and the unlikelihood of advanced scenarios, including, I hope, their own. My position is that none of the scenarios I have seen advanced so far are finally very "reasonable" but that most are about as "reasonable" as each other because what is still missing is the basic physical and material evidence concerning the production of the forgery.
This gap in the investigation remains.
I do not know Paul or Richard or Caroline personally, nor do I really yet understand all of the dynamics of the alliances formed and reformed here on these boards. I do know that my own readings of your posts are not designed to advance the case of one school of thought about guilt or innocence over another. They are attempts to make explicit and to detail what remains, what is missing, what is contradictory and problematic, and why I believe we must continue to resist our own desire for the language of and promise of solutions here given the state of the evidence and the state of knowledge available to us concerning what exactly happened to this book before its first public appearance in 1992.
Again I honestly do apologize if it looks like this has become a set of readings motivated by the desire to advance one case (innocence) over another (complicity) or to advance strictly on personal grounds one set of readers over another. I have no interest in doing either. But as always, when some are presenting what they see as evidence for guilt, since legal consequences and personal reputations are at stake, my inclinations are to examine that evidence with great care and to try and determine if the conclusions, even about the likelihood or probability of guilt, have been fairly, validly, and thoroughly developed using explicit premises, raw data and material evidence, and an eye towards all possible, indeed likely and probable interpretations and explanations of the data. Paul, for instance, seems to have posed possibilities that have on several occasions, seemed to me as likely or probable as the ones Karoline has advanced. This is not the same as saying that therefore Karoline's are unreasonable, of course. Although none of the scenarios advanced so far have struck me as reasonable beyond a doubt or even as, in any meaningful sense of the word, established.
A while back, in concluding a post to Karoline after she had offered a list of items said to increase the likelihood of Anne and Mike's complicity in the forgery, I tried to describe honestly what I don't know. I want to allow these thoughts, only slightly revised, to reappear here as a way of concluding this post. I once wrote to Karoline:
*********************************
I have never written that none of the things you mention above suggest for me "an even slightly increased probability that the Barretts were involved in the forgery to some degree."
In fact, I have said several times that the purchase of the diary and the Crashaw quote's appearance in the Sphere volume do indeed, for me, remain at least as partial, fragmentary evidence of before-the-fact intention and therefore they clearly do suggest something of an increase in the "probability that the Barretts were involved in the forgery to some degree."
Now, both of these pieces of data are surrounded here with conflicting and troublesome and muddled stories that remain to be read carefully and in meticulous detail. That is what I think we are beginning to do here. That is what needs to be done. That is what remains. But clearly, as they sit, they are precisely the sort of evidence of actions and events prior to 1992 that would be essential in examining if we are to going to responsibly discuss the possibility that either or both of the Barrett's actually wrote this document.
The other four items you mention are different.
"the profit motive, the spurious provenance, MB's confession, the fact that the text of the thing was on MB's computer"
The first two of these speak either in favor of acquisition or authorship equally, especially considering the events that followed publication, as I have tried to show at length elsewhere, and are not, it still seems to me, in any way necessarily or logically indications of complicity in actual forgery. So I do not yet consider them as "increasing the likelihood" of the Barrett's having composed the lines on these pages.
The second two are more problematic.
"MB's confession, the fact that the text of the thing was on MB's computer"
This has all been discussed elsewhere to my satisfaction at least. Mike's confessions are a mess. They could never, as they read now, stand as evidence for anything, and I think I could clearly and carefully demonstrate why, if I had not already gone on much too long here. I would be willing to do so in a later post, although a quick read of their contradictions, their histories, and their gaps should reveal this to anyone who cares to read them over on the Casebook pages.
The fact of the appearance of the diary text on the word processor, as others have shown, can be read quite simply and quite logically in two conflicting and contradictory ways. This is the case with much of history of course, and in this case, we are not bound to decide. We can allow both readings to stand until we have read further and developed better conclusions based on less problematic evidence.
As I said above, what would count for me, what does count for me as evidence that, as you say, would "suggest an even slightly increased probability that the Barretts were involved in the forgery to some degree," would be any and all data specifically concerning, and any "clear physical or material or experiential evidence in some way of, their actually writing it or their preparing to write it or their researching it or their having written it or other people's witnessing their writing it or their preparing to write it or their researching it or their having written it or someone's actual knowledge of their writing it or their preparing to write it or their researching it or their having written it." I would include here things like the location of the Crashaw quote and the purchase of the red diary, but not whatever lies after the fact about provenance they might still be telling or have told since 1992.
And one last thing. I am not at all convinced yet that Mike and Anne did not write this book. I do not know who wrote this book. I do not even yet see any clear argument in favor of suspecting any particular people of having written this book. Anywhere. Melvin Harris claims Anne and Mike did not write this book (at least I think he claims that. He takes credit for the idea that they were merely planters). I do not think Melvin (or anyone else) has even come close to proving the case that Anne and Mike did not write this book. Nor do I think that anyone has come close to proving even, as you yourself once claimed, "beyond a reasonable doubt," that Mike and Anne did write this book.
I do not think the case has even more than barely begun to be established that they did or did not write this book. And I have no ideological or personal investment in whether or not they wrote this book. It is a fascinating set of questions -- who did this and how and where and when -- but any clearly established or even simply evidenced answer would suit me just fine. I know none of the people involved personally and I have no great desire for a hurried solution. I sometimes don't even really mind not knowing, since it allows me to continue to struggle with these questions.
But, as of now, I know nothing at all about where this book was before 1992. I have seen barely any material evidence at all specifically about where this book was before 1992.
Consequently, for me, anyway, much more reading remains to be done.
*******************************
Now, I am afraid I have to leave soon for a long weekend at a Shakespeare conference, but I will let that citation of my own voice from the past stand as my lingering response to the work done here up to this point. I did want to clear some of these things up and I do sincerely thank you, RJ, for the opportunity to do so.
Have a great weekend, everyone,
--John |
Author: Peter R.A. Birchwood
Wednesday, 11 April 2001 - 12:13 pm | | Paul Begg suggested:
"So that Mike could carry a copy with him when doing his
research and not risk having the diary lost, damaged or
stolen."
Then why not simply photocopy the diary and carry that about?
" So that it could be sent through the post if
necessary"
See above. But was it ever posted? Mike actually took the original down to London personally.
"So that Mike could annotate the transcript"
Was it ever annotated on the wp?
"So that it could be read without handling the 'diary' to much."
See above.
"So that a copy could be left with and agent or publisher."
But was it? Did Doreen or Robert Smith ever mention having one?
And of course it's still possible that Mike transcribed the diary onto the Amstrad for one or all of the above reasons. Possible - but not very.
Regarding Paul Begg's message addressed to Karoline there are a couple of matters that might help. 1/ Over this particular period there is no indication from Mike's bank account that he received inputs other than those which can be identified as payments via Rupert Crew of diary royalties. There is no evidence therefore that the £3666.74 received by Anne by cheque 7th December 1993 was transferred in whole or part to her husband's account . As Crew had sent Mike at least one cheque direct to his account in October 1993 it seems unlikely that they could have been under the impression that he had no account. 2/ An "Advance" paid to an author is actually more properly an "Advance against royalties." A sum received by MB from Crew in June 1993 is called:"Portion of advance due on delivery of typescript" and a sum sent in April 1993 is called:"Your 50% share of further portion of advance." The sum sent to Anne in December 1993 is actually called:"As schedule of payments dated 4/11/93." This form of words is carried forward in future months when cheques are sent separately to Anne and Mike. So there is still some question as to what this December payment was actually for. |
Author: Paul Begg
Wednesday, 11 April 2001 - 01:03 pm | | Peter
I have to endorse John Omlor’s observation here that your perception of probability or likelihood seems based entirely on your pre-determined conclusion that Mike Barrett is guilty of having forged the ‘diary’ and having composed it himself. Whether any of the above reasons is likely, more likely or less likely than your own conclusion is your opinion, not, as far as I can see, a conclusion based on evidence, and I would point out that if Mike did not compose the ‘diary’ then one of the above reasons is likely, perhaps very likely and certainly more likely to be true.
Now, the point of this discussion was, I thought, an attempt to carefully examine and assess the evidence against the various candidates as forger. I have now listed several times various reasons why Mike might not have known the ‘diary’ was a forgery. Nobody has addressed these points. Keith asked whether or not your theory that Mike and Anne forged the ‘diary’ would collapse if the ‘diary’ handwriting didn’t match theirs. You didn’t answer. Except to say that you weren’t a handwriting expert. Caz has asked how the idea that Mike composed the ‘diary’ is effected by Melvin’s claim that Mike and Anne were merely placers (i.e., Mike did not compose it), but her question has not been addressed. I don’t mean the forgoing to appear as critical, only to illustrate the range of argument to the effect that Mike did not compose the ‘diary’ and possibly didn’t even know it was a forgery.
If these arguments have merit - and you have yet to demonstrate that they don't - then another explanation exists for the text being on Mike's word processor. Any of the above possibilities would therefore be more likely. If you ignore all these arguments as if they don’t exist then there is no point in discussing the matter with you.
1/ Over this particular period there is no indication from Mike's bank account that he received inputs other than those which can be identified as payments via Rupert Crew of diary royalties. There is no evidence therefore that the £3666.74 received by Anne by cheque 7th December 1993 was transferred in whole or part to her husband's account . As Crew had sent Mike at least one cheque direct to his account in October 1993 it seems unlikely that they could have been under the impression that he had no account.
You do appreciate, I hope, that my above remarks related to discussions going on before it was made known that no money had been transferred into Mike’s account and that the above remarks were intended to demonstrate that the argument, though speculative, was soundly based.
Regarding an advance against royalties, I am, of course, aware of what an advance is. I am also aware that no publisher could conceivably have paid out royalties in December on a book published in October, so, as you rightly say, there is indeed confusion of what the payment was for. It is possibly for some other contractual deal, such as foreign rights or something like that.
Mike is presumably your source for this information, so could you clarify a couple of points about the pre-December 1993 payments. How many were there? Publishers usually pay the advance on royalties in either two or three stages – on signing the contract, on delivery of manuscript and on publication. The payment in October 1993 is presumably ‘on publication’. How many payments were made prior to that? And did Mike open his account with the first of these payments? If not, do you know what he did open it with? We should just clear away the remote possibility that Anne leant Mike money from her own account and that the £3666.74 was repayment of that loan. And most importantly, can you confirm whether these payments were for 50% or just 25% or the advance due? It might be helpful if you could quote the figures, but I appreciate that this might be too great an invasion of privacy. And if you wouldn’t mind, as I suspect you have the detail at your fingertips and I don’t, could you just remind me where Anne has stated – rather than been reported as having said – that she received no money.
Thank you in anticipation.
Paul |
Author: Martin Fido
Wednesday, 11 April 2001 - 01:15 pm | | A question that has possibly long been answered to the satisfaction of everyone obsessed with the diary - in which case, my apologies. But it does seem to me important.
Do we know whether or not the version of the diary on Mike's Amstrad reproduced the very individual mis-spellings and grammatical betises of the handwritten version?
Martin Fido |
Author: Peter R.A. Birchwood
Wednesday, 11 April 2001 - 01:42 pm | | Paul:
At least three prior to October which goes along with your schedule, the June 22nd one being "on delivery," and at least two being 50% I've already said that the account had a high (for that time) overdraft limit. It's impossible to say definitively that Anne hadn't lent Mike money which he agreed to repay via the 50% Crew cheque but it seems very unlikely due to: Mike having got this high OD limit presumably on proof of future income from the book wouldn't need an input from Anne to start it up. Perhaps an answer might be (and I've only just done the math on this) that the three pre-December 1993 cheques to Mike came to approximately the same figure as the December 1993 cheque to Anne. So possibly they split the diary money 50-50 in this way and then after December they arranged for separate cheques. But I agree that further research must be done.
And Paul - I quote from Chris Georges recent post and transcript of Anne's radio interview: "I would remind you that in the transcript of her October 4,
1995 interview with Radio Merseyside, which I previously
posted here, Anne Graham was asked specifically about what
money she had made from the Diary:
Interviewer: And what about the money side of things, Anne,
have you made a lot of money out of it?
Anne Graham: No, no--
Interviewer: Have you made any money out of it?
Anne Graham: Well, not a great deal. The research, the
expenses from the publisher, there has been an incredible
lot. And really there hasn't been much money made out of it
at all.
Anne has never on paper stated anything directly always through filters, for example Colin Wilson and Shirley Harrison. |
Author: Christopher T George
Wednesday, 11 April 2001 - 01:42 pm | | Hi Martin:
Excellent point. I believe that the question of the mispellings and grammatical idiocyncracies/mistakes in the handwritten Diary are the very reason why Peter and others would like to compare the transcript of the Diary that was on Mike's computer with the handwritten version, to see if they match up and if anything can be learned from a comparison of the two versions of the text of the Diary.
Best regards
Chris George |
Author: Richard P. Dewar
Wednesday, 11 April 2001 - 02:28 pm | | Hi all,
Thank you Paul for your hilarious question/answer text earlier. . .it brought a smile to my face.
Martin asks an important question about whether the misspellings also appear on the pc.
The diary has several lists in which certain words are crossed out. If the pc version does not include these words, that seems to me to indicate that the diary text may have been written prior to the version on the pc.
Accepting Mike forged the diary for the sake of argument, I still await someone telling me why the version on the pc "probably" came before the diary text - other than that it is the scenario which exclusively suggests Mike forged the diary.
I believe I have outlined earlier an equally plausible scenario that the diary version could come before the pc version whether or not Mike forged the diary.
But it seems some of those wedded to a particular theory will not consider any interpretation which conflicts with their notions of the diary's provenance.
Rich |
Author: Karoline L
Wednesday, 11 April 2001 - 03:08 pm | | Well this is a lengthy response - but at least it should satisfy those persons here who (through possible muffled Freudian associations) think I am avoiding dealing with the long tough questions here.
I wrote in response to Paul's request for information:
"1.On these boards a few days ago, it was argued by one or two people here that we could not conclude that AG had profited from the diary - even though there was a royalty payment clearly stating she was receiving money - because she might subsequently have given all that money away. This is a completely speculative hypothesis devoid of data. Regrettably, this fact did not prevent one or two people claiming that Peter Birchwood should prove it didn't happen before anyone could conclude AG profited from the diary"
Paul responded by saying:
"I’m sure you can appreciate that it would help everyone if you accurately reported the actual argument being made, the argument in this case not being the rather silly one that Anne 'might subsequently have given all that money away’ but the altogether more serious and rational one that Anne might have given the money to Mike, whose money it was"
Paul,
To be perfectly frank I don't see it makes much difference who the money is alleged to have been given to, does it? The point is that it is being suggested that AG might not have kept any of her money and thus not profited from the diary - when there is no data to suggest this at all and it is fact a slighty silly idea at base.
(i mean why on earth would RC make out two separate cheques to MB and AG - just so that AG could give all her money back to her husband?)
But, since you ask - I quote from one of a series of similar observations over an extended period. You wrote (April 6):
"The next step is to find out if the money stayed in Anne’s account, which you may find out by asking her and thus be able to complete your research with a flourish and put a full stop to your conclusion."
You'll note that you say nothing specific about this money being given back to MB - you just state that I must prove she kept the money before we can conclude she profited from the diary.
I then paraphrased Paul's words of April 7, like this:
"3.Quite recently on these boards you responded to my suggestion that AG had invented her 'in the family for years' story, by arguing that, even though there is no shred of evidence to support her story, it still might have some truth in it and be the 'kernel' of an old and therefore valuable family legend"
Paul replied:
"Again, this is not an accurate representation of the argument..... I’m sorry, but I really can’t be bothered to summarise all that was said in order to clarify something that on past evidence you will probably garble when repeating. If you return to the posts on this Board from my post of Saturday, April 07, 2001 - 05:37 am onwards you can re-read what was in fact being said."
Paul,
I quote from your post of Saturday, April 07, 2001 - 05:37 (just a little further down from the lengthy extract you have pasted above):
"In fact, not only would proving Anne’s provenance story hogwash not only not make Anne the forger or bring us any nearer to knowing who the forger was, it may not even prove Anne’s ‘in my family for years’ story untrue......Sometimes a story can for all sorts of reasons become bent and battered beyond all recognition, even during transmission from aunt to neice (sic), yet retain a kernel of truth. Proving the details of Anne’s story untrue, right down to its equivalent of the iron gate in the Mrs Cox story, doesn’t mean the ‘diary’ wasn’t inherited by Billy Graham in 1950."
I think if you or anyone else here compare these words of yours to my summary of them quoted above, it will be agreed I have represented you very accurately.
I don't ask for any apology for your usage of the word 'garbled'. I appreciate that this is your accepted method of addressing those with whom you find yourself in conflict.
I wrote:
("b)Similarly, on these boards from about 1998 and up to the present, it has been argued that the reference in the diary to the Poste House (a Liverpool pub that didn't have that name until modern times) doesn't prove the document a modern forgery, because - (what else?) - there could have been another Poste House somewhere in England in Maybrick's time, and he could be referring to that. This is a purely speculative hypothesis devoid of all data and much sense."
Paul replied:
"It has never to my knowledge been suggested that there could have been another Poste House somewhere in England in Maybrick's time, and he could be referring to that. If this isn't another misrepresentation by you of the argument below, please accept my genuine apologies for suggesting otherwise and be kind enough to support your argument by citing the posts in which this suggestion has been advanced."
What can I say? I have used capital letters and an additional 'e'. I apologise for thus misrepresenting you.
However, you presumably contend(ed) that this 'post house' could be called a 'Poste House' - or why was the assumed Maybrick calling it that in his assumed diary?
Paul wrote:
"A post house was an inn, hotel, or other location where post was left for collection and sometimes where travellers could rest and take refreshment. Although these establishments had their own name, such as ‘The Plough’. ‘The George’, ‘The Blue Angel’, they were also referred to as ‘the post house.....It is an extremely reasonable deduction based on a knowledge of Victorian England, the postal service as it existed, a reading of Charles Dickens, who mentions such staging places several times, the fact that I have enjoyed a fair few pints of ale in such establishments as survive and that one is located opposite my home."
As I recall, Feldman failed to find a single 19thC reference to the usage of 'post house' in this context (at least he failed to quote any in his book). All he could muster was wild speculation and one non-quoted reference to a man called Andrew Perry of the Royal Mail Archives and Records, who reputedly allowed (in Feldman's words) that "any establishment that used to accept post for collection and distribution could have been known as a 'poste house'"
But yet you are saying the matter is now proven.
If this is true - and I'm sure it is or you wouldn't say so - then I apologise for saying your post house hypothesis was devoid of data. It does indeed have some.
Would it be possible for you to quote your sources here?
Could we have the refs for Dickens talking about 'post houses' - and any other documentation there is?
"Now Karoline, this road is the one you introduced. If you recall, you reappeared on these boards to dismiss a hypothesis as a surreal wriggle"
No, I appeared here to offer support to the admirable RJ Palmer, who was fighting a rather lonely battle against what can often appear (I'm sure wrongly)to be considerable and motivated forces of unreason.
However - yes, I think "surreal wriggle" is a very good term for some hypotheses. Particularly of the 'prove this didn't happen' kind, which sadly do tend to get employed here rather more than is wholly prudent.
Actually I wrote an article that touched on this very subject that was recently reprinted in Ripper Notes - would anyone like me to reproduce it here?
"You are the person who maintained that eight facts as near as dammit proved Mike and Anne’s guilt."
No - I maintain they make it probable that MB and AG were to some extent complicit in the forgery. You yourself have said exactly the same thing, several times - as I have already pointed out.
"You are the person who variously claimed that no alternative suggestions had been offered"
I have not said that.
I have said - repeatedly - that alternative suggestions had indeed been made but that few if any facts were ever marshalled to support them.
"That offered alternative suggestions were the equivalent to Elvis is alive and well in Bhutan,"
Well, if John Omlor's student can be an illustration, then I am sure my Elvis can!
More properly he was an allegory to demonstrate the dangers of reasoning from an undisprovable negative (like "prove she didn't give the money away")
"You are the person who had made a large number of silly comparisons to diminish otherwise reasonable suggestions."
Well, others might say I had made rather sensible comparisons to illustrate the silliness of certain suggestions. But I would not expect you to take that view. Nor should you if you choose not to.
" ...and who has misrepresented arguments and, incidentally, repeatedly attributed to me statements I never made."
Please supply a list of these statements I am supposed to have attributed to you that you never made.
"(what did I say that encouraged you to think I was involved in the Friedkin movie?)".
When you mentioned possibly receiving a script, I took it to indicate a measure of involvement on your part.
Was I wrong?
If so I apologise, but this is not attributing any statement to you, this is simply misunderstanding your words.
"If you sincerely do want to debate this issue sensibly and help progress our overall understanding, then may I seriously suggest that we set aside all the foregoing posts and assess the information with pre-conceived conclusions in mind. Most importantly, if you disagree with an argument, state why you disagree with it - give reasons.
I do sincerely want to debate the issues - in fact I believe I have been doing just that since I came here. It would be nice if you could accept that someone can hold opinions contrary to yours and even prove you wrong on occasion - without having to impugn their motives at every opportunity.
I can't 'set aside all the foregoing posts' because I stand firmly by everything I have said in them.
As to your last suggestion - Paul, please go through my back posts. Read them. Then come back here and tell me if you are still of the opinion that I have never given any reasons or stated why I disagree with anyone.
"Why not start by answering Rich?
He has fairly asked you a very simple question: why is it more reasonable to suppose that Mike composed the ‘diary’ on his word processor than it is to suppose that he transcribed the ‘diary’ for some other purpose?"
I have answered Richard's questions (and yours and John's) on that issue quite a few times. The latest answer I posted this morning.
"Or answer Caz’s question about how Mike and Anne simply being placers, as argued by Melvin Harris, conforms with your idea that Mike composed the ‘diary’ on his word processor"
Well, I don't think there is an anomaly - if that is what you mean.
Personally, I don't actually have any theory about the precise details of how the thing was created - but I gather the present consensus view amongst those who have done most of the investigating is that the diary text was composed on MB's wp by a group of two or three individuals - one of whom actually wrote out the MS. MB was thus involved in creating the text and placing the finished artefact - but not in the actual physical creation of the forgery.
At least, so the present reasoning goes, as I understand it.
I have no idea if this is the 'last word' since I gather new data is still emerging, but as a theory it is admirably simple and serves to explain all the known data without needing the hypothesised introduction of other purely speculative elements - as is the case with so many of the other suggestions put forward here and elsewhere.
But no - before you even ask - I do not 'believe' this. I am actually very much opposed to 'believing' anything. It's a personal foible of mine. I much prefer to keep personal belief systems to one side and concentrate on allowing the data to speak for itself as much as is possible.
This, really, in my muddled way, has been what I have been trying to say from the start here.
" I mean, we have a small but interesting accumulation of data here to suggest that Mike didn’t forge the ‘diary’ but was the unwitting patsy of those who did"
No, I don't think we do.
What we have is a small collection of data to show MB knew very little about the physical method of the forgery - but yet knew something about the creation of the document (the Crashaw quote). We also have him displaying clear indications of 'knowledge of guilt' by his attempts to conceal his ownership of the Amstrad ("oh that computer!"}
(seriously guys - if he'd just copied the old text on to his machine - why on earth would he try and pretend it wasn't there? Doesn't this imply even the teensiest twinge of probability that he knew that document had got there as part of that fraud the police were investigating?)
"and if Mike genuinely didn’t know the ‘diary’ was a forgery but was just given the thing to ‘place’, then you do have to explain how the text got on his word processor, don’t you?"
Well, I'm not sure it would be my personal responsibility alone - but yes, I/we/one would.
But the rather important point your previous sentence overlooks is that there is currently no evidence to suggest MB "didn't know the diary was a forgery," is there?
All we have is an indication he didn't know too much about how it was physically forged. Apart from that, everything he did - from the false name through his "what computer?" story up to his knowledge of the Crashaw quote and his possession of the Maybrick book (which he also denied), indicates that he was in it up to his arse.
best wishes
Karoline |
Author: Paul Begg
Wednesday, 11 April 2001 - 03:30 pm | | Karoline
But the rather important point your previous sentence overlooks is that there is currently no evidence to suggest MB "didn't know the diary was a forgery," is there? All we have is an indication he didn't know too much about how it was physically forged. Apart from that, everything he did - from the false name through his "what computer?" story up to his knowledge of the Crashaw quote and his possession of the Maybrick book (which he also denied), indicates that he was in it up to his arse.
Well, that's what some of us are not sure about and is what we're trying to find out. |
Author: Richard P. Dewar
Wednesday, 11 April 2001 - 06:14 pm | | Hi Karoline,
Respectfully, I submit you have never replied to my question about the pc question in regards to the diary.
What you have done, on each occassion, is slightly alter my question so that you can provide an answer that is consistent with your theory.
You have stated that you feel it is "probable" that the first draft of the text was on the diary prior to the pc. Amongst your reasons outlined in a previous post is that a forger would not have wanted to write the material into the diary cold and that since Mike lied about the ownership of the pc this is the most likely scenario.
Yet, as I have put to you four times, and I will again, why is your scenario more likely that this one:
1. The forger researches the Ripper case making notes on paper.
2. The forger then, from the notes, writes out the diary.
3. Mike transcribes the text of the diary onto his pc.
The scenario I have presented works whether Mike was or was not the forger. I submit that you appear to reject it as not being as probable as your proposed scenario for that very reason.
I am making the point that you are calling your scenario as most "probable" not because it is, but because it appears to bolster your opinion (an opinion I might add that I share).
You say you have replied to my question but so far you have not. You keep repeating why you feel your scenario is a likely case. You have not given one reason why your scenario is any more probable than the one I have cited - other than you think Mike is the forger and this is the way you think he would have done it.
Finally, I hope we can dismiss the charge that Paul, John and I are jointly in some conspiratorial fashion weaving an improbable web of doubt in order to murky clear waters (lots of mixed metaphors!).
The three of us are in accord in that we believe some proponents of a particular theory are not looking at the evidence objectively. In fact, I dont believe any of us have ruled out the possibility that Mike forged the diary.
I dont know Paul or John personally but I do agree with their opinion that we need more evidence to conclude Mike forged the diary and we know precisely how he did it.
Rich |
Author: Caroline Anne Morris
Wednesday, 11 April 2001 - 06:55 pm | | Hi Karoline,
A few points regarding your latest long post (gosh, you have been busy lately – no tax forms to fill in yet? I’m up to my eyes in accountants named Cohen).
You wrote:
(i mean why on earth would RC make out two separate cheques to MB and AG - just so that AG could give all her money back to her husband?)
You evidently haven’t seen the latest posts over on The Maybrick Diary board. There might be an explanation or two loitering there, if you are interested. Just call it crazy speculation on my part – I don’t mind in the least – but maybe Mike did arrange with Doreen for Anne to get some of his 50% share (though not it seems anything like half of it, going by the details you yourself posted), against Anne’s will, and maybe, just maybe, we’ll discover what Anne actually did about that?
In my dictionary I find post house – an inn, orig. where horses were kept for posting. Don’t know about you, but I’d say we could be talking – ooh – as far back as when, er, inns began keeping horses for posting.
You wrote:
Well, others might say I had made rather sensible comparisons to illustrate the silliness of certain suggestions.
Yes, others might. Perhaps they will. Anything’s possible – but is it probable?
You wrote to Paul:
...this is not attributing any statement to you, this is simply misunderstanding your words.
You see, this is where reading carefully in the first place might save you and everyone else a heck of a lot of time in the long run. Others might think you were deliberately trying to cast Paul in a poor light with your ‘misunderstanding’ over the film script – in fact, I’d say that it's more than probable that they would think that.
You wrote:
I do sincerely want to debate the issues - in fact I believe I have been doing just that since I came here.
But which issues? Our current concerns that the people who are really in it up to their arses are being fingered fairly and squarely? Or only the issues that you believe are already settled and don’t require further debate?
You wrote:
...I gather the present consensus view amongst those who have done most of the investigating is that the diary text was composed on MB's wp by a group of two or three individuals - one of whom actually wrote out the MS. MB was thus involved in creating the text and placing the finished artefact - but not in the actual physical creation of the forgery.
Could you please state which investigators you are referring to here, what you mean by most of the investigating, and what direct contact any of them have had with any of the ‘individuals’ concerned?
You wrote to Paul:
But the rather important point your previous sentence overlooks is that there is currently no evidence to suggest MB "didn't know the diary was a forgery," is there?
Now really, Karoline. You are not seriously asking Paul to ‘prove Mike didn’t know the diary was a forgery, are you? So soon after you yourself wrote: ...I think "surreal wriggle" is a very good term for some hypotheses. Particularly of the 'prove this didn’t happen' kind, which sadly do tend to get employed here rather more than is wholly prudent.
Love,
Caz |
Author: Karoline L
Wednesday, 11 April 2001 - 08:38 pm | | Caz-
thank you for the post house thing. But whatI am looking for is some ref to suggest that inns were habitually called 'the post house' in place of their real name. Otherwise the diary-ref. of the Poste House makes no sense.
But don't trouble too much over it, it's only a hypothetical, since no one now contends the Poste House argument is anything other than a crock of ordure.
It was just a quibble really - my passion for footnotes. I was wondering if there really are refs in Dickens to people swigging ale in 'the post house' Was it really used this way, or was Feldman just being his usual desperate self?
(my personal favorite of his many shining example of frantic reaching, is the one where he grabs the word 'medicine' from the diary and discovers that - oh my God - the Victorians actually used used this word for their...well, medicine. So, like - how on earth could anyone possibly fake that?)
best wishes
Karoline |
Author: Paul Begg
Thursday, 12 April 2001 - 05:00 am | | Karoline, I dislike these ‘you said/I said’ posts, which are as boring and time consuming to write as they are boring and time consuming to read. They also lead absolutely nowhere because you just shift the goalposts to create an endless stream of tangential arguments.
Let me give you an example. I repeatedly point out that there would have been an inn in Liverpool where mail would have been left and which could have been known as the post house. You change this to “there could have been another Poste House somewhere in England”, which isn’t by anybody’s standards even a moderately fair report of what I actually said. When I quite reasonably object to this misrepresentation of the argument, you reply by saying “What can I say? I have used capital letters and an additional 'e'. I apologise for thus misrepresenting you”. But this is not what I complained about. It is another misrepresentation!
Then you switch the argument, indicating that you are ignorant of what post houses actually are, which, if true, rather supports Caz's contention that you seem to argue without really understanding what you are arguing about. And I note yet another subtle shift of emphasis in your post to Caz wherein you now want evidence that inn’s were ‘habitually’ referred to as post houses, which yet again isn’t something anyone has claimed.
Furthermore, you also ask “Could we have the refs for Dickens talking about 'post houses', which yet again does not accurately reflected what I said. I said that that I knew that post houses existed because among others reasons Charles Dickens ‘mentions such staging places several times’.
I think the above provides more than sufficient example for any reasonable person to see why I state, without malice, that you garble what is explained to you. But I am not alone in complaining about your goalpost shifting. For other examples, see John Omlor’s posts or more conveniently Rich’s post below, wherein he complains: “Respectfully, I submit you have never replied to my question about the pc question in regards to the diary. What you have done, on each occasion, is slightly alter my question.”
Now, the question here was your assertion that many arguments alternative to your own amounted to "speculative hypothesis devoid of data" – your words. I asked you to support this with some examples. You did so, among them being the Poste House argument. So, is the Poste House argument really devoid of data?
The Oxford English Dictionary defines a post house as “2. An inn or other house where horses are kept for the use of travellers; a posting house. Obs.
1645 Evelyn Diary 28 Jan., We repos'd this night at Piperno, in the Post-house without the towne.
1712 Lond. Gaz. No. 5027/5 He alighted at the Post-house to change Horses.
1819 Byron Juan i. ciii, They are a sort of post_house, where the Fates Change horses.
1833 L. Ritchie Wand. by Loire 16 The main road running past the town_, and the post-house being at a little distance beyond.”
So a post house is an inn.
Do inns have names?
The naming of inns has been a common practice since the 12th century, but because the majority of people were illiterate an Act of King Richard II also made it compulsory for alehouses to exhibit a sign to identify themselves. Inns were often purpose built establishments (unlike taverns and ale-houses) and were often located on church property because they were erected by the church builders to provide their own accommodation (making an inn the medieval equivalent if a nissen hut). Other inns provided accommodation for pilgrims travelling to a holy shrine, as immortalised by Chaucer. And inns often had religious names because they were on church lands and supplied by monastic brewers. Even names like the Ten Bells is religious in that it reflects the number of bells in the local church. The oldest surviving inn in England is Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem in Nottingham which dates from 1189A.D. In 1577 a survey estimated that there were 1,999 inns in England (against 401 taverns). The inns were often galleried – a gallery running round the inside of the inn’s courtyard – and it is thought by some that the balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet was inspired by a galleried inn. A rare surviving example of a galleried coaching inn is The George in Southwark. Inns provided accommodation for travellers from their earliest days, but with the stagecoach the inns developed into coaching inns proper and acted as staging posts along the main routes to provide changes of horses, food, drink, accommodation and a place where letters and packages could be left for collection (poste restante as it later became). Coaching inns were also known as staging inns because they were located at stages along a route (hence, also, stagecoach) or post houses and one lasting legacy, apart from their representation on millions of Christmas cards, is that the customers travelled both inside and on top of or “outside” the coach. “Outsiders” usually refreshed themselves in the public bar. The better off “Insiders” were invited into the innkeeper’s private parlour or salon, soon corrupted into saloon bar, a distinction still to be seen in very many pubs today.
Thus, there were inns where people refreshed, stayed and left letters and packages and people for collection. These establishments had names (some even took names derived from their purpose, such as Coach and Horses, which you will see quite frequently today). They were also called post houses, as the OED indicates. And Liverpool would have had one or more of them.
As for Dickens’ I don’t know whether he ever refers to a post house, but I never said that he did. I said that he referred to coaching or staging posts, and you will find a particularly nice example in David Copperfield when Dicken’s describes young Copperfield’s arrival in London – in Whitechapel, as it happens. You will also find several references in Pickwick Papers and elsewhere.
Now, I think the argument that Liverpool would have had a post house that someone might have called a post house is a fairly solidly based conjecture and not an argument ‘devoid of data’, don’t you?
But the point of the argument is not really whether the reference to Poste House is a reference to the modern pub or not, which is may or may not be, depending on whether or not there was an establishment within Maybrick’s ken that he could have so described (or that a modern forger could have so described), but that the whole argument obscures the far firmer case that the ‘e’ in the spelling is a recent affectation not consistent with Maybrick’s time.
Now, Karoline, I could go on, but no doubt to everyone’s relief I won’t. But I do have to say that I think your claim that arguments are ‘devoid of data’ is magisterially wrong and that you do nobody any favours by misrepresenting arguments as you did by describing a perfectly sound argument about there being a post house in Liverpool as “there could have been another Poste House somewhere in England”. |
Author: Caroline Anne Morris
Thursday, 12 April 2001 - 06:46 am | | Hi Karoline, Paul,
I had wondered if the diary faker was using 'Poste House' generically, to avoid the very trap of putting in the actual name of a pub, or inn, or, er, post house. Presumably anyone could have done this whenever the diary was written. So might the faker only have fallen victim to this generic cop-out when pubs such as the one formerly known affectionately as The Muck Midden, started being given brand new names above the door, such as the quaintly nostalgic 'Poste House'?
As Paul has repeated so often, it's the e on the end of Poste, a modern affectation, which is the real poser. What caused the author to make this error? As I have pointed out before, a similar error is made with 'poste haste'. So are we talking two modern affectations of a modern forger, or two similar spelling errors, which could have afflicted our author at any time of writing?
How often might our author, writing as James Maybrick, expect to see the terms 'post house' or 'post haste' actually written anywhere? "Just popping to the local for a pint, love, I won't be long" becomes "I am going to take some refreshment at the post house, my dear, I'll be back post haste." But how might this dialogue look, written down by someone who was not very well-read (or a faker posing as such a one)? If we are talking spelling mistakes, rather than modern affectation, where might all the erroneous es have found there way in? The only 'poste' anything I can find is 'poste restante', which may well have been a common sight, for a person going about his business at the time the diary was supposed to have been written. Might this have caused a less well-read person to imagine that the terms 'post house' and 'post haste' should also bear a French e at the end?
Just a quibble really, because, of course, it's far simpler to explain away Poste House, poste haste, and what have you, as an unholy mixture of modern affectation, spelling error and crocks of ordure - or Muck Middens - created by Mike Barrett. When we have Mike there, up to his arse in the midst of all this muck, we are laughing really, because everything falls into place and we don't need to work too hard. As the man himself might say, "Simple!"
I do agree with Karoline about Feldy's antics. But then, I am trying to make sense of the diary itself, not analyse those I come across along the way - although that might be another project for a very rainy day.
Happy Easter all, and may your buns be as hot and cross as you like them. I like mine all spicy and dripping with butter.
Love,
Caz |
Author: Paul Begg
Thursday, 12 April 2001 - 08:53 am | | Peter
Many thanks indeed for the additional information. To clarify, we don't appear to have Anne actually ever saying that she hadn't received any money from the 'diary', only other people saying this. Is there any evidence of who the original source of this is? I mean, if Doreen Montgomery did 'unilateraly decide' to give Anne a 25% share, could this act in itself, whatever explanation there may be for it, have given rise to the belief that Anne had not hitherto received any money? Is this, do you think, just a big misunderstanding?
I take it the three payments to Mike add up to one-quarter of the total advance on royalties, showing that one quarter went elsewhere (presumably Anne) and half went to Shirley?
I have to say that overall I am still doubtful that this has any bearing on Anne's 'in my family for years' story. I feel that at the time she told it Anne would have had more immediate concerns than keeping Shirley's book going. And if that had mattered to her, I think she'd have confessed to Shirley rather than Feldman. I must admit that I incline to R.J. Palmer's view that something happened at the 'photo album' meeting with Feldman that influenced Anne to tell her story. Whether it was the genuine belief that Feldman didn't believe her, was the temptation of a lucrative film deal that Feldman may have talked about, or was something else entirely remains to be seen. Just a feeling. |
Author: Paul Begg
Thursday, 12 April 2001 - 10:07 am | | | And by the way, Karoline, just for the record, I said that I would reserve judgement about Battlecrease until I had either seen the movie or read the script, from which I don't think it is fair to judge any involvement with the movie. I can confirm, however, that I have no involvement with the film. |
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