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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 July 10, 2001
Casebook Message Boards: The Diary of Jack the Ripper: General Discussion:
The Maybrick Diary:
Archive through July 10, 2001
Author: Paul Carpenter
Friday, 06 July 2001 - 09:12 am |        | Hi all,
Glad you enjoyed the story of the Clearwater penguin, and whilst it doesn't necessarily shed any light of the mindset of the diary hoaxer, I hope it goes someway to showing how a need to believe can suspend critical faculties and open the door to erroneous supposition - and that it doesn't take a great deal to hoax a great many people for a goodly number of years. The hoaxer in this case was just an "ordinary" bloke (as far as such a person can be said to exist) with no previous nor subsequent involvement in anything remotely similar. He was neither in it for the money, nor to grind a personal axe - he just followed a 'what if?' scenario up to its logical conclusion. A great experiment, you might think.
Graham - an interesting theory, and one that I think has been mentioned, or at least hinted at, before. John's analysis of the text certainly suggests that the construction of the book is something more akin to a (bad) piece of creative writing than an actual journal. Of course, we'll only know for sure when the provenance of the diary becomes a definitely ascertained fact.
Unfortunately, all roads still lead to a dead end on this score, however hokey we think the diary sounds...
Cheers
Carps |
Author: John Omlor
Friday, 06 July 2001 - 01:05 pm | | Hi All,
Interesting thoughts all around. One problem, Graham, with your last scenario is that neither Mike nor Anne's handwriting has been offered as much of a match for the diary's. But I suppose it could have been a clever disguise on one or both of their parts. Still, although the diary may not have been written in order to fool people originally (and I'm not too sure of this, I must say), I think that if it was someone's idea for a novel, it never got very far along in the process -- there are no real characterizations in it other than our hero's -- Florie and Michael and Lowry and company all remain merely mentioned and never seriously developed. There is very little in the way of dramatic detail about the murders -- something a novelist would have no doubt needed to include in such a work – in fact, there is very little actual drama at all -- almost no conflict except that hinted at between Maybrick and Abberline, and Abberline never shows up to fill it out. The plot movement is minimal, huge gaps of time are unaccounted for and psychological development is really reduced to a two-stage process. So all in all it does not have the look of a serious plan for a complete work of fiction. This is why I remain skeptical that anyone ever planned to use this document or the stuff inside it for anything other than a sketchy journal like the one we eventually got. Now why someone would want to write a sketchy journal without planning to use it as a fake diary I'm still not sure. And why they would plan to use it as a fake diary without, as Caz, talks about, at least checking Maybrick's handwriting first and making sure of their historical details, I'm not sure. After all, someone went to the trouble of seeing what sort of ink would be chemically appropriate to or at least available in Victorian times and what sort of pen nub to use and to get their hands on Victorian age paper in a Victorian age album. And then they wrote in it in their own handwriting? It seems pointless. But I do have a thought. It may be that our diarists figured if they said very little that could actually be checked (which they are relatively careful to do, it seems to me) and if they simply ignored Maybrick's handwriting and let the readers and experts posit rationalizations why the handwriting isn't even close (based on their own desires, mostly) and let those rationalizations stand as their arguments without actually having to make one themselves, then the diary might take on a life of its own because it would be surrounded by so many uncertainties and conflicting details that no one would know what the hell to do with it. That's what I mean by "craftiness."
Or, they could just have gotten very lucky after having produced a fairly bad fake.
But I'm afraid I really don't see our man Mike creating this prose from some outlined notes for a novel that he stumbled upon. And here's another reason why: we know Mike and Anne, we know where they lived, and drank, and what they did for a living, and many of their friends. Where are Mike and Anne Barrett likely to just come across the already researched notes or outline for a novel -- any novel -- let alone a novel of nineteenth century crime history. Who in their circle of friends or their neighborhood is likely to be secretly researching and planning a historical novel all their own?
The thing is, somebody somewhere had to be at least interested enough in these two cases to do the work, even if it was around the time of the Ripper centennial. They had to at least be willing to do the reading of the few books and the planning of the document’s narrative and voice and psychological development and willing to take the trouble to find or chemically produce the appropriate ink and acquire the materials – willing, that is, to actually take the time to do all of this. And my suspicion is that that someone might well be someone we have not yet met nor heard of. But that is just a guess.
Not I must wash the golf course grime off of me and relax for a quiet afternoon.
I am enjoying everyone's thoughts and speculations very much.
Thanks,
--John
PS: Chris, you were working on a Maybrick book a while back, in novel form, right? Has anyone ever checked out the active members of the community of Maybrick hobbyists and scholars around 1988, especially those in the Liverpool area, to see if any of them were working on anything in particular, or especially anything also Ripper related, at that time?
 And if Mike or Anne really did work this up from someone else's plans for a novel or a fictionalized "journal," why wouldn't that someone else, when they saw this thing, simply come forward and say "Hey, this looks like it came from the notes to this project that I was working on a while back! What's up with that?"
PPS: Caz -- Here in America anyway, London Broil is a specific cut of beef – it’s a relatively inexpensive cut that you buy broad and flat and that you marinate for several hours before you broil. It’s usually served sliced into thin strips and sometimes with a gravy or sauce. You can get it in any supermarket. |
Author: Graham Sheehan
Friday, 06 July 2001 - 02:27 pm | | Hi John,
Of course I should have been more clear when I mentioned that I believe the 'Diary' could well be part of a novel, or more specifically have been intended to form part of the same. Obviously in itself it really isn't much of a story at all. But imagine it was broken into smaller pieces and was merely short chapters, or interludes, placed between the real meat of the novel. Everything would run in a logical sequence. We'd follow Jack as he takes to the streets in search of his prey, as he strikes down his helpless, pitiful victims. All the 'missing bits' would be neatly accounted for in the main story and thus the 'Diary' would make perfect sense to the reader. We'd also follow the hero of the story as he chases up leads, witnesses the carnage Jack leaves behind etc; have described for us the mounting panic among the prostitutes and other citizens of Whitechapel as the murders become more frenzied. The 'Diary' text itself would merely be link material, a first hand description of the murderer's thoughts, common in many works of fiction. Because this is a novel whose primary subject is Jack the Ripper, the author probably felt it necessary to include all of the aspects familiar to those with a passing interest in the case: the taunting letters, the bad verse, the writing on the wall etc Yes, he would very probably have been aware that few serious students of the case believed more than perhaps one of the letters, if that, to be genuine, but that didn't matter at all because this is a work of fiction. It was never intended to stand alone as a single document, merely to add dramatic effect. I think I'm correct in saying that Maybrick is never mentioned by name in the 'Diary' text. This, of course, would be essential in order that the reader be kept in suspense. Yes, there are very obvious clues - Sir Jim May this, that and the other - but if you started off reading the book with no inkling as to who the writer of the text was, and if you didn't have a reasonable knowledge of the Maybrick case as most casual readers wouldn't - then you wouldn't immediately know who this mysterious madman was.
I don't think Mike would have worked from outlined notes, but would have had this text in the complete form we see it now. All the bad verse would have been there. If we work on the assumption that he didn't receive it in its present form, he would then have needed to buy a journal, obtain some ink, and a pen with which to write. From what I have learned about Mike Barrett, it seems to me feasible that he could have put together the book in which the text now resides. Let's be honest, it was very crude. Pages ripped out, handwriting which looks blatantly 'modern', even the possibility that two people took part in the physical act of writing it. This is most certainly not the kind of conduct one would expect from a serious forger who hoped to pass off the document as a genuine artefact. The more I look at the 'Diary', the more incredulous I become that people can accept the text as the work of a genuine forger. Strip away all the trimmings, Shirley Harrison's attempts to persuade us of Maybrick's guilt, the facsimile pages with their bursts of manic frenzy, and just read the transcript. Nothing else. Just that alone. The more you do (or the more I do, anyway), the more convinced I become that my theory is very close to being the truth, at least in essence. For me, the very idea that this was ever intended as anything beyond entertaining link material in a novel, or just possibly a short fictional piece in itself, simply doesn't hold water.
Not that that will make the slightest bit of difference to the people who think it's really Maybrick speaking, or the work of a clever and devious team of hoaxers :-))
I read on these boards and elsewhere smug comments from certain people to the effect that 'it's never been proved a fake.' IMHO, not being able to prove it's a fake means nothing at all. There are any number of ludicrous claims people could make which can't actually be proved incorrect, but that doesn't make them any less so. God is Millwall supporter who lives on Neptune. Can you prove beyond doubt that this isn't in fact the case? But would anyone entertain this as a serious possibility? This albeit high exaggerated example serves to illustrate the kind of thing we're dealing with here. The 'Diary' merely restates just about everything we already knew, without adding something provably false such as that Jack also murdered Inspector Abberline, for instance.
Best regs,
Graham |
Author: John Omlor
Friday, 06 July 2001 - 02:56 pm | | Hi Graham,
I notice that in your account of this thing as perhaps the "linking material" for some future novel, you don't speculate as to where or how someone like Mike Barrett, who lived where he did, worked where he worked, drank where he drank, and associated with the people he associated with, would be likely to just stumble across the completed literary research and/or notes or linking material for a nineteenth century historical novel.
And if he did somehow mysteriously acquire only the notes as the text we see before us, and then transcribed them into a Victorian album that he somehow found (although his own account of how he found it seems to be demonstrably a lie), and then if he also somehow found or made ink that could pass the scientific tests for age, and he got hold of the proper sort of pen nubs and sat down and wrote this thing out (with or without his wife), how come everyone who has seen his own handwriting, even including our own dear Melvin, says that it doesn't match the diary's?
This still seems to be an awfully assumptive scenario concerning Mike's behavior, and all without any real evidence whatsoever, of course.
And perhaps even more importantly:
You also didn't quite explain to me why, if Mike cribbed this whole thing from someone's notes for a future novel, that someone, once they saw the diary published as an allegedly authentic Ripper confession, didn't just step forward and say "Hey, that's word for word my own notes for a novel I was planning. What's going on here?"
And how could Mike have ever been sure, if he was just copying some notes he found into an album he somehow acquired and was thereby risking his own fate by being the one to foist it onto the public -- how could Mike have been sure, in any case, that the person who originally wrote the text he allegedly "got hold of" somehow wouldn't have immediately identified it as their own work and put a stop to things as soon as they got started?
There just seem to be a few gaps in this particular account that would require filling in before it makes complete sense.
But it's certainly worth continuing to think about.
All the best,
--John
PS: To be fair, what the claim "it's never been proved to be a fake" does mean, even for those of us who believe it is a fake and even a recent fake, and even for those who are completely convinced it is a fake, is that we have still more work to do if we wish to make our case as logically sound and complete as possible. And of course, that doesn't even begin to speak to the fascinating (at least for some of us), remaining question of who actually wrote these words. |
Author: Graham Sheehan
Friday, 06 July 2001 - 04:19 pm | | Hi John,
I wish I could say I had all the answers, or even some of them, but I don't. What I wrote in the previous couple of posts is merely a vague and rough approximation of what I think may have happened. Above all, I don't think the 'Diary' is a document that was designed to stand up to serious scrutiny so much as part of another work that was never intended to be presented as fact. I would also suggest that the person who composed the original text of the 'Diary' is no longer around to step forward. And probably hasn't been at any time during the whole debacle. As to the exact details - well, as with most areas of the whole Ripper case, there are an almost limitless number of possible explanations.
Let us suppose that I had just completed hoaxing such a journal. Would Mike Barrett really be the person I chose to present it to the world? Indeed not. I may have chosen an 'ordinary bloke in the street' an a bid to add a certain credibility to the case, but I'd have chosen someone of rather more stoic character, and I'd have had a damn sight better background story worked out than the one MB told, retold, and amended before an increasingly bemused public.
What do we know of Tony Devereux? He would seem (to me) to be the person most likely to have constructed this text, or at least to have known the person who did. If the latter is the case, why did they give the 'Diary' to him? Perhaps Mike was indeed given the work in its entirety but chose only to release the part which best served his interests. Perhaps he knew that with the person or persons responsible for its creation now dead, he could safely reveal it to the world without having to worry about anyone saying 'I wrote that.' Mike Barrett, the would-be writer. Could he have been given the text on the understanding that he did something (of a fictional nature) with it? Could it have been part of an ongoing (intended to be fictional) collaboration that Mike turned into something altogether different? I really have no idea :-)
I think the easiest trap to fall into is the one that says the 'Diary' is a work of an expert, or someone with special skills. I don't think it is, personally. I think it's crude and amateurish in the extreme. How difficult would it really be to obtain a journal of approximately the correct age, and to obtain ink and a pen of a type used in late Victorian Britain? I can't answer that because I don't really know, but I would imagine not *that* difficult. Besides which, the various tests undertaken on the ink and paper have produced results which could hardly be described as in perfect accord.
The handwriting - well, I can certainly alter mine to the point where it looks completely different from my normal hand. Whether it would stand up to expert scrutiny is something I can't say.
I don't think in any other case except that of Jack Ripsmith would this 'Diary' have stood up for five minutes. It is only because of the mystery and disagreement surrounding virtually every facet of the whole saga that this piece has been able to survive as a debatable point for so long, coupled with the potential embarrassment many people closely involved would face were it positively denounced once and for all.
Best regs,
Graham |
Author: John Omlor
Friday, 06 July 2001 - 05:10 pm | | Hi Graham,
Yes, there are certainly a lot of mysteries remaining surrounding the original scene of this text's research and composition.
But before you attempt to pin the composition on Tony, you should look into whether he is really the type of person who might have had this idea and this desire to write a fictionalized journal from the nineteenth century about the life of James Maybrick as Jack the Ripper to begin with, on his own, and whether he is really the type of person who might have sat down and researched (at least to some degree) and written this prose and created this voice and this psychology, even as rudimentary as it might be. And of course we have no evidence that Tony D. ever even knew about this whole diary thing at all, other than Anne and Mike's word about Tony supposedly giving it to Mike -- and how much of what they have said has proven to be true or reliable? So I'm not sure what would make us choose poor Tony as a likely candidate, except that he's no longer around.
I agree with you, though, about the strangeness of having Mike front the diary if it was a deliberate choice. It doesn't seem like a very smart move. Of course, people make dumb choices all the time. But you're right, that could mean that no one picked Mike for this. But then how did he get hold of the so-called fictional notes or "linking material" in the first place?
You say this about Tony:
"He would seem (to me) to be the person most likely to have constructed this text, or at least to have known the person who did."
Why?
Why do you even assume Tony knew anything at all about this text? Or are you simply believing Mike's stories about him?
And even beyond that: is there anything about what we know of Tony that would make him likely at one point in his life to be quietly and innocently planning to write a nineteenth century historical crime novel?
Do we have any reason to suspect this at all?
I don't think so.
And if not Tony as would-be historical novelist and not Mike as once an innocent would-be historical novelist (that's almost certain), then who? I'm just not quite convinced the Barrett's, in 1988, regularly moved in the sort of circles where someone might happen to be researching and planning a fictionalized journal of a nineteenth century true crime figure who might also, in the novel, have been Jack the Ripper; and that they just happened onto the original materials for this novel somehow. And I certainly can't believe that Mike ever received an entire, unpublished fictionalized full-length manuscript from someone somewhere and then he, himself, edited it down to this journal form and made the selections and then created the book all on his own. And there's certainly no evidence of that whatsoever.
I agree that we don't need and don't even likely have experts as our authors. But someone did have the original idea and someone composed at least these pages, and I'm not sure why we would be inclined to think that someone was any of the persons we have in the game so far.
Finally, you write:
"It is only because of the mystery and disagreement surrounding virtually every facet of the whole saga that this piece has been able to survive as a debatable point for so long, coupled with the potential embarrassment many people closely involved would face were it positively denounced once and for all."
And I agree with this, although I'm not sure that anyone's potential embarrassment is still actively keeping the diary "alive." At this point, I think it's being kept alive almost entirely because no one knows who wrote it. The case for authenticity, slim as it might be, still remains intact in some small circles only because the diary's actual authors have yet to be identified.
But I would also say this about what you have just described below:
"It is only because of the mystery and disagreement surrounding virtually every facet of the whole saga that this piece has been able to survive as a debatable point for so long."
This, it seems to me, is true of a great many things. Any situation wherein the details remain unknown and the facts are surrounded by mysteries, lies, conflicting stories, partial narratives, a lack of hard evidence, and thorough "disagreement," as you say, is bound to remain a topic of interest and discussion. It's only natural.
And how strange would it be if the most widely read book about the most famous serial killer never to be caught or identified turns out to have been written by an author or authors never to be caught or identified?
That would make me smile.
--John |
Author: Scott Nelson
Friday, 06 July 2001 - 06:09 pm | | | Has it been suggested that the 64-odd pages cut out before the diary begins could have contained written text in addition to photographs? |
Author: Christopher T George
Friday, 06 July 2001 - 06:25 pm | | Hi, John, Graham, Caz, and Carps:
John, I'm afraid I am not of any help in answering the question of whether anyone in the Liverpool area at the time of the centennial of the Whitechapel murders in 1988 may have been working on a Maybrick or Ripper novel. The novel that I worked on based on the Maybrick case, I wrote while I was living in the United States, and I did not visit Liverpool between around 1984 and 1995 as I think I explained before. At any rate, that's my story and I'm sticking to it! 
John, I do have to agree with you that the Diary as we know it is unlikely to be connected to a novel. I appreciate Graham's argument that the Diary might be background for a novel, and I suppose that is possible. But arguing against that possibility, as you point out, there is no character development whatsover for anyone else but the speaker, and even with him the writing and descriptions of his emotions are formulaic and repetitive. . . how many times do we have to hear that he is "thrilled" or he is "clever"????
I can though see some value in Graham's argument that someone may have done it either as a prank or a fun project just to see if it could be done, rather than to fool anyone and make a mint. If I may digress a bit, let me tell you a somewhat parallel example. As you may know, I am a historian on the War of 1812 and recently published a book, Terror on the Chesapeake: The War of 1812 on the Bay. I got into this field after researching the life of British Major General Robert Ross who was mortally wounded on September 12, 1814, leading his Redcoats toward Baltimore. It was during the British attack during which the "Star-Spangled Banner" was written two days later by Francis Scott Key, in celebration that "our flag was still there" despite a 25-hour bombardment by the Royal Navy. In any case, part of my research into Ross included meeting a direct descendent of the general's who was then living in Washington, D.C., with his wife and three children. This man, Francis Hamilton, was able to give me useful information on Ross's home village of Rostrevor, Northern Ireland, and on a regimental museum in Bury, England, that contained his uniform and plumed hat.
This gentleman's children as a gift to him wrote a diary in the name of General Ross as a Christmas gift for him, of which I have a photocopy. It is written in period style but is plainly done in fun although they do use quotes from the time attributed to Ross and incidents that are known to have happened. They even use the period-specific "f" instead of "s" so the front cover reads, "Diary of Major General Robt. Rofs 1814." The section of the diary that deals with the day Ross was killed reads as follows (I will write the "f" as an "s" if I may!):
I long to return to Rosstrevor and the arms of my dearest Eliza. I trust the portrait for which I sat last year has now been finished and hangs in the withdrawing room.
But first on these distant shores I must fulfill my duty and sack the city of Baltimore to which the Royal Oak is now on her course for Old Roads Bay on the Patapsco River.
12th September 1814
By the dawn's early light we landed at North Point and breakfasted at Todd's Farm. Here I requisitioned another horse which I have called Mickey of Rosstrevor. It is a mere 25 miles to Baltimore and by God I shall eat in Baltimore tonight or in hell!
I hear the opposition forces are numerous but disorganized, but in the absence of sure information I must advance and reconnoitre in person. . . ." [The next page of the diary is blank.]
The Ross diary is a clear spoof, with the children writing that after routing the American forces at Bladensburg and capturing Washington, Ross and his men enjoyed hamburgers in the White House cooked by a "chef of Scottish origin of the clan Macdonald"! But the point I am making, along the lines of Graham's thinking, is that the Ross diary was not made with the intention of fooling anyone or of making money. It was done for fun. One wonders if the Maybrick Diary might have been created under similar circumstances, but as we have discussed something went wrong and somehow the original intention became forgotten and the Diary became a commercial entity.
Best regards
Chris George |
Author: Graham Sheehan
Friday, 06 July 2001 - 06:38 pm | | Hi John,
For me, it comes down to three possibilies: one, Mike (perhaps with assistance from his then wife) devised the whole thing, from the basic idea to the completed journal. Two, person or persons unknown composed the 'Diary' as a deliberate attempt to fool people into believing that it was what it purports to be, and then this person or partnership, having (according to many commentators) painstakingly put this 'Diary' together, used the wholly unsuitable Mike Barrett as the front man to present the document to the world. Three, Tony Devereux or someone known to him discovered the tenuous link between Maybrick and the Ripper case and decided to expand this into something more substantial. If Tony had intended a deliberate hoax, why not just go public with it? Why pass something with the potential to earn a considerable amount of money, and possibly acclaim also, on to Mike? Unless, of course, it wasn't passed to Mike in the context to which he put it to use. Which of these three is the most likely? Why could Tony D not have written this? It certainly wouldn't have taken a great deal of doing, I don't think. A few drafts would have been needed, just to iron out any creases (a number of which still remain), but there is no reason why he couldn't have penned it. If the rest of his novel was of the same standard as the 'Diary' text, it probably was totally unpublishable anyway, even if the basic idea was an extremely good one. But many people write bad novels, people who wouldn't have a hope of seeing print. Plus, of course, a person need not possess a particularly high level of intelligence to have a good idea, to spot a connection. As a matter of interest, is a sample of Tony's handwriting available, and has it ever been compared to the text in the so-called diary? I think Tony or someone he knew must be the most likely choice based on what we know for the simple reason that there is no one else, except for Mike and Anne.
I feel certain I, and indeed many others here, could create an infinitely more believable piece of work and then pass it off as the actual writings of the man known to us as Jack the Ripper. Everything about the 'Diary' text points to dramatic effect: using an already known historical figure, making a point of almost childishly drawing attention to every well known major area of the case, the ha has, the ridiculously bad prose, the signing it as JtR at its (very convenient) conclusion. I think I would have made Jack what he most likely was - a total nonentity of whom nobody has ever heard. I doubt the Ripper kept any form of journal, but if he did, I think it's highly improbable he would have gloated about his deeds. More likely he would have been appalled by what he'd done after his lust had been sated. I would also have ended my journal abruptly, left things up in the air, certainly not drawn it to a nice cosy conclusion. It just doesn't make sense (now there's a novelty in this case  ).
Had I discovered a connection between Maybrick and Jack and decided to perpetrate a hoax diary in which Maybrick was the Ripper, I think I would have written in a similar way to that described above. I would have made sure there was only just enough to identify the writer as Sir Jim, and then only after some research. I definitely wouldn't have gone out of my way to add such obvious pointers. My Jackbrick would have agonized over his deeds, been full of disgust and self loathing, in terror of such urges returning to grip him. He would have made very little explicit reference to things like tin match boxes and the mutilations. There would have been enough meat to show the writer as Jack, but nothing too overt. Presented correctly, I think Maybrick could well have become the number one suspect and remained there. Of course, I'd probably still have slipped up somewhere, but I'd have had a damn sight better go at it than *someone* did, someone who I don't think for one minute was really trying to fool anyone beside the readers of his (to be acknowledged) work of fiction.
Best regs,
Graham |
Author: John Omlor
Friday, 06 July 2001 - 06:54 pm | | Graham,
Just a quick response because I am heading out the door for the evening. We don't even know if Tony D. knew the diary existed. We only have Mike's word that Tony ever even knew of any diary. And Mike is the opposite of reliable and trustworthy.
Also, nothing about what we do know of Tony suggests that he would ever be likely to try and write a nineteenth century historical novel about James Maybrick or anything else for that matter.
But most disturbingly, you write:
"I think Tony or someone he knew must be the most likely choice based on what we know for the simple reason that there is no one else, except for Mike and Anne."
But this is horrible logic. What can "there is no one else" mean here. We don't have any idea who there "is." We don't have any idea who might be involved. And Tony was never seen with the diary never said he knew about the diary or went on the record about the diary at all. The only reason there even "is" Tony is because Mike Barrett named him, and he has lied about almost everything.
To think that Mike, Anne, and Tony are all there are to choose from -- to think that for some reason we already know everyone who might have been involved -- or that our choices must be limited to the players whose names have appeared so far is to make a dangerous and potentially tragic logical error. And that is compounded by then suggesting that since Mike named Tony, Tony is a likely suspect. You yourself point out that a whole lot of people could have written this book -- and by limiting ourselves to the three people we happen to know about so far we are dooming any investigation into what is likely before it even starts. Saying that because other than Mike or Anne, Tony's name is the only one we know says nothing at all about who likely penned this thing, especially since we only know Tony's name from Mike and Anne.
I must rush off, but I do want to say that not only do I think there are lots more possibilities than the three limited ones you advance above, and not only do I not see any evidence that would allow us to limit ourselves to those three, but I can't see any reason why poor Tony is likely to have written this sort of thing at all. And there is certainly no evidence whatsoever that he did or that he likely did.
But now it's dinnertime and I must be off. I'll try and comment in more detail about the other ideas above tomorrow.
All the best,
--John |
Author: Christopher Scavone
Friday, 06 July 2001 - 06:54 pm | | Does this scenario seem likely to anyone? The book came from Anne's family, like she said it did. I don't think she knew much or cared much about it- to the point of not really knowing if it was real or fake. And then she passed it along to her husband (through Tony)to keep him busy. Didn't she say she did this because she didn't want Mike bothering her father about it? So Mike investigates and thinks it's real, until it's too late and he finally learns where it really came from- puts the pieces together, and said it was a forgery because that's what it was. Mike and Anne were maybe trying to save having her family hounded for answers, and this is why Mike couldn't explain how it was forged. This still doesn't really answer why or how it was forged, but can explain Mike and Anne's involvement. And perhaps the book that the diary quoted also came from the same source. Sort of like "we put a bunch of junk in a box, take it and see what you can use around your house."
What did Anne's father do for a living? |
Author: Christopher T George
Friday, 06 July 2001 - 09:37 pm | | Hi, Christopher:
Anne Graham's father was a worker at Dunlop's tire factory in Speke. This is located next to what in my day, when I lived in Liverpool in the 1960s, was known as Speke Airport, but which, it has just been announced, will be renamed Liverpool John Lennon Airport in spring 2002 when a new terminal is opened. Lennon, in his 1965 book In Own Write called nearby Tudor mansion, Speke Hall, "Talk Hall": not a bad metaphor for the Diary and all the talk about it!
Chris George |
Author: Jeff Bloomfield
Friday, 06 July 2001 - 09:46 pm | | Chris,
Was the airport originally named Speke for the
ill-fated African explorer, and discoverer of
Lake Victoria, John Hanning Speke?
Jeff |
Author: Christopher T George
Friday, 06 July 2001 - 10:09 pm | | Hi, Jeff:
No. Speke is one of the ancient manors mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086, so the locale well predates explorer John Hanning Speke. I believe the McCartneys lived for a while in Speke, where there is now a big housing estate and a Ford factory as well as the Dunlop tire plant. The explorer's forebears conceivably might have been connected to the ancient manor if we consider that a number of English surnames are derived from placenames.
Best regards
Chris George |
Author: Graham Sheehan
Saturday, 07 July 2001 - 03:03 am | | Hi John, Chris, all
Refreshed after a night's sleep, I may possibly be slightly more logical this morning. May be, but probably won't be
If you look at what I wrote above though, John, I didn't say I thought the diary must of been the work of Mike, Anne or Tony - I also included someone Tony knew, or knew of, which opens things up considerably. Plus I said I believed this only to be likely (as opposed to must have been so) based on what we know. There is no doubt plenty we don't know, and I would be perfectly willing to bin my probably way off beam theory should anything more compelling come to light. Eight years is a long time for the players in this game to be under the media spotlight, and yet where is the evidence that this fatuous piece of nonsense was the work of a serious forger who has yet to be named? Yes, I think it's certainly possible that someone could have written the journal in the same manner that the Ross diary Chris mentioned above was composed: as an exercise in entertainment, nothing more. But as I've said several times now, it just doesn't stand up as a serious forgery, at least not to my jaundiced eye. And if it isn't, it has to be something else. What else could it be but either a short stand alone piece of mildly entertaining hypothesy, or a small part of a larger fictional work?
Based on Mike's previous performances, don't you think it likely that he'd have blabbed if he and/or Anne had been protecting a forger(s), unless, possibly, the forger had been Billy Graham (which also seems very unlikely)? I don't buy Anne Graham's tale about the book having been in her family for a second. What absolute and utter twaddle, in my opinion. The 'Diary' wasn't written more than fourteen years ago, of that I'm certain. It seems to me that the Barretts (as they were in the early '90s) hit on a way to make some money. I guess we can't really blame them for that because they were hardly affluence people. We know Mike had health problems and couldn't work. But it all got wildly out of control. They quite obviously underestimated the intense interest in all things JtR related, even today when the chance of anyone proving his identity beyond reasonable doubt is almost nil.
For myself, the saddest part of the whole fiasco isn't that Mike tried to pass the 'Diary' off as genuine, but rather the immense of amount time and energy which has been wasted studying and re-examining the damn thing (including my own), plus the bad feeling it has generated in Ripperology circles. Mike and Anne's marriage fell apart apparently because of the stress the damn journal created. As with the hoaxed cassette which was sent to the police during the Yorkshire Ripper manhunt, the 'Diary' is something that has nothing to do with the actual case, but which has diverted a huge amount of human resource away from study of the real issues.
Best regs,
Graham |
Author: Caroline Anne Morris
Saturday, 07 July 2001 - 06:22 am | | Hi Graham,
But Mike didn't 'try to pass the 'Diary' off as genuine. If he simply took it to London and said he was given it by the late Tony D, and that he knew nothing else about it, he couldn't logically be claiming to know it was genuine, could he?
You wrote:
'...coupled with the potential embarrassment many people closely involved would face were it positively denounced once and for all.'
Well, Shirley, Keith and Robert Smith have been courting that embarrassment for ages, haven't they, by trying to get Melvin to 'positively denounce' the diary once and for all, either by getting Kane's handwriting samples analysed (no one has ever suggested Tony D's could be a match, by the way), or by showing conclusively that the diary ink is chemically identical to pre-1992 Diamine, or by revealing any other inside information, so far kept under wraps, which would prove one of our modern players was either involved in creating the fake, or knew it was faked in recent years.
Love,
Caz |
Author: Graham Sheehan
Saturday, 07 July 2001 - 07:05 am | | Hi Caz,
If someone had given that journal to me, I'd probably have read it once, thought 'utter nonsense', and thrown it in the nearest bin. I certainly wouldn't have taken it to a literary agent, following some pretty intensive research. *Why* would someone do that? Why not an expert in old documents, or something of that nature? As everyone keeps pointing out to me, Mike lied at every turn. Why would he have taken this accursed document to Doreen Montgomery unless it was with the hope of it seeing print? And the only way it ever would do that was if it was believed to be genuine. The fact that it very obviously isn't meant nothing to those with money to make.
Melvin Harris? Wasn't he the effeminate one out of It Ain't 'Alf Hot, Mum? Seriously, I don't think for one instant that Mel Harris knows who forged the diary. I don't think anyone does, for the simple reason that no one did, if you see what I mean. Shirley Harrison no doubt wrote the text accompanying the journal in good faith. But having put her name to the 'Diary' book, she's had the unenviable task of having to stick by it, despite its increasing lack of credibility. No amount of badgering Harris will ever get him to speak, because he knows little if anything more the you or I, I'm certain of that. This truth will eventually come out. And when the whole truth of this sorry tale does likewise, I think many will be disappointed. All of these ink tests etc are a waste of time and money. They're not necessary. All one has to do is read the 'Diary' text in the cold light of day to see it was written recently, is not a serious attempt at a hoax, and was most likely put together for either amusement or as part of an intended larger piece of fiction. These just being my humble opinions, as ever
Best regs,
Graham |
Author: John Omlor
Saturday, 07 July 2001 - 08:26 am | | Good morning, Graham,
We agree about many things (what Melvin probably does or doesn't know, for instance). So I just want to make two small points.
First, you write:
"Based on Mike's previous performances, don't you think it likely that he'd have blabbed if he and/or Anne had been protecting a forger(s), unless, possibly, the forger had been Billy Graham (which also seems very unlikely)?"
Yes, I think if Mike knew the truth about the origins of this book and could prove it, he probably would have done so long before this. He tried claiming he did of course, and was unable to prove anything at all. That's why I think it's at least possible that he still, sadly, has no idea who really wrote this book.
But you also said:
"I didn't say I thought the diary must of been the work of Mike, Anne or Tony - I also included someone Tony knew, or knew of, which opens things up considerably. Plus I said I believed this only to be likely (as opposed to must have been so) based on what we know."
Well, one of the things we don't know is whether Tony even had anything at all to do with any of this or even knew this diary ever existed before Mike did. So I'll just ask you Graham:
What makes you think Tony Devereaux ever even knew anything at all about this diary before Mike did?
What would allow us to assume that he ever gave anything at all to Mike or had ever even seen this book?
If you have any good reasons to think and assume either of these things, I'd like to know what they are.
But in any case, I appreciate that you, like so many of us, are struggling with a situation that in many ways, makes little or no sense. Perhaps someday it will, perhaps not.
But I really don't feel that my own time is being wasted, as you suggest, "studying and re-examining the damn thing" and playing with the mysteries and problems and possible scenarios and uncertainties and conflicting evidence and stories and the fascinating situation posed by such a situation and such a text. I think it's been fun. I think it helps us examine our own expectations about documents and evidence and uncertainty. I think how we react to these sorts of problems can show us things about ourselves. I think it can also be good exercise for our logic and our reason and our reading skills. And again, most importantly, I think it's fun. No one should waste their time on this thing if that's what they feel they are doing. Discussing it isn't going to make the world a better place, nor is it really important for any clear and vital reason. It's a lark for most of us. But it's also a provocative and entertaining mystery for some of us and a fascinating textual problem as well. Discussing it isn't going to help us at all in determining the identity of Jack the Ripper, either. Of course, a close look at these boards perhaps demonstrates that discussing Jack the Ripper and the case of Jack the Ripper isn't going to help us at all in determining the identity of Jack the Ripper, either. But neither discussion is a waste of time if people are enjoying themselves and getting something out of participating. And if they are not, then that's their call. But you say that studying the diary "diverted a huge amount of human resource away from study of the real issues." But I think the actual origin of the diary is its own "real issue" -- completely separate from anything to do with the real identity of Jack the Ripper, but fascinating nonetheless. Why would one issue be more "real" that the other? They are, as you correctly point out, relatively unrelated. But they are both fascinating mysteries, at least to me. Of course, I regret the hostility that people's reactions to the book have engendered. But that's more a question of turf and egos and people themselves than it is a question of this goofy book. And I'm not sure one can blame this book for Mike and Anne's marital troubles either. Things probably go a bit deeper than that, I suspect. But I just wanted to say that I do think there are interesting questions about reading and interpretation and personal expectations and desire raised by this text and its short public history, and I don't think that analyzing them or discussing them is a waste of time for me, anyway.
I can't speak for anyone else, of course.
Now I must prepare for day one of a two day golf tournament. I'll be away from the boards for most of the next two days, I'm afraid, except for a quick check in the evening or early morning, possibly. But I did want to thank everyone for their provocative and fascinating ideas.
Have a great weekend,
--John |
Author: R.J. Palmer
Saturday, 07 July 2001 - 10:34 am | | John--that fly in your jam is the fact that Tony D had possession of Mike's copy of RWE's book on Maybrick. [---but I know: Mike's research, right?] But tell me, then, why did Ms. Graham use Tony as part of her provenance, as well? If you perhaps believe that the Maybrick diary can't be older than 14 years, and AG's story isn't true, then why did she use TD as part of the equation? Did she know the diary could be traced as least far back as TD, and had better use that as part of her provenance?
Also. If, as your hedgingly state above, Mike "probably" or "possibly" doesn't know where this diary came from [I disagree, by the way] are you suggesting now that the Crashaw quote & Mike's prior ownership of the Sphere is nothing more than remarkable coincidence? And are you happy with that? Or are you suggesting something else?
Caz--sounds like you're saying that y'all won't believe it's a modern hoax unless you have a modern hoaxer. Is this a realistic prerequisite? RP |
Author: Graham Sheehan
Saturday, 07 July 2001 - 10:42 am | | Hi John,
What makes me think Tony D was involved? Well, as the g/f has been known to say to me occasionally around that time of the month - I just do No, it's more than that, of course. Tony's name was mentioned as the person who gave the journal to Mike right at the start of the story. Why would he have said that? Surely it would have been a risk if he'd merely found it, or even stolen it, for someone could come along and contradict him. The idea of a person or persons deliberately hoaxing the 'Diary' and using Mike as the front man is, to my way of thinking, almost beyond belief. I just can't imagine that ever happened, and I don't think it did. If it had, I'm convinced Mike would have named them by now. Could Tony merely have been a middle man the hoaxers? I very much doubt it. But I feel sure it was he who did indeed pass the journal, or the text which now appears in it, to Mike. After his death, when he was no longer around to give his version of events, Mike went public with it. That seems a perfectly rational line of thought to me, or at least no more irrational than Mike Barrett being chosen to bring the 'Diary' before the public. IMHO, far too much emphasis has been placed on tracking down the so-called (and, I'm convinced, nonexistent) forger(s). But then I guess that's only natural.
If Mike didn't get the text from Tony, he must have got it from somewhere. I don't think anyone used him as the front man, and I don't think he, or he and Anne, devised it either. Anne alone is a possibility, although not one I tend to favour. And I can't imagine him just happening upon it lying in an old chest somewhere - unless some devious conspirators planted it there for him to find You see, it all comes back to Mike having received the text from Tony as being the most likely of several improbable possibilities. Nothing makes sense, so sometimes we must make a little of our own.
So, in my parrelel universe Tony D gives Mike the text in whatever form and tells him to do something with it. Mike later claimed he was getting it into print in to carry out Tony's wishes. But, according to him, Tony only told him to do 'something' with it, not present it as a factual document and make several people, including MB himself, a significant amount of money by fraudulent means. But Mike certainly did something with it, and the next thing he knew it was a global story, and he was right near the centre of it. The wheels started to come off. He clearly didn't want to tell us the truth, possibly because of a genuine desire not to betray his friend now Tony was dead, so he came out with all sorts of nonsense instead. Very obvious nonsense, too, it should be noted. Just as the 'Diary' itself was obvious nonsense in the context of being a first hand account written by the man responsible for the horrific murders of several East End prostitutes. Which again moves me to ask this question: how did it ever get to the stage it did? I think Harrison's book, with its bending of the facts and it's dubious expert testimonies, was largely to blame. Without the book, the journal would have remained what it is: a mildly interesting pastiche of what a diary written by the JtR of general public perception would have looked like. Once more I'll state my belief that the Maybrick text started out as acknowledged fiction, but was viewed by the inexpert Mike Barrett as being something which the public just might believe was the real thing. With the results we have been witnessing for the best part of a decade.
When the truth is finally revealed, it will be very simple indeed, I think. More of a sad tale than a story of genius and cunning, twisting and turning and tangled. Yes, John, I can understand why so many people discuss the matter now, and why they enjoy doing so (hell, I enjoy it myself ), but I don't think it should ever have been allowed to get to the stage it has. But certain people saw the money making potential, and money is God to most people these days. *That* is why it's been so fiercely defended, and why so many tests have been carried out on it etc etc ad infinitum. The Diary of Jack the Ripper is a cash cow if milked by expert hands.
Best regs,
Graham |
Author: John Omlor
Saturday, 07 July 2001 - 05:24 pm | | Hi all,
A quick response.
Graham, from what I read above, then, the only reason you think Tony had anything at all to do with this whole affair is Mike's statements.
Mike's word.
That might be a problem for you.
Hi RJ: Are you suggesting that Tony had Mike's copy of this book before Mike had the diary in hand? Do you have any way of knowing this? I'm confused. Has this ever been demonstrated, in any way? If not, then why would we assume that Tony got Mike's book before Mike got hold of the diary rather than afterwards? Is there anything, any reliable or material evidence, that would fairly or logically allow us to assume this?
Why did both Anne and Mike use Tony in their stories (stories, by the way, which we know are both chock full of holes and certainly unreliable at best)? I don't know, but here's a thought: he was convenient. And, by 1992, he was dead.
So this somehow means that Tony must have actually been involved?
Some evidence would be nice.
But I guess we can do without that for now.
RJ: All I am suggesting by saying that it is still possible that Mike doesn't know who actually wrote the diary is that it is possible that Mike did not put the quote from the Sphere volume in the text himself.
Who did?
I have no idea at the moment and we have no evidence that would allow us to claim that we know, do we?
And if Mike did, then he must have helped write this book and he must know how it was done -- and yet he remains unable to tell us, even when he wants to.
Odd, that.
Gotta' run.
All the best,
--John |
Author: Christopher T George
Sunday, 08 July 2001 - 09:11 am | | Hi, John and Graham:
I agree with you John that possibly the reason Tony Devereaux was named by Mike Barrett as the person who gave Mike the Diary was that he was conveniently dead by Spring 1992 when Mike told literary agent Doreen Montgomery where he got the Diary.
There may be a real parallel here between Maybrick and Devereaux in that both might be totally innocent -- Maybrick of being Jack the Ripper or of writing the Diary, and Devereaux of having anything to do with the Diary, let alone having a hand in forging it. So really, Graham, I have to agree with John: There is nothing to indicate that Devereaux was involved in the forgery. If he was, we need a lot more evidence of his involvement. Speculation alone is insufficient to put him in the frame.
Best regards
Chris George |
Author: R.J. Palmer
Sunday, 08 July 2001 - 11:38 am | | Chris--Hello. Let me spill my guts for a moment. Of course the possibility that Tony D was merely "convenient" exists and I think this is what both you and Peter (among others) have said for a good long time. I do believe, however, that there is a solid possibility that Tony D. at least knew of the Diary's existence, since he had Mike's booklet that dealt with the Maybrick case. This, obviously, was before the diary was presented to the world at large. Circumstantial, of course. Can much be deduced from this alone? Well, no.
But have you ever noticed the one point on which Melvin & Shirley & Keith all agree? The one single point that those who have most investigated this mystery (other than PB) all believe? They agree that the diary wasn't created by Anne or Mike... ie., that it came from somewhere else. This flies in the face of what nearly everyone else here seems to be saying, but I happen to believe it is a good possibility.
Now since wiser minds than mine have told me that I ought not spend any more time wracking my head against the Maybrick diary, let me explain, why after all has been said & done, I still believe that the much disparaged Melvin Harris has the answer. All & all, I think his theory is the only one that is logically consistent with all the facts.
AG has said two things about the diary's provenance. #1: First to Harold Brough she said that the diary came from Tony D. and that is all she knew. #2: She said that the diary came from an old tin box and that she eventually gave it to Tony D. to give to Mike. Now we all know that some people believe Story #2 but no one ever considers the possibility that Story #1 is true. Yet I think it is a solid possibility.
Why? Well, first of all, as you already know, I believe the text of the diary indicates that it was written after 1987. I don't believe it came from the old tin box. Secondly, we only really have 2 or 3 independently verified stories from the time before Mike brought the diary to London. We have the child's story that Mike & Anne fought over the diary. We have a story [told in connection with an interview] that AG showed up at work upset about Mike "writing a book". Finally, we have TD's daughter saying that she had borrowed from TD a copy of RWE's Maybrick booklet. Not a heck of alot, I admit. But who's story is this consistent with?
To my mind, it is not consistent with AG's story, which I can't believe anyway because of the diary's text. It's never made any sense to me that she would give Mike the diary with the instructions "do something with it" and then be mortified when he decided to publish it. Is it consistent with the diary coming from somewhere else and AG being upset that Mike was going to take the damned thing to London? Yes, it is consistent with that.
Now look at the claim made by John above, a claim that is very similar to statements made by Caz & others in the past:
"Mike remains unable to tell us [who wrote the Maybrick diary}, even when he wants to."
This is a statement of fact. But this is merely speculation disguised as fact. This has certainly not been proven. And how could it be? Who can really know what Mike wants except Mike himself?
What is clear to me is that Mike Barrett is not the imbecile that everyone posting on these boards claims he is. He has told everybody exactly what they wanted to hear. Melvin seems to be the only one that realizes that Mike was milking every udder of the cow at the same time. According to Shirley he broke down at interviews and confessed that he knew nothing about where the diary was created. But in the same time-frame he called Feldy and told him the diary came from Anne & the Knowsley buildings! He tells the Cloak & Staggerers that he wrote the damned thing--but in a very unconvincing way, as if to keep the diary mystery alive. He tells Mr. Gray that it came from others & drops some clues to this effect. He winks at Martin Fido at the suggestion that it came from a piece of fiction written by Anne. He confesses to Harold Brough (but can't give any details). He tells Shirley privately that he thinks it's genuine. And he (evidently) works with Mr. Gray trying to prove it's a forgery, but at the same time lets Shirley send him on a fact-finding mission to the Liverpool Library.
Now return to the statement made by John above, that Mike can't tell us who wrote the diary even when he wants to. Do we know this for certain? Of course not, because we don't know what Mike wants. Maybe Mike wants to protect his friends. Maybe Mike wants to keep the damned thing a mystery. Maybe Mike wants to keep milking the cow. All in all, I even rather have come to like Mike. It must have taken some incredible guts to put the thing under his arm and take the train to London.
Has Mike told us absolutely nothing (and, as Caz has suggested) knows absolutely nothing? No, I don't believe so. I think Mike in giving us his sworn affidavits did tell us things.
First of all, I'm not entirely convinced that these affidavits have been completely disproven. Second of all, Mike did tell Mr. Gray some things that have been confirmed. He said that he & Anne had bought a red diary before bringing the Maybrick journal to London. This was investigated and confirmed. He told us the quote came from the Sphere book and produced a copy. This has been 'somewhat' confirmed, depending on whom you believe. There has evidently been some independent confirmation that the Sphere was owned by Mike prior to the diary being brought to London, and the Sphere people have said that they had given books out for donation in the past. Logic, probability, and the scene at the Liverpool library suggests to me that Mike couldn't have found the quote there. So some of what Mike told Mr. Gray does appear to me to be verifiable.
I admit this is little to go on. But here's the bottom line. The text suggests to me that the diary is recent. As far as I am concerned, either you & Peter are correct and Mike's confessions have some merit; Martin is correct [I used to believe a variation of this, myself]; or (most likely it seems to me) Melvin is correct: the diary came from somewhere else and Mike was merely a placer, but indeed knows...
Until someone can show me better evidence, I'm sticking with Melvin's scenerio. I guess that pretty much sums up my thoughts on the mystery. See you on the other boards. Please send all libel suits to my email address above. RJP |
Author: Peter R.A. Birchwood
Sunday, 08 July 2001 - 12:15 pm | | Hi Roger:
I just got back from Ireland and have finished scrolling through about 300 JtR messages most of which have gone into delete. Your last one however is typically well conceived and researched. There is one point that I must make which needs to be understood when considering MB's part in all of this.
There are references in the Feldman and Harrison books to stories told by Mike which we are obviously meant to take with a pinch of salt. One of these is that Mike had been seriously ill with kidney disease, had nearly died and had been on dialysis.
I have seen a report by a doctor confirming that by the mid-1980's Mike had indeed suffered serious kidney failure and that later he underwent dialysis treatment. For those unfamiliar with this treatment it involves sitting for several hours at a time connected by tubes to a machine which filters and cleans the blood. It is a necesary but painfull treatment.
If we are concerned that MB's stories of the diary and how he forged it are often inconsistent and his character changeable then we must consider that this disease and its treatment means that fatigue poisons accumulate in the body, the mind is affected in various ways, it is difficult to concentrate and memory lapses are common. Incredibally enough, even such mundane things as handwriting can change!
I'm familiar with all these effects because they happened to me during my three years of dialysis before I got the kidney transplant that saved my life. I even had to give the Bank a new signature!
Incidentally, although it was said during the Wallace trial that William Herbert Wallace's kidney disease had altered the moral centre of his brain to make him a criminal mastermind, I think that is a fallacy. |
Author: Christopher T George
Sunday, 08 July 2001 - 12:34 pm | | Hi, RJ:
Thanks for your thoughts.
One thing that I had not realized until recently is that Tony Devereaux was an older man than Barrett. This is not clear from Shirley's Hyperion edition but her 1998 British Blake paperback (p. 7) quotes Mike as saying that in 1989 he began to collect his daughter Caroline from school in Kirkdale and would stop into the Saddle pub on the way where he met Tony. Mike stated, "He was about 67 at the time and I was 38." This would make Devereaux more of the generation of Billy Graham and not of Mike's generation at all. Billy was born in 1913 (Feldman, Virgin hardback, p. 176) making him 76 in 1989. I am not sure that this necessarily implies that Billy Graham and Tony were buddies, but the closeness of their ages is worth noting for the record.
Now, the Diary could have been "placed" with Mike because Tony or someone else realized, knowing Barrett's personality, that he would recognize a big story when he saw it, which is indeed what happened. Possibly when no one else claimed the Diary and under pressure from Feldman, Anne came up with the "been-in-the-family-for-years" story. As Paul Begg has noted, it is interesting that the two stories, the original one and Anne's revised one, both feature the Diary going through the hands of Tony Devereaux.
RJ, I also agree with you that Mike's confessions should not be discarded out of hand, which is why I have been pressing for further follow-up with the auctioneers where Mike says he bought the scrapbook. As you say, the purchase of the little marroon diary is a case where it can be proved that he was speaking the truth. This though might be explained by Mike thinking that the scrapbook did not look like the right sort of book to contain the Diary and that there was some thought of transferring the text to a period diary.
Best regards
Chris George |
Author: Christopher T George
Sunday, 08 July 2001 - 01:03 pm | | Hi, Peter:
You sneaked in while I was posting to RJ. Nice to see you here again. Thanks for confirming that Mike Barrett did indeed have kidney problems and for your valuable thoughts on how that may have effected his general health and his memory. I appreciate your input.
Best regards
Chris George |
Author: John Hacker
Sunday, 08 July 2001 - 01:48 pm | | Greetings all,
My wife was surfing and came up with this link which some people might find interesting.
http://www.triumphpc.com/saucyjacky/
It's a "Jack the Ripper Simulator". It offers "Eliza" style chat (You ask a "question" and it responds with a variety precanned text selections) with "Jack". The text responses are all out of our dear friend, "Mr. Diary". So if anyone feels the need to chat w/Mr. Maybot, you should hightail it to the above URL, it's a hoot.
Here's a sample question they suggested and the reponses that I got.
Q "Why did you stop killing?"
A1 "I could not cut like my last, visions of her flooded back as I struck."
A2 "I stopped myself in time."
A3 "The last ones ripest for Jack's idea of fun."
You can get bits of fun regarding aresenic and Michael and Florrie, etc.. Be warned a few responses contain hyperlinks that link to mortuary photos without any warning.
Unfortunately the humour here comes with a price, another page on the site
http://www.triumphpc.com/jack-the-ripper/about_persona-bots/index.shtml
mentions that it was developed to promote a major motion picture, and with the diary centric nature of the site there can be little doubt as to the nature of the film. Sigh.
There is also a John Lennon bot there as well if anyone is interested. Hmmm... It might be fun to get the two of them talking to each other. :-)
John Hacker
(Snark) |
Author: John Omlor
Sunday, 08 July 2001 - 04:01 pm | | Hi everyone,
Once again I am rushed, but just a quick response to RJ, amidst all the guessing and speculation we are all admittedly doing.
First, a point of agreement. RJ writes about what many of those involved in researching this book believe:
"They agree that the diary wasn't created by Anne or Mike... i.e., that it came from somewhere else. This flies in the face of what nearly everyone else here seems to be saying, but I happen to believe it is a good possibility.
Me too, RJ. And I, of course, have never said that the diary was "created by Mike or Anne."
Now I don't want to go point by point over all the things that have proven to be a problem with Mike's confessions, including all of the dates, and the scenario of composition – with Mike dictating and Anne transcribing and Caroline watching -- which almost no one believes, as far as I can see, and the word of the auctioneer that his account does not match the way they do business and that they have no record of such a book being sold and everything else.
Mike has tried three times now to confess, and prove that he wrote the diary -- the first time in the papers, in public, no less, and then in two affidavits -- and all three times he was unable to prove he wrote anything at all or offer a complete and coherent account of how it was done. And the newspaper interviewer even noted how many simple procedural details Mike couldn't answer. Now we get people speculating that Mike was deliberately holding back even though he apparently wanted very badly to derail Feldman's project and to prove the diary was a fake. But he couldn't. So now RJ speculates he didn't really want to? Then why go to the papers that first time at all -- why not simply the let the thing live? And even Mike's later account of buying the maroon diary has some of the details wrong, including the dates, I believe -- and the records show us that he ordered it with his own name and address -- hardly the clearly incriminating act of a man planning to use thing for nefarious purposes as he later claims.
Melvin's "account" concerning the motives and knowledge of all involved, by the way, is pure and utter speculation and has not a single piece of substantiating material evidence behind it and even he admits he has no interest in identifying the writers of this book, but that he does not believe either Mike or Anne penned the thing (unless he's changed his mind since he last posted here).
RJ: you claim that the following -- Anne's original story -- is a "solid possibility,":
"First to Harold Brough she said that the diary came from Tony D. and that is all she knew."
But since Anne has proven to change her story and make up stuff for the sake of convenience, we are of course going to need much more than this to start believing that any diary ever really came from Tony.
Do we get any of what we are going to need in any of the posts above. Well, no, sadly. But I suppose that is predictable, since none apparently exists. [And I'm not sure any of RJ's three independently verified stories were ever really independently verified, since the young child's tale cannot really be called independent verification of anything, and a daughter's tale about her father can't either. And Anne Barrett could have been upset at work for any of a number of reasons -- why we should believe it had anything to do with a mentioned book (her story, once again, and not independently verified -- that she was upset might have been verified, but the reason for this certainly has not been) is beyond me, unless there is some real evidence somewhere.]
But, of course, there's not.
By the way, has Melvin ever said on the record that Mike knew the diary was a forgery when he walked into Doreen's office that first time? I don't remember him ever actually saying this explicitly, in print, and I do not believe he has any clear evidence at all to support this conclusion, but you include it as part of Melvin's scenario: i.e. Mike was a placer "but indeed knows..."
Also, by the way, I still have not see you, RJ, nor anyone else offer any evidence at all that Tony had the RWE pamphlet before Mike first saw the diary. Could this be because there is no such evidence. If so, then the pamphlet cannot properly or logically be considered evidence of Tony's prior knowledge or involvement in the project.
RJ cites all of Mike's different stories and concludes that they don't pan out because Mike is somehow deliberately and in a politically clever way strategically misleading all of his interviewers in order to play each side against the other.
Of course, the other possibility is that Mike is just making stuff up to get attention and doesn't really know what he is talking about.
Which is more likely?
I'll let everyone decide that one for themselves.
Finally, RJ points out that the scenario that seems to him most likely is simply that the diary came from "somewhere else."
You know what? I agree. Although I really don't think we have anywhere near enough evidence to decide that this "somewhere else" somehow must include Tony Devereaux. Especially considering it is only Mike and Anne who have said it does. But I agree with RJ's speculation the diary probably came from "somewhere else."
In fact, here's the real truth as I see it now, whether we'd like to admit it or not:
We don't have any real idea precisely where this "somewhere else" was.
And we do not have clear or convincing material evidence that Mike or Anne knew precisely where this "somewhere else" originally was. Although people speculate about this all the time. In fact, there is still not any reliable material evidence that would allow us to make a case that anyone who has been talked to or who has been mentioned so far or who has written about this book or who has discussed this book or who has been named in conjunction with this book has any solid idea, backed up by reliable evidence that can be trusted, where this "somewhere else" was. No one at all.
I have not seen any compelling evidence that anyone we have met so far in this little drama knows for sure exactly where this "somewhere else" was. That includes Mike and Anne and Tony and Billy and Shirley and Keith and Melvin and Robert and RJ and Peter and Chris and Christopher and Caroline and Paul F. and Paul B. and Martin and me and you, dear reader.
Melvin has not said where this "somewhere else" was. We have no real evidence that Melvin knows where this "somewhere else" was. Melvin doesn't even say he knows where this "somewhere else" was.
No one in fact knows where this "somewhere else" was for sure.
Because still, today, no one knows who wrote this book.
Except, of course, for the person or persons who wrote this book and those others that they might have told.
And no one is speaking. And the evidence of their identities simply remains missing and I remain a happy reader.
Bye for the evening.
All the best,
--John |
Author: Caroline Anne Morris
Monday, 09 July 2001 - 11:56 am | | Hi John,
Perhaps no one alive knows who wrote the diary?
Hi RJ,
You asked if it was a realistic prerequisite, to bag a modern hoaxer in order to believe the diary is a modern hoax. Well, it doesn’t matter what I think, does it? You know as well as I do that Keith, Shirley and Robert, among others, are not going to be persuaded out of their strongly and sincerely-held viewpoints, simply by a majority of posters here offering their various opinions as to why they are convinced Melvin is right. Their own beliefs will only get stronger, I would have thought, the longer this thing goes on with no one being willing or able to bind even one of the usual suspects to the diary’s creation. You read what Keith wrote, didn’t you, about there being no one else in the loop? Realistic or not, we’d better learn to live with it, ‘cause it ain’t going nowhere yet. 
And I could hardly believe your statement, that:
‘Melvin seems to be the only one that realizes that Mike was milking every udder of the cow at the same time.’
Pull the udder one! What on earth makes you think Shirley and Keith aren’t aware of the cat and mouse game Mike was playing with the various investigators? It's pretty obvious that he was telling Shirley he knew nothing, while he was enlisting Alan Gray’s help to prove the thing a recent fake. Gray was still urging him to come up with a believable and newsworthy account of his involvement in 1996! Melvin, Peter and many many others have been every bit as happy to take Mike's word for it that he was involved (although I don't think he ever claimed to be a mere handler or placer), as Shirley, Keith and others have been unhappy to accept any of his stories at face value. And if Melvin is not prepared to offer conclusive evidence that Mike knew the diary was a modern fake when he took it to London, how can we know there is anything in Melvin’s box of tricks beyond choosing to believe Mike’s word when it suits?
Hi Graham and everyone,
If Mike knows the truth, there seems to me to be very little doubt that he would have told it at some point, either wholly, partially, or mixed in with the lies, if it could have destroyed Feldy’s dream of Maybrick being the ripper, and proved Anne was lying about the diary having come from her family. So I don’t think it’s realistic to start speculating about any new scenarios involving Mike that haven’t already been hinted at in any of his previous accounts or confessions, when he was so desperate to prove the diary a modern fake that he engaged Alan Gray to help him.
Hi Peter,
Speaking then as someone who knows, would you say that a man who had, by the mid-1980s, ‘suffered serious kidney failure and…later… underwent dialysis treatment….’, involving ‘sitting for several hours at a time connected by tubes to a machine which filters and cleans the blood….a necesary but painfull treatment’, would be likely to be contemplating, conceiving and carrying off a money-making scheme, by the late 1980s, involving the creation and marketing of a hoax diary of James Maybrick as Jack the Ripper? Isn’t it a bit like suspecting a septuagenarian stroke-suffering Royal physician of being a serial killer?
I do think, however, that you are right to doubt that kidney disease could alter the moral centre of anyone’s brain sufficiently to turn them into any kind of mastermind, if the potential is not already there.
Love,
Caz |
Author: Peter R.A. Birchwood
Monday, 09 July 2001 - 12:10 pm | | Chris:
Tony Devereux was born in 1931 so was actually 58 in 1989. Mike was born in 1952. Tony was therefore 18 years younger than Billy Graham and was 7 years older than Gerard Kane. |
Author: Christopher T George
Monday, 09 July 2001 - 01:45 pm | | Hi, Peter:
Thanks for setting us right in regard to Tony Devereaux's age. It looks then that this was another piece of "bum" information that Mike told Shirley that Tony was thirty years older than he was when in fact he was twenty years older.
Hi, Caz et al.:
I think one of the things that is clear about Barrett is that he is a man on the look-out for the "main chance" and a place in the spotlight. I agree that he was playing one party off against another for his own advantage, and I would have to concur with you, Caz, that it had to have become pretty obvious to the other players what his game was.
All the best
Chris |
Author: John Omlor
Monday, 09 July 2001 - 04:17 pm | | Hi all,
And according to recently released information, now available on another board, Chris George was born in 1948. That means that he is only a scant four years older than Mike Barrett and that they are of the same generation and were probably in Liverpool at the same time once, long ago, and Chris probably had a copy of RWE's pamphlet in 1989 and I'd bet he knew more about the peculiar combination of Maybrick/the Ripper than almost anyone on the planet at the time...
Still working on gathering data for a future post which will tell all about Mr. George, I remain,
--John
PS: Seriously, though, I agree that there is no question that Mike has seemed willing to say just about anything to get attention, including, no doubt, some stuff he just made up. I'm not sure how this helps us decide whether he even knows the truth. Except, of course, as Caz points out, there does seem to have been a time when he was desperately trying to derail the Feldman express and Anne's second story and, if he did write this thing, or knew who did, he could have used that information then to successfully accomplish his desires. The fact that he seemed at that point unable (or unwilling, for RJ) to produce the proof that would have crushed his enemies, to have put an embarrassing end to Feldman's project and Anne's story, still seems at least to suggest that he didn't have the proof to begin with. But who knows?
|
Author: Graham Sheehan
Monday, 09 July 2001 - 05:21 pm | | Hi all,
Aha! I knew it. Just as I suspected, the 'Diary' was indeed produced as fiction - didn't I hear mention of Mr George having written/been writing a novel involving Maybrick? And it now transpires that he was close friends with Mike Barrett (feasibly). Well, there you have it. I can see it all now: Chris writes the journal text to be included in his novel, but down the pub one evening with his old pal (and, I'm sure I read somewhere, best man at his wedding) Mike Barrett, he hatches the dastardly plot to use MB as front man in daring hoax scam. Ever wondered where CG got the cash to pay for that Lamborghini with the RIP1 plate (which he allegedly owns, according to a second cousin of Anne Graham's friend Betty Inglenook's Aunt Mavis, financed by the immense wealth the DOJTR has made him)? Only four years difference in age between CG & MB - how much more proof does anyone need?
OK, mystery solved. Large Jack D for me (and Chris is paying - he can afford to out of the vast fortune he has made from his ingenious forgery).
BTW, to switch into serious mode for a moment, and to pull a strand of another thread over here, I definitely think the constant allusions to Abberline by 'Maybrick' are very suspicious in view of the relative lack of prominence the inspector occupied during the actual investigation (as if the rest of the journal wasn't more than enough).
Best regs,
Grhaham |
Author: Caroline Anne Morris
Tuesday, 10 July 2001 - 05:25 am | | Hi All,
Hi Graham,
I think, if Guy Hatton is reading, he may be thinking that the taunting of Abberline mirrors the Geordie hoaxer's taunting of George Oldfield during the Yorkshire Ripper investigation. If our diary hoaxer was influenced by Geordie Jack, is there a slight problem, in that he chose to imitate someone who was proved to be only a hoaxer - not the killer?
Or is this a manifestation of a typical trait of hoaxers of the sick kind - pick someone at the heart of an ongoing investigation (George Oldfield for Geordie Jack, Mishter George Lusk for an 1888 hoaxer and clever little Abberline for the diarist), and taunt the life out of them? I would think it pretty much fits with the psychology of a nobody with an inferiority complex. But was our diarist au fait with the psychology, and purposely imitating it for good effect, or did he share the trait?
Love,
Caz |
Author: Caroline Anne Morris
Tuesday, 10 July 2001 - 05:52 am | | Hi Chris,
So, the plot thickens. We know all about your Liverpool connections. How are your kidneys? Has your handwriting ever changed as a result of eating cold ones for supper? Are you a good liar, or a hopeless one? Or could you fool Shirley Harrison into believing you are a worse liar than you really are, and that you are not quite the fool you appear? Are you a witty fool, who buys an 1891 diary in which to write the diary of a man who died in 1889, or a foolish wit, who puts ha-has everywhere for the unwary reader? Have you an incriminating word processor? Do you have something against a woman? (or are you smiling for another reason right now?  ) Are you Catholic, by any chance? And is this the Spanish Inquisition?
(And yes, Graham, I think MH was Gloria in 'It Ain't 'Alf Hot, Mum' - or was it Melvyn Hayes? )
Love,
Caz |
Author: Christopher T George
Tuesday, 10 July 2001 - 09:36 am | | Hi, Caz:
I quite like kidneys but I don't think I would like them cold.
The first scene in the musical of mine that you will see in Bournemouth blames Jack's mother for his problems, actually both his mother and father, although you won't see the scene enacted there as it is not on our highlights CD. Other than that I have nothing particular against women and think they are wonderful, radiant beings who have much to contribute to the world and mankind. Also you had better be on your mettle because Christopher-Michael DiGrazia is going to ask you, if you would, to review the show for Ripper Notes (seriously). Better not have too many Freddie Fudpuckers before the show. . . .
I can state categorically that I never have owned an Amistrad computer and that I never dictated the Diary for Mike or Anne or Mr. Cain or Mr. Abel to write down, even if any of them were able.
All the best
Chris |
Author: John Omlor
Tuesday, 10 July 2001 - 10:21 am | | Hi all,
As to the focus on Abberline in the diary text: all of the notes I have read here and on the other board are very good ones, I think. But also, the drawing of Abberline as a counter-figure may have just been necessary for a reason so old it nowadays seems only natural to us: conflict.
Conflict is the source of all drama -- our ancient Greek friends taught us that and we've interiorized it for so long now (over 2000 years) that it seems inevitable. Every hero has to have his focused enemy against whom he struggles. Maybrick the family man might have had his wife as the Other -- the source of his alienation and conflict; but Maybrick-as-Jack would have needed a foe -- for drama's sake. Thus we get Abberline.
And our writer wouldn't have even had to know he was doing this. It is a formula as old as writing itself and if our writer had read anything at all or seen any movies at all, from his childhood on, he would have absorbed this expectation in spite of himself. If I have a killer, I have to have someone, his enemy, who is chasing him -- a figure to personify the law. It's only natural.
Now our diarist could have had Maybrick struggle not with an outside foe, but with himself. He could have had the opposition be a psychological one in which the calm Maybrick struggles with the crazed Maybrick -- the way a whole bunch of slightly more sophisticated literature has done, also since ancient times – and, incidentally, in a way that was being rather crudely literalized on the Victorian stage in 1888. But this interiorized, psychological conflict might not have occurred to our writer, or it may just have seemed simpler and easier and more natural to have one man versus another. And so the character of Maybrick/Jack must have his Abberline to play off against. It would just seem a logical opposition to construct in this sort of melodramatic crime story. Hell, journalists do it all the time, even the journalists of Jack’s day (and of our day as well).
But I wonder what a real diary by Jack would have done? Would Jack have really seen himself in opposition to Abberline -- or would his ego have been too self-absorbed even for that -- would he have seen himself more or less against everyone, against the world, or even against only God -- or would Jack's diary have been an interior struggle -- Jack against himself -- or against women, perhaps -- would his diary be a series of violent and misogynist rants that made very little sense but that positioned its speaker as a hero in the struggle against the evil and filthy and fallen women of the world?
I have no idea, of course. But the Ripper vs. Abberline dialectic seems to be more the ultra-simplistic dramatic conflict of something like pro-wrestling or bad horror movies (again), or bad movies in general, than it does the workings of a mind that ventures into the night to butcher human bodies.
But this too is all speculation on my part. Consider it as such and decide what you think about such an opposition in the diary and such a traditional structure of conflict.
All the best,
--John |
Author: Christopher T George
Tuesday, 10 July 2001 - 10:36 am | | Hi, John:
Very good point that "Maybrick" needed to focus on one person, i.e., Abberline, as his nemesis, for the sake of the dramatic construct of the Diary. The penman could have chosen Sir Charles Warren for that role, but I think he chose Abberline, as I noted (and others have noted) because of the emphasis on Abberline in the 1988 Michael Caine movie "Jack the Ripper." Interestingly, there is a little known Jack the Ripper letter written September 24, 1888, which preceded the Dear Boss letter of September 25 that got all the press. I will be discussing the September 24 letter in an article in the October issue of Ripper Notes. It is the first letter purportedly from the murderer in the MEPO Scotland Yard files at the Public Record Office. That letter was addressed to "Sir Charles Warren, Commissioner of Police, Scotland Yard." If our pal had known about that letter, and the letter had been played up big in the Ripper books, which it decidedly has not been, Sir Charles could very well have been made the focus of Maybrick's anger, not Abberline.
Best regards
Chris George |
Author: Graham Sheehan
Tuesday, 10 July 2001 - 11:29 am | | Hi all,
Some excellent points raised there, John. I think this basic need for Maybrick to have a foe, an adversary, again highlights that this piece was put together by someone constructing a story, as opposed to the actual rants of a seriously unbalanced murderer. I've always been struck by the way 'Maybrick' seems to be telegraphing events in advance of them happening. The way he tells of his coming 'campaign'. Everything seems to be working its way to a logical conclusion, which of course is eventually reached when the 'Diary' is signed Jack the Ripper.
How common is it, I wonder, for real serial killers to plan a series of crimes of this nature in advance? One crime, yes, but a whole string of them? I know very little of the psychology of murderers, but I'd have thought such people would struggle with the mounting urge within them which demands they kill. And wouldn't such a person also believe that if they killed once, or just once more, the overpowering need would be satisfied and leave them for ever? Most addicts always tell themselves that the next bet, drink, whatever, will be their last. The Maybrick of the journal is quite clearly not insane in a way that would convince a court of law to apply leniency. The fact that no one was ever apprehended for the Whitechapel murders in spite of the massive police effort later in the case shows that the killer had at least enough wit to escape undetected, even if luck did play a role. He didn't run screaming through the streets, knife in bloody hand, as someone 'mad' would. And so if the Maybrick of the 'Diary' was in possession of enough mental stability for him to plan his crimes, and to escape the scenes thereof, surely he would also regret his actions, at least for a few days immediately after the latest outrage. One would expect remorse, perhaps self loathing and disgust - not jaunty little rhymes - and terror as the desire to rip builds slowly within him again.
Presumably experts have analysed every word of the journal text. It's just that some of the terms used by 'Maybrick' seem rather out of place. Was 'opened like a ripe peach', for example, a term in common usage in late Victorian Britain? The writer seems to get carried away with his funny little games occasionally and to let snippets of his real self show through. To my mind, there is no doubt at all that the person who created the words which appear in that old scrapbook knew he/she was writing for an audience and was determined to showcase everything a person with a basic knowledge of the case would expect to find in the personal diary of Jack the Ripper.
Best regs,
Graham (spelled it right this time ) |
Author: John Omlor
Tuesday, 10 July 2001 - 01:16 pm | | Hi Graham,
Just a point of information. Dr. Kate Flint (lecturer in Victorian and Modern English at Oxford) was, at one point, called in to examine the language of the diary. I seem to recall that she found only one or two expressions that she thought were anachronistic and both of them were later challenged. I don't remember which ones they were. Still, that is a very small number and I'm not at all sure whether that indicates luck or skill or thorough research. There are a few phrases which have always made me wonder, but I am not a usage expert nor a linguist and would have no way of knowing for sure about any of them. To me, though, some of the syntax sounds very modern. Not the words or phrases, but the structures of the sentences at times. Chris has commented on the run-ons that permeate the diary and there are other patterns -- like the "I am tired, very tired." stingers -- that have always sounded like movie dialogue to me. When you read letters of the period (I recently read some of Florence Nightingale's letters, for instance), there is a flow to the grammar and a propriety and formality to the syntax, even in personal communiques, that I think would find itself at least partially inscribed even in the prose of a private journal. Perhaps someone out there who has read journals and diaries from the time might comment. I've read a number of author's journals from the 1920's and there is still a color to the private prose even then, after the War and with the onset of Modernism, that you don't get nearly as much by, say, the 1940's, when most of the prose voices have changed for good.
But this is all far too general and amateurish on my part and I offer the thoughts just as a casual aside on a rainy tuesday afternoon.
Now it's nap time,
--John |
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