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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 07 January 2002
Casebook Message Boards: The Diary of Jack the Ripper: General Discussion:
TIME FOR A RE- EVALUATION!:
Archive through 07 January 2002
Author: Peter Wood
Thursday, 03 January 2002 - 08:16 pm |        | John
Glad we got that straight then.
You are, as ever, sitting on the fence.
I mean, I will accept that you believe the diary is a forgery, but apart from that you don't commit yourself to very much. So your belief is based on what? A hunch?
Whereas my beliefs are based on the evidence: Rod McNeill, Alec Voller, Anne's evidence and so on and so on.
So, actually, we didn't get very much straight at all, did we?
Except for the fact that because Bill Waddell believes the author of the Galashiels letter to be the same person who wrote Maybrick's will, anyone who follows that line of reasoning is "goofy".
Which reminds me of a joke........the one about Mickey Mouse in the divorce courts and the judge says "Hey, just 'cos Minnie's got buck teeth ain't good enough reason to divorce her", and Mickey says "I didn't say she's got buck teeth, I said she's f*****g goofy".
But at least you made your point, John.
I think.
Just tell me again, what was your point?
The positioning of the 'O Costly' line in the 'obscure' poem is of no importance. It is, after all,just a line which has etched itself into someone's memory. It has been evidenced that the Crashaw quote was being recalled from memory as, in a quote of five words, two mistakes are made.
You are edging towards (reluctantly) accepting that Mike had nothing to do with the "forgery". And yet you claim the Sphere guide could still have been used by any one else who had access to Mike's house.
Let me see...that would have been ......Anne? Caroline? And, umm,.....did they have a pet dog?
The Crashaw quote is a non-starter, a fluke if you will. There is no proof that Mike was sent the book in the method which he describes. There is no proof that Mike even had the Sphere guide before the diary was taken to London, apart - of course - from Mike's word on the subject, and as I have pointed out previously "the detractors" believe Mike only when it suits them.....
So it remains a strong probability that Mike found the Crashaw quote and then went and treated himself to a copy of the Sphere guide so he could claim the glory for having found the quote - and having found it under his own roof! Doh! Stupid Mike! Didn't he realise that would make his "creation" look like a forgery?
Too much has been made of the Crashaw quote and the Sphere guide without any substance whatsoever to back it up. An alleged binding defect? Bring it on. Mike used it to forge the diary? Except that Mike seems to be unaware of this.
So your Crashaw quote and your Sphere guide are nothing but unsubstantiated items which cannot be shown to be related to the creation of the diary.
Not being an expert on poetry, obscure poetry even, doesn't help. Not wanting to do any research on this pathetic subject helps even less. But you are arguing only that the Crashaw quote came from the Sphere guide because the Sphere guide was, allegedly, in Mike Barrett's possession before the diary was taken to London. That doesn't really make sense. So it couldn't have come from any other source? It had to come from the sphere guide? Nah, of course not.
The Crashaw quote could have come from anywhere, a collection of poetry, a friend with an interest in poetry etc etc. I don't know where Maybrick got it from. But he did.
So, what are we left with?
Alec Voller says the ink is decades old.
Bill Waddell says the Galashiels letter was written by the person who wrote Maybrick's will.
Melvyn Harris says that James Maybrick wrote the will.
And you guys.........you've got five little words which, bless your cotton socks, you are clinging to with such desperation that your knuckles have turned white.
But it is fun reading.
Maybe this year one of you will get round to producing the document, photograph, newspaper article, letter......anything, that shows Maybrick, Florie, Hopper, Michael, Bobo, Gladys, the Baroness, Brierley, Lowry etc etc - just one of them, could not have been where the diarist has them as being in 1888/1889.
Or maybe you'll just accept the obvious and admit that James Maybrick was Jack the Ripper.
The challenge is there, you can continue to debate the Crashaw quote and the Sphere guide which have already been shown to have been of no importance - or you can debate serious issues such as if the diary ink isn't diamine then just exactly what is it? And I suppose that Bill Waddell is plain old wrong? Or perhaps not an 'expert'?
I'm going to do some 'goofing' around now, just to see what it feels like. I'll let you know tomorrow if I enjoyed it or not.
Regards
Peter. |
Author: Christopher T George
Thursday, 03 January 2002 - 08:33 pm | | Hi, Peter:
I am certainly not in any way saying the Crashaw quote that appears in the Diary, "Oh costly intercourse of death" is not important. On the contrary, if you had read my posts carefully you would have seen that I think the Crashaw quote may be of critical importance to identifying who forged the Diary. I was also arguing of course that Mike Barrett, from what I can see, has shown evidence that he was not and maybe still is not aware of the significance of the appearance of this out-of-the-way quote from a not well known seventeenth century poet in the Diary, which may imply that he had nothing to do with putting the quote in the Diary, appearances notwithstanding given the strange coincidence that he happened to own a book of essays containing that very quote in a few lines from a Crashaw poem. Whether or not Mike had anything to do with the production of the Diary, I think the bizarre appearance of this quote in the middle of what in essence is a schlock pastiche pretending to be the Diary of Jack the Ripper may prove to be the key to identifying who forged the document.
Best regards
Chris George
P.S. Peter, I think you will find that once Nicholas Anelka starts scoring for us that Liverpool's title claims will be back on track and we will give you Red Devils a run for your money.  |
Author: John Omlor
Thursday, 03 January 2002 - 09:57 pm | | Hi Peter,
I am not taking anything we say here personally, honest.
Now then, as to your claims. You actually write:
"Whereas my beliefs are based on the evidence: Rod McNeill, Alec Voller, Anne's evidence and so on and so on."
"Evidence?" Come on. Anne's "evidence" is a story told by an interested party in her own defense. That's not reliable evidence of anything unless it is corroborated, and Anne's most definitely is not. So there's that. Alec Voller's "evidence" tells us nothing about the origin of the diary ink nor about the authenticity of the document. The only thing it might tell us is that the ink isn't Diamine and therefore Mike lied. And that would be neither surprising nor new -- it certainly would not be evidence of authenticity. Not by any stretch of the term. So there’s that. And Rod MacNeill's "evidence" actually contradicts the claims to authenticity since it places the diary in the early 20th century -- and even that claim is later hedged by all involved after it was determined that MacNeill's findings could not be reliably nor consistently reproduced. So, given your list, except for the mysterious "and so on" part, you are basing you claims to authenticity on no evidence whatsoever. And that is not surprising, since there is no evidence that this book is authentic. None at all. Not a single piece.
So there's that.
And I am not "on the fence," Peter. I am simply honest about what we know and what we don't know and what the evidence does allow us to conclude with any reliability and what it does not. That's not being 'on the fence;' it's being responsible, both critically and analytically. I am responsible in my judgments and I try to be accurate in my analysis of the state of knowledge and the state of the evidence. That is a professional habit. It is not being "on the fence," nor is it a refusal to draw conclusions when they are appropriately called for by the evidence. It is simply patience and careful reading and a respect for what is necessary before a claim to knowledge can be made.
Read my last post above once more, carefully, and you'll see that this is the case.
You then repeat this flawed assumption:
"It has been evidenced that the Crashaw quote was being recalled from memory as, in a quote of five words, two mistakes are made."
This is nonsense. As I have mentioned before, I have had many, many experiences wherein students have tried citing lines of poetry, often with the book right in front of their noses, and still transcribed the line or lines incorrectly, especially if the syntax or the spelling or the punctuation is not modern (as in this case). So to conclude that the line is being remembered simply because of the transcription errors is yet another unsubstantiated claim that is actually wish-fulfillment disguised as evidence.
So there's that.
And you'd better check your facts if you think that Mike might have "treated himself" to purchasing the Sphere Guide after the diary went public. We know who sent the Sphere Guide to Mike and we know why and we know when. And I believe that this donation has in fact been confirmed.
And you are wishing again.
And I love this sentence:
"Bill Waddell says the Galashiels letter was written by the person who wrote Maybrick's will."
This is based on the handwriting, right?
And, based on the handwriting, neither document, apparently, was written by the person who wrote the diary.
So there's that.
Still, it would be nice if you could, amidst all your insistences and wishes, offer one single piece of reliable evidence that links this book to the real James Maybrick in any material way whatsoever. Otherwise, you are simply dancing around the fact that neither you nor Paul Feldman nor anyone else has taken even a single step in uncovering any real, responsible reason to think that this book is anything but a melodramatic forgery that sets itself up as a drama, gives the scene and the major players all on the first page (despite its pretensions to starting in media res), unfolds in a cheap and classic Aristotelian structure filled with shallow and repeated clichés but without a single piece of information about either Maybrick or the Ripper that was not already available, and concludes with a classical single page ending that plays out like cheap stagecraft despite the book's pretending to be a diary of a lived life in which the narrator should not know what is coming.
That is to say, neither you nor anyone has offered even a single piece of evidence to suggest that this book might be anything more than a forged document or might be in any way linked to the real James Maybrick.
So there's that.
All the best,
--John |
Author: R.J.P.
Thursday, 03 January 2002 - 10:55 pm | | | And since it's a forged document the first question to ask is how Mike and Anne acquired such a forged document. But Barrett talks in circles and Graham talks not at all. They are quite willing to leave the explanation of the diary's orgins in the 'capable hands of others', and so it goes, and so it goes. End of story, really. |
Author: Paul Begg
Friday, 04 January 2002 - 02:38 am | | Hi Peter
A happy New Year to you. Over the years I have struggled to make it clear that there really aren’t pro- and anti-diarists. Nor should there be. Examining the ‘diary’ from a pre-conceived conclusion (that’s it is genuine, that it is a forgery) just clouds one’s assessment of the evidence – as we all frequently witness. Now, John Omlor isn’t anti-‘diary’. In fact he is one of the few contributors here who tries to properly assess the available data without any preconceptions (or at least without allowing those preconceptions to influence his reasoning).
And may I also point out that in questioning whether Mike was the forger – and it has taken some people almost a decade even to consider this as a reasonable possibility – isn’t an anti-‘diary’ stance. It is seriously questioning the evidence upon which is based the belief, once widespread and almost unshakable, that Mike was the forger. And the mere fact that some people are prepared to concede that the data suggests that Mike didn’t have anything to do with the forgery and didn’t know the ‘diary’ was a forgery is perhaps the single most important step forward made in the investigation of the ‘diary’ on these Message Boards in the best part of a decade. And in a way it is good news for you, because if Mike didn’t forge the ‘diary’ then people are going to have to question who else did. And maybe, just maybe, they’ll have to conclude that none of the available candidates did and that maybe Anne Graham’s story is true. And then maybe folk will have to consider that the ‘diary’ is genuine. I don’t think that is ever likely to happen, mind you. But you should nevertheless support any investigation of the forgery theory. |
Author: John Omlor
Friday, 04 January 2002 - 08:34 am | | Hi RJ,
You write:
"But Barrett talks in circles and Graham talks not at all."
And yet your are convinced that "Barrett" was involved in the forgery and "Graham" was not. Why the difference?
Still curious,
--John
PS: And since what you write above is true, it really can't be the "end of story" yet, can it? It's precisely because neither person has clearly explained the origins of this book in any way that can be corroborated that the investigation should continue, that evidence should still be acquired and examined, and that the story continues. Because we still don't know precisely where this book came from.
PPS: Thanks, Paul, for the kind words. |
Author: Christopher T George
Friday, 04 January 2002 - 09:49 am | | Hi, Paul:
Thanks for your message to Peter Wood about the nature of the Diary investigation. Boy, with the people involved here I feel once more as if I am speaking to the Apostles. . . Peter, Paul, and John.  It's just that people like Ivor, Melvin, Keith, and R.J. have to spoil the apostolic impression!
Paul, thank you also for your clear-eyed view of John Omlor's contribution here and for pointing out to Peter that Mr. Omlor is not anti-Diary. John consistently looks at the available facts and weighs them, as you say, without preconceived notions. As pro-Diarist Shirley remarked in a private e-mail to me, "Thank God for John Omlor!"
Despite the muddy areas in the on-going Diary investigation and the tantalizing and bizarre twists such as the discovery of the Crashaw quote, the Sphere Guide, the little maroon diary, Mike's confessions and strange behavior, Feldman's intensity and unorthodox research techniques, Mrs. Hammersmith, the Maybrick watch now owned by Albert Johnson, Steve Powell's strange story that the Diary may have been concocted in Australia where Anne worked as a nurse in the late Sixties, etc., etc., I somehow feel that before too long, even if it takes another decade or two -- although heaven forbid!  -- the strange story of the origins of this hoax document will be revealed. As Shirley is fond of saying, quoting Maybrick's family motto, Time Will Reveal All!!!!
Best regards
Chris George |
Author: Caroline Anne Morris
Friday, 04 January 2002 - 10:17 am | | Hi All,
Hi RJ,
Thanks for clarifying your thoughts for me. I’m not sure why you thought I was trying to ‘transfer’ the use of Mike’s Sphere book to Devereux – I don’t remember even mentioning Devereux in that context. But you actually raised an interesting point when you reminded me that ‘he wasn't a visitor to the Barrett household [Anne barely knew him] and his own family claimed that he 'wasn't a reader'’ and that you therefore ‘have a hard time believing that he would have ever borrowed a book of critical essays such as the Sphere.' Because you then wrote that you ‘currently believe Mike was involved with this [forgery] with Devereux & Kane.'
So what sort of role do you have down for Devereux if Kane was the penman and Mike simply a handler/placer? Presumably he has to have been the composer – a man who wasn’t a reader. This seems to me to be yet another contradiction in your argument. If you are arguing on the one hand that Devereux was not the type to borrow books, especially one like the Sphere (even from a ‘mate’, who was in on the forgery anyway, and might reasonably have offered whatever books he happened to have indoors at the time in case they could be of use – just like that mate did with Jenny’s son), it rather argues on the other hand against him (Devereux) being the most likely candidate for the diary’s composer. A poor, infrequent or unenthusiastic reader would hardly relish the task of sifting through potentially useful sources and gathering his raw material, but our author must have thought it was a task very much worth taking on for some, as yet unknown, reason.
One other point is that Melvin did say that Mike named Devereux as the person to whom he passed the Crashaw lines for inclusion in the diary. So was he telling the whole truth? Did he in fact pass the lines on to someone else he was protecting, using Devereux’s name instead because he was in no position to say anything? But, as Paul has said, Mike had seen more money from getting the diary published than he had ever seen before, so it makes little sense that he would deliberately cut off that established and ongoing (if lessened due to cries of hoax pre-June 1994) supply, purely on a whim that a confession story might bring in a nice lump sum from another as yet unestablished source. (And as you say yourself, when offering a reason for Mike holding back on proving his involvement, there was indeed ‘no market for it’.) If Mike has been protecting the composer’s identity all this time, was he also sharing his diary money with him? The composer’s financial interests were certainly not uppermost in Mike’s mind when he confessed.
But if money was not the composer’s driving force, what was? Was he/she a practical joker with a sick sense of humour and a penchant for rocking boats? Or was he/she a deadly serious forger with a Ripper obsession? If Anne had anything to do with the diary’s creation/composition (which, as John has observed, is as likely as, if not more so than Mike, if we consider basic ability and circumstance), she has managed to put on a flawless act as someone who has neither a remotely sinister sense of fun nor the slightest fascination with a man whose claim to fame was the murder and mutilation of women.
What also strikes me as a bit unlikely is Melvin’s opinion that Anne took an active part by sharing Mike’s handling/placing role. For a start, how did she know what Mike might have known about the scheme if, as you say, she barely knew Devereux, and there’s no evidence she’d ever even heard of Kane? I can’t really see an intelligent woman like Anne agreeing to take on such a role with only a limited knowledge or appreciation of the scheme itself and who else might be involved. She certainly doesn’t seem the sort to have sat back and accepted whatever Mike might have told her about it all. And when he confessed she was determined to contradict him and then produced her own account as if to take (or regain perhaps?) control over the situation, with little apparent concern that Mike or anyone else involved (an unknown factor like Kane for instance) would ever decide to come out of the woodwork and prove her a liar.
RJ, I’m not sure you really answered my latest question, although I’m grateful you finally offered another possible reason (making money from a ‘tell all’ interview) for Mike confessing, apart from getting back at Feldy. What I was after was what kind of details you think Mike might have been able to add if he were to ‘reveal the full truth’, or ‘tell all’. Where he did give certain incorrect or false details about the materials used and their acquisition and disposal, and who actually penned the diary, where and in what circumstances, do you think it was done to disguise a working knowledge of the actual facts? Or would specific knowledge, such as what ink was used and where it was purchased, be quite naturally on a ‘need to know’ basis, if he was simply asked to place the finished product? If Mike didn’t know such details when he brought the diary to London, might he have made it his business to ask for them later, when thinking about confessing, if he knew who else was involved and that person was still alive and being protected by him? Even if it was just so he had the facts to hand when deciding what to confess and what not to confess? I just wondered if you had any thoughts about what else Mike would/should have been able to tell (or at least find out from others involved) about the forgery, if we are assuming he at least knew it was one.
Finally, to John. John, you wrote:
'Anne's "evidence" is a story told by an interested party in her own defense.'
The only problem with that statement is that at the time of telling her story, Anne would have had no need to defend herself. She had been living apart from Mike for six months and was furious with him when he confessed to forging the diary all on his lonesome. It supposedly caused her to start divorce proceedings. She could have left Mike to continue digging his own grave after June 1994 (particularly if RJ is right and she had no involvement) and, despite Feldy’s pestering of the Barrett relatives, and a growing conviction that Anne knew more about the diary or must be a Maybrick (might the latter explain why Mike’s sister contacted Anne about the former, rather than Mike? Or perhaps the sister, not knowing anything about the diary, and fearing Mike would only give her the runaround, thought Anne would be in a better position to tackle him and sort something out with Feldy), if Anne had never spoken out and given the diary a new provenance, what would she have had to defend herself against? As we know, there was absolutely no supporting evidence for Feldy’s theories about her and still wouldn’t have been today if she had stayed silent. That’s why Anne must have had a motive for inventing the tale, if that’s what she did, at a time when she herself had not been accused of anything. Telling a blatant and complex lie with the help of her dying father, and deceiving the people she later worked with on her own book, in order to retrieve and protect the Barrett/Graham family honour, if she saw Mike’s confession as reflecting badly on it, seems a bit like rescuing it from the frying-pan only to chuck it on the fire. And I don't think she was doing it for Mike's sake. But I still have some difficulty in accepting her motive was purely financial, considering her first and only established port of call in that respect was Doreen Montgomery, not Feldy.
Have a great weekend all and keep your thinking caps on at all times. You never know when a stray thought might spark off an idea that no one’s considered over the past decade.
Love,
Caz |
Author: Peter Wood
Friday, 04 January 2002 - 11:54 am | | John O. - I'll get to you in a few moments. But first.......
Paul Begg - Thanks for offering your opinion on the relative position of "Anti" and "Pro" Diarists. I think that to clarify my own position on that subject it would be fair to say that there are those amongst us who have a predisposition to believing the diary is a forgery, and then there are those of us who will at least reserve judgement until the evidence has been examined. As Shirley has stated many years ago there were people then who were denouncing the diary as a forgery even before Shirley's book had been published.
And that, Paul, is where I think some people still are now. The type of person who could condemn the diary as a forgery even before the publication of Shirley's book (and many moons before PHF's involvement is the type of person I would characterise as an "anti" diarist. I, probably more than most on this board, would consider myself to be a "Pro" diarist, though I have confessed both to John Omlor and Christopher T. George (in private e mails) that there are days when I cannot seriously entertain the notion that Jack the Ripper wrote a diary. I mean, come on! Jack the Ripper left a diary? No way.
But then, Paul, I take the time to read the books and examine the evidence - and actually the "anti" league have yet to come up with anything which knocks the diary on the head once and for all. Not only that, but there are professional people who are willing to stake their own reputations on the diary being genuine.
You see, I find it helps to think of it not as a 'diary of Jack the ripper', but as 'a diary of James Maybrick', who just happened to also be Jack the Ripper.
And therefore when you perceive that I am 'attacking' someone of obvious integrity (witness John Omlor), you would have to recognise that it is not an attack upon John's credentials, but an attack on the stance that John has taken against the diary - without proof one way or the other as to the diary being genuine/ a forgery. Witness this paragraph from one of John's most recent posts.
Otherwise, you are simply dancing around the fact that neither you nor Paul Feldman nor anyone else has taken even a single step in uncovering any real, responsible reason to think that this book is anything but a melodramatic forgery that sets itself up as a drama, gives the scene and the major players all on the first page (despite its pretensions to starting in media res), unfolds in a cheap and classic Aristotelian structure filled with shallow and repeated clichés but without a single piece of information about either Maybrick or the Ripper that was not already available, and concludes with a classical single page ending that plays out like cheap stagecraft despite the book's pretending to be a diary of a lived life in which the narrator should not know what is coming.
Now everyone here knows that I have the utmost respect for John and that I enjoy (perhaps more than most) pitting my wits against John in debate, which isn't easy as John has a habit of being singularly analytical and capable of cross examining "witnesses" with a style which tends to deflect attention from the 'strengths' of the diary and confuses people to such an extent that I wouldn't relish meeting him across a court room. John is a skilled debater, but for all his invective and statements such as 'in media res' ( which I won't even pretend I had come across before contributing to these boards), it remains to be said that there are areas of the discussion that are deliberately avoided.
For instance, I think it is much more worthwhile debating the point that Bill Waddell believes that the writer of the Galashiels letter was also the author of James Maybrick's will. But John dismisses that with a cursory "And, based on the handwriting, neither document, apparently, was written by the person who wrote the diary."
But the handwriting is what bothers me least about the diary, simply because I know that I exhibit several different styles myself so I can well believe that James Maybrick did too. But to John and many others in here, simply because the diary handwriting isn't a cc of the 'Dear Boss' handwriting appears to be enough to wave away the views of Bill Waddell.
Have you met Bill Waddell, Paul? Do you lay any store by his belief that the writer of the Galashiels letter also wrote James Maybrick's will?
John, I think maybe I should start addressing the remainder of this post to you, instead of just talking about you. I wouldn't want to give you a complex.
Let us take the simple issues first, namely Anne's evidence. As you have it Anne's "evidence" is a story told by an interested party in her own defense.
I'm not so sure why you say 'in her own defense', because surely Anne could have just let the whole thing lie. Sure, there are holes in her story - or at least there are areas of it which should be open to responsible discussion - but the simple fact remains that either Anne is lying or Anne is telling the truth.
If Anne is lying then it is highly likely that the diary is a forgery and she has some involvement in it's conception.
If Anne is telling the truth, however, this causes tremendous problems for the group of people I earlier explained to Paul Begg were the ones that I classify as "Anti", the type of person who knocked the diary before even seeing Shirley's book. Why? Because it means you can stop talking about which 'JTR' books post 1977, post 1989, post 1991 etc etc must have been used to construct the 'forgery'. You can stop talking about Mike forging the diary. You can stop talking about 'tin match box empty' and a whole host of other things which take up much of our time.
Because if Anne is telling the truth then there are displays of knowledge in the diary's composition that simply would not have been available in the late 1960's. And if her father was telling the truth then the problems worsen for you.
So it's simple, you either believe Anne or you don't. And if you don't then you have to come out publicly and brand her a liar.
Then make "Anne's evidence" the focus of your research/discussion. Indeed, make Anne the focus of your research/discussion. Come to the truth about "Anne's evidence" and you are tying up a myriad of loose ends.
That is why I can never agree with the sentiment that Anne's evidence is "a story told by an interested party in her own defense."
Come on John, you're worth more than that. I'm sorry John, but I would still have to classify you as "Anti" diary as you don't believe it is genuine, or rather you don't even believe there is a possibility that it could be genuine. Until you admit that there is a possibility that the diary could be genuine, then you really are arguing only from one perspective. And that makes you biased. And thus your posts will suffer accordingly.
But, as I have said before John, I will accord you the acknowledgement that, along with Caroline, you do pose some of the more interesting questions regarding the evidence we have. Yes, you do question it. But you are only playing "Devil's advocate" and I don't think that qualifies you to be called 'fair minded' as your mind is pretty much made up against the diary already.
Christopher T. George - you stand shoulder to shoulder with John Omlor and therefore much of my post to John should apply equally to you, except that I feel you are only now coming round to questioning things such as the extent of Mike's involvement, whereas perhaps John has been doing that for a little longer.
Just to return to Paul Begg for a moment - Paul, I agree with you that the current discussion about the extent of Mike's involvement in the 'forgery' is indeed good for my 'cause', but surely such ground breaking discussion should at least lead to such learned contributors acknowledging that the diary, at the very least, could be genuine? In the absence of such an acknowledgement I don't think it is unreasonable of me to continue to use Paul Feldman's phraseology and refer to the "Anti" diarists.
Anyway, thank God Christmas is over as I had a truly awful one, but I shall extend my sincerest wishes to you all for a wonderful 2002.
Take Care
Peter.
P.s. In time honoured tradition, a little football 'aside'. (Saint) Christopher T. G: Nicola Anelka score goals for Liverpool and win them the championship? Are you serious? Did you know that you can get odds of 50 to 1 in England on George "W" Bush resigning this year? I suggest you take the latter bet, it's got much more chance of succeeding. |
Author: Christopher T George
Friday, 04 January 2002 - 12:12 pm | | Hi, Peter:
I am very pleased to see you 'fess up in public here what you have admitted in private to John Omlor and myself, that you are somewhat of a skeptic when it comes to the Diary and not the virulent Diary advocate that you made out you were in previous posts on these boards. So sorry to hear that your festive season was not so festive, and hope you have a better 2002. You should be receiving a New Year's greeting from me arriving by snail post. Those French have the right idea about escargots! With a bit of butter and garlic, they go down fine!
Best regards
Chris George
P.S. Peter, Nicolas Anelka is a trophy winner. He helped Arsenal win the double in 1998, helped Real Madrid win the Champions League in 2000, and was FIFA Club World Cup Top Scorer in 2000. I can see you already quaking in your boots. By the way, I noted your comparison of R.J. with Ryan Giggs. Well, since United win when Giggsy plays, I take it that means the anti-Diary side is going to triumph!  |
Author: R.J.P.
Friday, 04 January 2002 - 02:13 pm | | John--Hello. Here's the short answer, but you aren't going to like it: intuition.
Mike was the bloke that marketed the diary. Mike was the one that left his copy of Liverpool Tales with Devereux. Mike was the one that went hunting for a genuine Victorian diary [Anne merely signed a blank-check after the fact].
Anne seems to have kept in the shadows with her head down. [Shirley tells how it was very difficult to persuade her to even go to the London for any of the book business].
Anne involved? I doubt it. She had a full-time job and was a working mother. When would she have time to write the diary, keeping it all a secret from Mike? I tend to believe the Barrett girl when she tells that Anne fought with Mike over getting the diary published. And I also believe Anne's secretary friend when she relates how Anne told her that Mike was 'writing a book' and that it visibly upset her---and yes, I believe this episode refers directly to the Maybrick diary.
As far as I am concerned, the Sphere book suggests that someone in the Barrett household was involved in the composition of the diary. I think that person is Mike Barrett. If the diary came through Devereux & friends, it would have involved Mike, not Anne. There's no proof that Anne even knew Devereux.
If Anne had forged the diary, why would she go out of her way to implicate herself to a complete stranger --and a friend of Mike's-- by giving it to him? The whole idea is clumsy and impossible to believe.
No, I believe Anne's "in the family" story was just an expedient way to resolve the troubles that Mike made back in 1994; I don't think it's true and I seriously doubt that Anne was involved with the creation of the diary.
Besides, culling quotes was Mike's thing.
Everyone here seems to think that Mike must be an innocent dupe because he has never given a fully believable confession, or because he is too simple. I still don't buy it. There's a story that Paul Feldman tells of Mike taking him over to see Battlecrease. But Mike leads him to the house across the street and knocks on the wrong door! This seems awfully staged to me. What better way to say "I'm a bumbling idiot"?
Clever stuff?
But I've come to know your procedures, John, so I can't imagine that any of this will make you too happy. So let's just call it "intuition".
If that handwriting turns out to be by Devereux's mate, we at least know that Mike associated with Devereux. It doesn't look like that is the case in regards to Anne Graham.
And bottom line, I just don't believe that people who market forgeries are likely to be the unwitting dupes of their friends or wives. That seems more like some plot out of a mystery novel than real life.
Cheers, RJ Palmer
PS.--To Caz, I'll respond to your post when I get the time. Take care. |
Author: John Omlor
Friday, 04 January 2002 - 02:59 pm | | Hi Peter,
First, some easy ones.
You write:
"The type of person who could condemn the diary as a forgery even before the publication of Shirley's book (and many moons before PHF's involvement is the type of person I would characterise as an "anti" diarist."
As I think I mentioned to you once before, I actually was inclined to believe in the diary when I first read it in Shirley's book. I wanted it to be real. I loved the story. I wanted to be convinced. It was only after carefully taking note of the utter lack of evidence of any sort in favor of authenticity and the complete lack of a reliable or corroborated provenance of any sort and after a close reading of the diary text, where details that were wrong had to be explained away with desperate rationalizations (example: Maybrick was actually far away in an autobus watching the Grand National and not, as the diary claims, next to the Prince -- rationalization: "well, maybe he was just exaggerating in his own private diary," etc.), and after getting a look at Maybrick's known handwriting, that I began to be convinced that there was no real case for authenticity. This opinion was then reinforced when I read Paul Feldman's book and was stunned by the slipshod logic, shoddy prose, melodramatic exclamations in place of arguments, fanciful use of ellipses when no evidence could be found to support his theories, and complete sacrificing of anything like a scientific or rational method of careful investigation. The book wasn't a case being made, it was a dream being desired. And no serious academic publishing house would have touched the thing without serious editing and qualifications. To call the thing The Final Chapter was almost an insult to thinking readers. No, the case for authenticity, the evidenced case, has yet to begin to be made. So I am not one of those who prejudged the case. I read everything I could get my hands on carefully indeed. And there was only one conclusion available -- there is simply no evidence of any sort to support the diary's claim to authenticity.
Then you write:
"Not only that, but there are professional people who are willing to stake their own reputations on the diary being genuine. "
This, of course, is not evidence of anything. There are professional people "who are willing to stake their own reputations" on the idea that astronauts once visited ancient civilizations or that aliens routinely do anal probes on fishermen in Louisiana. People will often "stake their reputations" on whatever will sell books. Witness Patricia Cornwell, who has recently "staked her professional reputation" on Sickert being the Ripper without even a shred of proof. So you should not let this influence your thinking about the diary.
Also, Peter, your use of the Galasheils letter and your subsequent use of the "we all have many styles" argument are in direct contradiction.
Let me show you.
You tell us that someone thinks the handwriting in one of the Ripper letters (which we have no reason to suspect came from the killer) looks like writing in Maybrick's letters. This is supposed to be evidence of the diary's authenticity. But then someone annoyingly points out that the diary writing doesn't look like the writing in either of these documents. So you say, "well, we all write in many styles." Do you see what you've done? If we all write in many styles, then it really makes no difference if anything written by Maybrick looks like anything else, and the Galasheils argument is made irrelevant by your very own claim.
The Galasheils argument is only valid for you if you think there needs to be some consistency between the writing in one document and the writing in another to suggest the same hand wrote both.
But your "we all write in many styles" response undercuts that very assumption, suggesting that there need not be any consistency between the writing in one document and the writing in another for us to assume the same hand wrote both.
You have effectively destroyed the relevance of your own previous position.
Nice job.
And you have, with your "we all have many styles" argument, if you truly believe it, rendered all use of handwriting analysis, including Wadell's, irrelevant as well. Since, theoretically, I could take any document whatsoever written during Maybrick's lifetime (or not, as this case shows), and, using your argument, claim he wrote it, since we all have many styles and this might just be another one of his. Anything, therefore, could have been written by Maybrick, including the inscription to a young schoolgirl in rural Pennsylvania written on the first page of an 1881 copy of Hamlet that sits here on my shelf. This position is, of course, patently absurd and just more evidence of the degree to which you have to rationalize to get around the inconvenient fact that the diary is not written in Maybrick's own hand.
And before I get to the problems with Anne's story (and that is, still, what it is), let me say a word about my "fair mindedness" and your request for people to at least recognize the possibility that the diary could be genuine.
My job, as I see it here, Peter, is to examine the evidence. And so far there is not a single piece of evidence to suggest the diary could be genuine. Now, the diary was found in the late 20th Century. It claimed to be from the 19th. Therefore, the burden of proof sits squarely on the diary and its supporters to place it back in the 19th and not the 20th (where we already know it exists). The starting assumption has to be that the diary is a found 20th Century document (because so far, that's what it is, factually speaking) and then evidence must be offered in order to build a reliable case that it is in fact a 19th Century document. No one has offered that evidence, therefore it is not yet either necessary nor fair to conclude that the diary could be authentic. This isn't pre-judging the evidence, this is waiting for it and analyzing it as it comes by. This isn't being prejudiced, this is being unconvinced. I am more than willing to admit that the diary could be authentic once someone shows me any evidence whatsoever in support of this claim or gives me any responsible and reliable reason to assume that it did not come from the time and place where it was first known to exist. No one has done that, therefore there is no reason yet to assume the diary is anything but a forgery, given the lack of any handwriting match to Maybrick's own writing, the lack of any corroborated provenance for the document, the lack of any new details in it about either Maybrick or the Ripper cases, the lack of any positive dating to the appropriate time, and the obviously well-made and clichéd structure of the narrative. Found artifacts need to establish their authenticity, not the other way around. This one hasn't. It hasn't even begun to do so. That is why I have taken the position of critical reader that I have and that is why this remains a "fair-minded" and responsible position.
Now then, as to Anne's story. You echo Caroline's observations that Anne needn't have told the story at all after Mike confessed. She was not actually defending herself. She was simply opening up a whole new can of worms.
And I agree with this.
But she did tell the story. I do not know why (no one does). Perhaps she saw Mike's confession as a challenge to her own integrity (this would have been the wrong response, of course); perhaps she wanted to keep the diary alive (there would have been easier ways, I would think); perhaps she even believed and still believes everything she said. I have no idea.
But that's not my point. My point is that, since she did tell the story, it now needs to be corroborated independently before it can be considered evidence of anything, since the storyteller (Anne, in this case) remains an interested party. And the fact is, it hasn't -- not through documentation or independent testimony or genealogy or material evidence or any other way. Therefore, her story must remain still a story and not yet evidence of anything at all. And until you or Paul or Anne or someone can in some way begin to verify her tale independently in some meaningful and reliable way, it would not be proper to consider it as a reliable provenance for this document or as the truth. The truth, in a case such as this, must be established via evidence. Anne has not yet done this with her story. Therefore we cannot yet say whether it is the truth.
You see Peter, this is where you are wrong. You reduce these questions to simplicities. But they are not. You say things like this:
"So it's simple, you either believe Anne or you don't."
But that's not true. It's not responsible. A responsible reader does not simply believe Anne or not. A responsible reader continues to read and examine the evidence and especially, in this case, to note the appalling lack of evidence in favor of Anne's story and to call attention to that lack and to conclude that until some evidence is offered to support her story, it cannot be considered as reliable evidence of anything. The reductivist opposition you offer is a false one. The responsible position is the critical one, and that is part of a different operation than the one that would simply "believe her or not."
This is not about winning the argument, this is about analyzing the evidence that is available and noting well the lack of evidence in support of arguments. And the lack of evidence in support of Anne's story, like the lack of evidence in support of the claim that this book is in any way linked to the real James Maybrick, is formidable.
And based on that formidable lack, I still cannot responsibly conclude that there is any real reason whatsoever to suppose that this document ever existed in the 19th Century or was ever linked to the real James Maybrick.
But, as always, I'll keep reading.
All the best,
--John
PS: RJ, Thanks for the honest response about your intuition about a woman. Of course, your intuition will eventually need some evidence to support it. But we can wait. Meanwhile, I will have to respond to your points about Mike (and I still am not sure what actual evidence you think you have against anyone else -- only the existence of a single pamphlet and some still unexamined writing samples apparently) at a later time as I am headed out for the evening. |
Author: Christopher T George
Friday, 04 January 2002 - 04:29 pm | | Hi, RJ:
I don't happen to believe Anne Graham's "in the family for years story", however, her seeming non-involvement at different stages and even her reported opposition to publishing the Diary could be consistent with the idea that she did not want the Diary to be made public, that her intention was only to prod Mike into a writing project that would stop him drinking.
Best regards
Chris George |
Author: Peter Wood
Friday, 04 January 2002 - 05:31 pm | | And you have, with your "we all have many styles" argument, if you truly believe it, rendered all use of handwriting analysis, including Wadell's, irrelevant as well. Since, theoretically, I could take any document whatsoever written during Maybrick's lifetime (or not, as this case shows), and, using your argument, claim he wrote it, since we all have many styles and this might just be another one of his.
Nice try John, but you still haven't addressed the opinion of a respected authority, namely Bill Waddell, who claims that the Galashiels Letter was written by the author of James Maybrick's will.
It's another good attempt (but not good enough) to deflect attention from the point in question. You attempt a quick side step by trying to convince the audience that I have rendered all handwriting comparison irrelevant. But that is not so.
I have not ever tried to say that because the handwriting on two documents doesn't match then they must have been written by the same person.
Patently quite silly.
But nice try.
What I have tried to make clear is that just because the handwriting on two documents doesn't match, doesn't necessarily mean that they couldn't have been written by the same person.
Handwriting changes.
And so to the Galashiels letter...........
It is written by someone claiming to be "The Ripper", who also mentions Jack the Ripper. Clearly someone with an interest in the case.
It is sent from a part of the country that Maybrick had reason to visit, indeed it is known that he had been there.
The writer intimates that he is a gambler. So was the diarist.
The writer refers to his 'nice little games'. The diary? 'Funny little games'.
And, of course, there is the undoubted fact that 'games' looks more like 'james' in the Galashiels letter and it is a proven fact that Maybrick liked to play games with his name.
It has even been said that the handwriting matches that of a letter sent by Jack the Ripper from Liverpool.
So you can either address the issue at hand, or you can bluff and bluster and hope that it will go away.
And so to Anne........
You say "You see Peter, this is where you are wrong. You reduce these questions to simplicities. But they are not. You say things like this:
"So it's simple, you either believe Anne or you don't."
But that's not true. It's not responsible. A responsible reader does not simply believe Anne or not. A responsible reader continues to read and examine the evidence and especially, in this case, to note the appalling lack of evidence in favor of Anne's story and to call attention to that lack and to conclude that until some evidence is offered to support her story, it cannot be considered as reliable evidence of anything.
O.K. John, I can accept that you don't have to believe Anne one way or the other. But the fact remains that there are only two options:
Either Anne is telling the truth...........
........or she isn't.
Either way it would tie up a lot of loose ends if we could prove one or the other true.
And I love the fact that you claim that Anne's story requires independent corroboration, whereas you are willing to believe anything Mike tells you about Tony Devereux.
That's right. Anything Mike tells you. Because no one has interviewed Tony. He's dead.
So Anne's story requires corroboration, but Tony's doesn't. Because he's dead. And she's not.
Last I heard Mike was still claiming that Tony gave him the diary as originally claimed. But what happened since has changed somewhat - and Tony's 'involvement' is only evidenced by Mike's words.
Anyway, forget that, time for you to give us a reasoned and responsible answer to the Galashiels letter.
You see, Melvin Harris claims that James Maybrick's will is genuine. And Bill Waddell believes that the author of the will was also the author of the Galashiels letter, a letter that claims to be written by "the ripper" with connections to the Whitechapel murders.
Therefore Bill is claiming that 'James Maybrick' (the real one) wrote a letter about the Whitechapel murders.
And that letter was unpublished until PHF uncovered it.
What price a discovery like that if you and your gang of forgers had concocted the diary over a couple of pints and a bag of pork scratchings at The Saddle?
You see John, it may not prove anything, but it is a hell of a correlation.
And whilst you are chewing that over tell me exactly what corroboration of Anne's story you might expect to get? Remember, Anne's story is that she saw the book when her father was set to move home at the end of the 1960's. So the people doing the packing would have been.....err, Anne and her father.
So just exactly who do you think would provide the "independent corroboration"? Someone who just happened to snoop around in Anne's cupboards everytime she let them use the bathroom? Nah, I didn't think so.
These questions need answering John. And no amount of clever deflection will make these questions go away.
But you have work to do, so I will retire for the evening.
Best regards
Peter. |
Author: John Omlor
Friday, 04 January 2002 - 05:35 pm | | Hi RJ,
Frankly, your case against Devereux and Kane seems to be no better established than dear Patricia's case against Sickert. Although at least you haven't spent four million on yours.
You have Kane holding the pen. But what's his motive? He's not in the money loop and never has been, so there's no profit; and he'd have to remain anonymous, so there's no fame, no attention, so there's nothing. Why would he do it? Why participate in such a potentially criminal act for no reward? Just to help out a mate? Besides, you still have offered no evidence whatsoever that Mike ever met, knew, or even knew of the existence of St. Gerard. Do you know the guys who witnessed the wills of all your casual drinking buddies? You'd need at least in some small way to link Mike and Kane and we can't even confidently speculate that they ever even met. Some evidence to this effect would be nice before Kane starts being listed among the potential forgers, especially since the sacred handwriting relics still remain utterly unexamined and there are no results anywhere concerning any matches.
And you have Tony, I suppose, doing all the research and composing the lines. A man, as Caz has noted, whose own family can't seem to remember him ever reading much of anything. And besides, if Tony really did do the research and compose the diary somehow, and Mike was in on it with him, then surely the last story Mike would want to tell when he brought the diary to the public was that he got it from Tony. Why immediately point everyone, all the experts, all the investigators, in the direction of the book's real author? Why would Tony even allow Mike to do this? Is this yet another example of Mike being clever by playing the fool? How can you tell?
In fact, the only piece of evidence you even have against Tony is the existence of the pamphlet, and to claim that such a thing reliably suggests that Tony actually wrote this diary is almost Patrician (in the latest sense of the word). Peter Wood is correct in saying that everything else we use to link the book to Tony comes through Mike -- and anyone who is seriously considering anything Mike says as reliable evidence hasn't been paying very much attention.
And you say this:
"I believe Anne's "in the family" story was just an expedient way to resolve the troubles that Mike made back in 1994..."
How precisely was it supposed to do this? If anything, it made those troubles worse for Anne and her family, especially since she seems to have no support of any kind for the story.
But beyond that, as I think you know, nothing you mention in your post above concerning Mike, Tony, or St. Gerard (who remains involved only mythically and therefore continues to be canonized) offers any evidence that is in any way ultimately reliable beyond the existence of the Crashaw quote in the Sphere Guide, and the significance of that volume continues to be problematized by the behavior of the major payers regarding it. Thus, I suppose, you offer your final caveat that this is only intuition. Fair enough. But readers should be reminded at this point, that there is a serious lack of any evidence linking Mike and St. Gerard and there is still no evidence linking St. Gerard to this book and the alleged handwriting matches remain completely unmade by anyone qualified to do so, and there is still very little evidence that Tony had anything at all to do with the production of this book. Even a little nugget like Mike being the bloke who "went hunting for a genuine Victorian diary" is only a partial recounting of what happened, since it fails to mention that he did this only after he had already called and set up a meeting to take the book he said he already had to Doreen's office and he ordered the book using his own name and home address, despite his alleged intention to use it shortly thereafter in a highly public criminal act. No, not even this act can fairly be called clear or reliable evidence of participation in the actual creation of this document. And so we are indeed left only with intuition.
And I am left without the evidence necessary for a considered or responsible judgment.
All the best,
--John |
Author: John Omlor
Friday, 04 January 2002 - 05:57 pm | | Hi Peter,
I'm heading out, but here is a too quick response.
You write:
"What I have tried to make clear is that just because the handwriting on two documents doesn't match, doesn't necessarily mean that they couldn't have been written by the same person."
Right. So theoretically any two documents could be by the same person whether the handwriting matches or not, since we all allegedly have many styles that change.
So whether or not the diary happens to be in a hand that is in any way linked to, recognizable as, or even similar to any of James Maybrick's writing becomes irrelevant.
A neat trick, but a patently absurd position.
And clearly taken only for the sake of convenience. Conveniently set-aside when the issue of handwriting matches suddenly becomes relevant as in the letter writing arguments.
And since you insist that "Bill is claiming that 'James Maybrick' (the real one) wrote a letter about the Whitechapel murders;" I'm going to have to insist that you cite the place where this guy says exactly this, please, so as readers we can examine the passage for ourselves for context and conclusions. Where precisely does "Bill" say that the real James Maybrick must have actually written this Ripper letter?
Then you say:
"And I love the fact that you claim that Anne's story requires independent corroboration, whereas you are willing to believe anything Mike tells you about Tony Devereux."
Wrong again. Peter, please read the record. Know what I have already and often said before you attempt to characterize it. It's only fair. See my post to RJ immediately above for evidence that you have not correctly stated my position here.
And the Galasheils letter was certainly known about well before this diary and PHF (as I think Stewart Evans would tell you) and there is nothing about it that suggests our forgers would have had to have known about it, and no evidence in the diary that they did.
Finally, independent corroboration of Anne's story could take many forms. Genealogical investigations could support her, there could be documentary evidence researched and brought to light that could support her claim, reliable independent testimony from someone who had seen or heard of or known that this book existed before 1994 might be uncovered, and so on. Any number of possible circumstances and pieces of evidence could arise that would support Anne's story. But none have. Imagine that.
Now I really must run. You still haven't offered any evidence at all that links this book in any way to the real James Maybrick and I can't say that I am surprised.
All the best,
--John
PS: Two more things about the Galasheils letter -- First, it isn't even signed "Jack the Ripper," the way the diary is. It's just signed "The Ripper" (and, like so many of the other hundreds of letters, it makes promises that are never kept). Second, as I looked at the two documents pictured in Paul's book side by side (the Maybrick/Baltic letter and the Galasheils letter), I quickly noticed that the upper case "D"s that begin the salutations on both letters ("Dear") are completely different. (Then again, we all have many different styles of handwriting, so I guess that's not important and they could still be by the same person. That's convenient. ) Still, it's worth mentioning that the Galahseils letter looks nothing at all like the diary writing, not even a little similar, like it could just be a different style from the same person. |
Author: Caroline Anne Morris
Saturday, 05 January 2002 - 05:07 am | | Hi All,
A bit more on the question of whether Anne knew anything or not about the diary's origins.
She did have a little bit of luck. If Billy's step granny and a servant from Battlecrease could not possibly have gone together, as she claims was an oral tradition in her family, to Florie's trial, her story would have come unstuck. If she made the whole thing up, while working out what to tell Feldy in July 1994, did she do any research? Did she already know that Formby and Yapp lived within half a mile of each other during the early 1880s, and could easily have known each other? If not, how dodgy a lie might it have turned out to be?
Also, we have Anne asking Mike in the early days, "Did you nick it?" Now, whether or not it was a genuine concern or an attempt to nip in the bud any idea that she knew more about the diary's origins than she was letting on, this question is very telling in that it shows everyone in earshot that even Mike's wife can't trust anything he comes out with. In one fell swoop, she is not only admitting, in front of the very people who are investigating his story, that her husband is capable of lying and stealing, but she is also quite possibly sabotaging Mike's hopes and dreams for the diary. This show of wifely disloyalty, even if the question was asked half-jokingly, would not be lightly forgiven or forgotten in most households. So was the question asked to pre-empt any awkward questions being asked of her? Was it a genuine question or asked for effect? If it was the former, and Anne truly doubted that Mike was really given the diary by Tony, was she convinced by July 1994 that he must have been telling the truth after all? Would it have been wise to adapt his story and use it for her own if she had any doubts about it by then? Mike, who wanted more than anything for Anne's story not to be true, would have rejoiced if he had lied about Tony giving him the diary - it would have proved to his own satisfaction that her own story had to be a lie, and he wouldn't have been scratching his head ever since over whether she deceived him because she had the diary all along, or whether she wrote the thing herself, or whether she just lied about it. He'd know for certain.
It still seems to me, on balance, that Anne knew more about the diary than Mike and she was the one in control. Intuition again maybe, but based on everything I've read and know about the couple.
Love,
Caz |
Author: Peter Wood
Saturday, 05 January 2002 - 10:47 am | | Hi John
Fair point. I am coming to the conclusion that I did state your position incorrectly, but come on John - I'm not psychic! Your post to RJ making clear your position only appeared after mine.
Anyway John, Bill doesn't come out with a line such as "I think James Maybrick wrote the Galashiels letter", rather it is reported in Shirley's book on p. 332:
"The conflicting opinions are bemusing. There appears to my untrained eye, a clear relationship between the Galashiels letter and Maybrick's will. Bill Waddell ,former curator of the Scotland Yard Black Museum, has a lifetime's experience of forgery and is convinced they are one and the same"
And that is that. Using logical deduction and inference, Bill Waddell is of the opinion that James Maybrick wrote the Galashiels letter. Now, of course, that in itself doesn't necessarily mean that James was Jack the Ripper, but I was pointing out previously that it would be a hell of a coincidence for a band of forgers in Liverpool to select JM as their candidate for the Ripper and then, some years later, find out that he actually wrote a letter claiming to be the ripper. And regardless of what you say about the Galashiels letter being signed "The Ripper", you have to acknowledge that it is clearly tied in with the Whitechapel Murders.
Of course the handwriting is a problem, but it is precisely because the handwriting in the diary doesn't match any known example of Maybrick's that we have to search for other evidence against him. And there are few known examples of Maybrick's handwriting.
And the handwriting argument is complicated even further by Sue Iremonger's insistence that Michael Maybrick could have written James' will. As she puts it (I am quoting from memory now), despite the fact that they are brothers, she still wouldn't have expected to see such obvious similarities in their hands.
Another thing too, physically they must have been very similar as I noticed Feldman published a photograph claiming it to be of James, whereas Anne and Carole published the same photograph claiming it to be of Michael!
Seriously, I am utterly confused by the handwriting argument, especially Paul's insistence that the will was forged. So maybe if the will was forged then it must have been Michael Maybrick who wrote the Galashiels letter and not James!
And John, unlike St. Gerards writing (which we are NOT allowed to examine), both the will and the Galashiels letter should prove no problem if you wish to examine them.
Anyway, Donald Rumbelow says "...very little reliance can be placed on handwriting comparison. The handwriting of the German murderer, Peter Kurten, who was known as the Dusseldorf Ripper because of the way he imitated his notorious predecessor, changed completely after each murder, so much so, indeed, that he used to point out to his wife the anonymous letters that he wrote to the police and which were reproduced in the newspapers, so confident was he that she would never recognise them....nor did she.....".
There is no getting away from it John. James Maybrick's will is not a found 20th century document, it is of the 19th century, indeed of the year 1889, regardless of whether or not James wrote it or Michael and Edwin forged it. "And the handwriting of that will matches a letter sent by 'the Ripper' in relation to the Whitechapel Murders".
So you are wrong to insistently compare the handwriting of the Galashiels letter to the diary, which, up till now, you still insist is a "found 20th century document". Instead you should compare it to the will and give your opinion on Bill's reading of the match between them.
Because if Bill is right then there is a clear connection between the Real James Maybrick and the case known as the Whitechapel Murders. Now that connection could just extend to the one letter, it might go no further, but it is a connection and a very strange one when one takes into account the fact that the "forgers" of the diary could not have known of the letters existence, if indeed the diary was forged.
Which I still don't believe it was.
Hiya Caz
Y'know, that little bit you quote back there about Anne asking Mike "Did you nick it?" really bothered me when I read it in Feldman's book, not least because it was said in Feldman's presence.
Anne's story is a strange one, to say the least, but if she really did say "Did you nick it Mike?" in front of Feldman then (if my view is correct) she could only have said that to keep attention away from herself and perhaps to keep Feldman amused for a few more months.
I suppose there is of course the possibility that Mike and Anne concocted the scene to play out in front of Feldman as another way of explaining the diary's introduction into the world, but Mike is still sticking to the line that he was given the diary by Tony Devereux in the manner in which he originally described.
Mike is in no position to say whether or not the diary is genuine. But he can say how he got it. And stupid forgery confessions aside, the last time I heard Mike was still sticking to his story of getting the diary from Tony Devereux.
The whole "Mike and Anne" thing is turning by the day into a gross caricature of a 'Carry On' film (I'm not sure if you had them in the states - basically a satirical take on various situations with famous actors of the day, about thirty or forty years ago, and the films wouldn't get made today as they are not very "P.C.") - with Frankie Howerd cast in the role of Mike Barrett and Anne played by.............Barbara Windsor?
There have been too many twists and turns for us ever to trust another word they say without strapping them into a chair, hooking them up to a polygraph and getting infallible readings from both of them. That is, of course, after Mike has asked for his seventh whisky.
And another thing, if (as Keith Skinner believes) we accept Anne's 'In my family for years' story, then Anne was never "in control", as she has constantly stated that she wasn't intersted in Jack The Ripper, only gave the diary to Mike to inspire him to write a book and wished that the thing had been destroyed.
All in all, apart from one or two oddly phrased quotes, Anne has kept pretty much a low profile.
And so to Christopher T. George, thanks Chris - your lovely card arrived this morning, I just wasn't expecting that you would have written War and Peace inside it! You are right with what you say about James and Florie, you may remember me telling you many months ago that I visited James' grave and (whilst not being in any way religious) it felt very peaceful. I even left some flowers there because the guy has had a pretty bad press these last few years - and it just felt like the right thing to do. I did bear in mind that he stands accused of the murders of seven women of the 'unfortunate' class and I can't imagine anyone putting flowers on Ted Bundy's grave, but the case agaisnt James remains 'unproven' and therefore despite my belief in the diary I cannot help but feel a little sorry for him and especially Florie.
Regards to all
Peter.
P.S. F.A. Cup weekend and Man Utd are live on BBC1 tomorrow - playing against Di Canio's West Ham! Nicola Anelka meanwhile would be better off playing beach football against a rather tubby Eric Cantona. And still Robbie Fowler continues to score.............
R.J. Just a minor point, but when Mike took Feldy to see Battlecrease he didn't take him, as you say, to the house over the road - because over the road is the cricket club. Apparently it was there in Maybrick's day and it was there when I last went to view Battlecrease for myself.
The house that Mike apparently took Feldy to was the one next door. Battlecrease is only half of a mansion, not the whole of it. As you face Battlecrease it is the house on the left. Mike took Feldy to the one on the right.
But you are right to raise the question: What was that all about?
Incidentally, Battlecrease looked nothing like I thought it would, having seen the drawings published in PHF's book and read the descriptions of the grounds. I wonder if some of the grounds might have been sold off to the local council as, virtually butting up to the house itself (save for about thirty feet or so) is some housing which looked like local authority housing for old people - and patently not as old as Battlecrease itself.
I didn't go inside the house as I thought it would be a tad rude to knock on the owner's door and make known my interest, but it was nice to stand there for a few minutes and imagine the people who had come and gone from there.
If you ever get the chance to visit it you too will probably be surprised at just how small the front garden appears to be and how little space there seems to be at the side.
Anyway, that's that. |
Author: R.J. Palmer
Saturday, 05 January 2002 - 11:58 am | | Peter--Hello. Just one question today. All this talk about the inconclusiveness of handwriting. Are we being set-up for a new line of defense in case Kane's handwriting matches that of the Maybrick diary? I'd like to see an end of this someday Cheers, Giggsy.
Caz--Back to your post of yesterday. My point really wasn't that Devereux was or wasn't capable of writing or researching the Maybrick diary. He worked for the Liverpool papers as a compositor, so he was certainly literate. My only point is that a book of essays about George Herbert and Andrew Marvell isn't something that he would have likely borrowed or owned if his tastes didn't run to the literary. Nor is there any proof that anyone in the loop had this book other than Mike or Anne. [I wasn't suggesting that you were suggesting this, anyway. Sorry. I think it was Chris George that suggested that someone else might have supplied the Crashaw quote from the Sphere]. I still believe the most obvious and most likely answer is that the Barretts' ownership of the Sphere indicates that one of them supplied the Crashaw quote. And I think the best choice is overwhelmingly Mike Barrett.
At present, I seem to be the only one here that still believes Barrett was involved in the Maybrick hoax. [John sometimes grudgingly admits that he could be]. I just don't believe Mike is a dupe. To me, his various statements & actions can be seen to follow a pattern of 'half-revelation' followed by retraction & back-peddling when it dawns on him that the Diary is his income. The Saturday Night/Sunday Morning syndrome. Spontaneous angery confessions followed by repentance and denial. I can buy the fact that he wanted to derail Feldman [once Anne started to work with him] but the diary was still a potential money maker. So his various motivations were entirely confused and at odds with each other. He enjoyed kicking & choking the golden goose, but in his clearer moments knew he couldn't strangle it to death without losing another egg. My idea that Barrett wanted to make money for a confession is based on a hunch that Alan Gray wasn't able to extract too much information from Mike. This remains to be seen, of course. But I think getting information from Mike is like pulling teeth. I think Mike cooperated in so far as sniffing out whether it might lead to a 'deal' of some sort. A guess, that's all.
Chris-- My thinking is this. If Anne's "in the family for years" story isn't true, then it's pretty darn safe to throw out all the elements of her story. If the Maybrick diary is a recent forgery, and Anne was involved in it, then her claim to have given Mike the diary in order that he would write becomes entirely convoluted. A wife secretly forging a best-seller in order to dupe her husband into writing a book? Too convoluted. It doesn't seem realistic.
It's much easier for me to believe that Anne took control of the provenance because Mike was being troublesome. Best wishes, RJ Palmer |
Author: John Omlor
Saturday, 05 January 2002 - 12:12 pm | | Hi Peter,
Point by point, for the purposes of precision.
First, you write:
"Fair point. I am coming to the conclusion that I did state your position incorrectly, but come on John - I'm not psychic! Your post to RJ making clear your position only appeared after mine."
Indeed, however I had said exactly the same thing many times before and was arguing against indicting Tony solely on Mike's word often and repeatedly as far back as my first words around here. I have always made that argument when discussing the state of evidence against any possible forgers, especially whenever Tony was named, and the archives clearly show that I made it consistently -- even, I might say, well before you joined us. So let's be precise about what my position has always been. Thanks.
Now then, you say:
"Bill doesn't come out with a line such as "I think James Maybrick wrote the Galashiels letter..."
I thought as much.
Then you cite Shirley, who does not cite Bill, but simply tells us what she thinks he believes. This is not good enough for any serious scholar, Peter. It should not be good enough for you. Statements need context and conclusions need to be precise. If Bill Waddell really does think the Galasheils letter and Maybrick's will were written by the same person, he will have to be cited directly as saying so. I do not believe he has been. In fact, he has written, in his own book's chapter on Jack, on page 72, that
"I cannot offer you an absolutely positive answer to the question 'Who was Jack the Ripper?' and nor can anyone else, however convinced they may be in their own mind that they have discovered the final solution."
I am almost positive that he has never stated that he believes in the authenticity of the 'diary' or that Maybrick was connected to the Ripper crimes. If you can find something he has actually written, anywhere, in any publication, that says otherwise, I will start considering this his new position. Otherwise, frankly, this claim remains hearsay and certainly not established to the level of responsible scholarship.
Besides which, neither this letter, signed only "The Ripper," nor the will, nor Maybrick's letters (which Paul thinks look like the Galasheils letter despite the fact that the very first letter in each is completely different) look anything at all like the diary. They don't even look like different styles of the same hand. And no handwriting expert anywhere has ever said they do.
Then there's this gem:
"it is precisely because the handwriting in the diary doesn't match any known example of Maybrick's that we have to search for other evidence against him."
Or that we consider this as evidence that the diary wasn't written in his hand. Surely, that would be the more logical assumption.
But let's press on.
As I always knew it would, this argument arises, through a citation from Don Rumbelow:
"...very little reliance can be placed on handwriting comparison."
Yes, I knew this was where we were headed. It had to come to this. What I don't understand is why, if you really believe this, you bother talking about the Galasheils letter at all, since, as we've just been told by you via Don, "...very little reliance can be placed on handwriting comparison." You see? You keep undercutting the relevance of your own arguments. If you truly believe what you cite Don as saying, then you have no legitimate claim to your conclusions about the Galasheils letter or about any letter.
That's the price of inconsistency and directly contradicting your own arguments.
Either handwriting comparisons can be relied upon or they cannot. You endorse Don's claim that they cannot while at the same time citing them in the case of the will and the letter. This won't work. Unfortunately, you need both contradictory positions. You need to be able to use handwriting comparisons to make your argument about the letter and you need to be able to dismiss them whenever anyone actually looks at the diary. The reason for this is that your entire position is founded on two directly contradictory assumptions -- that handwriting comparisons are reliable when you want them to be and are not reliable when you don't want them to be. That's not an argument, that's sleight of hand. It's a thoroughgoing process of rationalization simply in order to fulfill your own wishes and arrive at your predetermined conclusions. It's not a serious or objective or responsible method of investigation or analysis of the evidence and it reveals why the arguments for authenticity are so often logically bankrupt.
You tell me I should compare the Galasheils letter to the will. Well, I don't happen to have a copy of the will nearby, Peter, so I compared the Galasheils letter to a known sample of Maybrick's own writing, the Baltic letter. And guess what? They are different. Indeed, the very first letter "D" in each is completely different. Now we know Maybrick wrote the Baltic letter. You think he wrote the Galasheils letter, but the writing between them doesn't match. You think he wrote the diary. But the writing between them doesn't match. You think (according to the diary) he wrote the Dear Boss letter. But the writing between them doesn't match. You think, (according to the diary) he wrote the Lusk letter with the kidney. But the writing between them doesn't match. Do you sense a pattern here , Peter?
How many times do you have to be hit over the head with a brick before you think to move? For the diary to be authentic and its claims to be genuine, the same guy had to have written the Baltic letter, the diary, the Lusk letter, the Dear Boss letter, and now the Galasheils letter. But none of them match. It's no wonder you now rush to a line in Rumbelow that assures you that "...very little reliance can be placed on handwriting comparison." No wonder you are forced to offer the lame little prayer "but we all have different handwriting styles that change all the time" or murmur some vague wish about Multiple Personality Disorder. Really, the lengths one needs to go to argue in favor of the authenticity of this document are almost embarrassing. If I were you, I think I'd stop talking about handwriting all together.
Only you, Peter could write a post that seriously cites and endorses these two sentences at the same time:
"...very little reliance can be placed on handwriting comparison."
and
"And the handwriting of that will matches a letter sent by 'the Ripper' in relation to the Whitechapel Murders".
Uh, hello? Doesn't the first citation at least render the second one somewhat suspect?
Or maybe it's just me.
Anyway, I'm off to lunch. Thanks, Peter. This one's been fun.
All the best,
--John |
Author: Caroline Anne Morris
Saturday, 05 January 2002 - 01:15 pm | | Hi RJ,
You write that you have 'a hunch that Alan Gray wasn't able to extract too much information from Mike'. And that you 'think getting information from Mike is like pulling teeth'. And that you 'think Mike cooperated in so far as sniffing out whether it might lead to a 'deal' of some sort'.
But wasn't it the other way around? Didn't Melvin say that Mike actually engaged Alan Gray to help him prove his involvement in forging the diary? I might be wrong here but I was under the impression that Alan Gray's main purpose in life only became extracting a good newsworthy forgery story out of Mike so he [Gray] would have some chance of eventually being paid for his services out of the money Mike made from such a story.
The reason it was like pulling teeth was because there was no true confession story - IMHO of course.
Love,
Caz |
Author: R.J. Palmer
Saturday, 05 January 2002 - 01:33 pm | | | Caz--I don't know. It seems a little confused to me. I was under the impression that Mike hired Gray initially to locate Anne, and the diary business somehow became tangled up in it. I don't really know much about it, frankly. Cheers, RP |
Author: Paul Begg
Sunday, 06 January 2002 - 05:41 am | | Hi Caz/RJ
For what it is worth, the sequence seems to be that Mike first hired Alan Gray to help him locate Anne and Caroline, then extended the engagement with a brief to help him prove the he'd forged the 'diary' and to find a newspaper which would be willing to pay for the story.
According to Melvin Harris the scenario is as follows:
“A book and other documents that were "evidence" were mentioned to private investigator Allan Gray by Mike Barrett, at the beginning of August 1994.No title for the book was given. Mike also mentioned that he had left his "evidence" with his solicitor.
At that time Gray took just passing notice of this claim. He is not a ripperologist, and at that juncture he was simply employed to trace Mike's wife and daughter.
But in the first week of September,. Mike extended his engagement and asked Gray to help him "prove" his forgery claim so that the story could be sold to a newspaper. He said that his earlier actions could dry up the royalties and he wanted some compensation for this.
It was at this point that Mike first named the book as a"Sphere book about poems
Let me underscore this: the partial naming of took place in the first week of September 1994. His disclosure of the Crashaw quote to Mrs Harrison did not take place until much later, on 30 September.
He had earlier said to Gray that he had kept the book "up his sleeve". He had not told the Liverpool reporter about this book, since "they wanted everything for nothing" and made no offer to pay him anything at all.
Here let me register that Alan Gray will back this up with a statement meant for publication.
And let me refute Mrs Harrison's claim that Gray was employed by me. he was not at any date. My contact with him arose out of a request from the Sunday Tiimes that I liaise with him on their behalf. That is all there was to it." - M. Harris, message supplied by Karoline L Tuesday, 15 May 2001 - 02:29 pm
So, according to this statement, at the begining of August 1994 Mike told Gray that 'a book and other documents' were lodged with his solicitor. And he appears to have said that he had not produced these proofs when he confessed to Harold Brough because "they wanted everything for nothing" and made no offer to pay him anything at all.’ In September, realising that his earlier confessions could dry up the book royalties, Mike sought to compensate himself by being paid for his full confession and in the first week of September 1994 accordingly ‘asked Gray to help him "prove" his forgery claim.’ And it was at this time – the first week of September 1994 – that Mike identified the book ‘as a Sphere book about poems.
The fact is, however, that Mike contacted Harold Brough and freely confessed, no mention of payment having been made. And when Harold Brough disbelieved him, Mike tried to identify the shop where he’d bought the ink and the auctioneers where he’d bought the book. It is clear that Mike wanted to be believed and that money wasn’t an issue. So his explanation for not producing the Sphere book for Harold Brough appears to be complete rubbish.
And I also wonder what happened to the other proofs Mike claimed to have lodged with his solicitor. They don't appear to have materialised at all. It all causes me to doubt whether Mike had actually lodged anything with his solicitor at all. And his subsequent actions suggest to me that the 'discovery' of the quote was recent. Would Mike have sat on the Sphere book throughout all his desperate attempts to prove he was the forger, yet chucked away this valuable piece of evidence because he wanted to prove that he was the genius researcher? |
Author: Christopher T George
Sunday, 06 January 2002 - 06:28 am | | Hi, all:
Caz stated--
"If Billy's step granny and a servant from Battlecrease could not possibly have gone together, as she claims was an oral tradition in her family, to Florie's trial, her story would have come unstuck. If she made the whole thing up, while working out what to tell Feldy in July 1994, did she do any research? Did she already know that Formby and Yapp lived within half a mile of each other during the early 1880s, and could easily have known each other? If not, how dodgy a lie might it have turned out to be?"
Let's have a look at this claim that "Granny" Formby, Billy Graham's step grandmother, Elizabeth Formby, knew a servant in the Maybrick household and that the servant and Granny attended Florie's trial together. I should say it is a classic example of the sort of "evidence" that fills Paul Feldman's Jack the Ripper: The Final Chapter and that makes it so unsatisfactory compared to books that present solid research. The passages in his book that refer to this episode are as follows, quoted from his 1997 Virgin hardback:
During a late July or early August 1994 meeting in Liverpool (the precise date is not stated but it was "a week or so" after the July 23 meeting at the Moat House pub in Liverpool in which Anne "confessed" her in-the-family-for-years story), Feldman states that Anne Graham told him, when asked about what she knew about Jack the Ripper (or, by implication, the Maybricks), "I don't know when, but I also picked up that Edith [Graham]'s mother, Elizabeth, was a good friend of Alice Yapp. According to my father, his step-granny, of whom he was very fond, accompanied Yapp to the trial of Florence Maybrick." (p. 153)
In one of the taped interviews with Keith Skinner transcribed in JtR: The Final Chapter, Keith (KS) asked Billy (BG) what he knew about the Maybrick Case:
BG: Well they talked about it for years--they all talked about when [Florence Maybrick] come to Liverpool [between 1921 and 1923 after her release from jail] and my grandmother went with the skivvy. She was the one who opened the letter and she went to the Assizes. That's what they tell me, like.
KS: Who was it that told you that your grandmother -- that must be Granny Formby -- went with the skivvy and that that was the skivvy who opened the letter?
BG: It could have been my sister, or my granny could have told me -- everyone talked about it. They talked about -- you know when a murder came up -- big licks it was. . .
KS: And was it this skivvy that used to visit your grandmother?
BG: As far as I know it was -- her name was mentioned a lot and she said she was from [not audible] and there was some talk about her coming down looking for a job and they were trying to get her a job with a big shipping firm. (pp. 175-176)
There are a number of things that are unsatisfactory about this interview as transcribed in Feldman's book. Most glaringly, Billy Graham never mentions Alice Yapp by name. At least, the portion of the transcript that is published pertaining to this topic never mentions Yapp's name. This is all the more unsatisfactory because Billy is quoted as saying, "her name was mentioned a lot" but the name is not given by him!
How can we be certain that the "skivvy" Billy heard about was Alice Yapp? How indeed can we be sure of the veracity of any of this information when we hear from him such expressions as, "That's what they tell me, like" and "As far as I know it was"?
Is there a portion of the taped interview with Billy Graham where Alice Yapp's name is mentioned? Peter Birchwood has asked Keith Skinner for access to these tapes, and it seems to me this is one of the questions that could be explored. Did Anne Graham coach her father to mention "the skivvy," i.e., Alice Yapp, to give a supposed way in which the Diary may have been transferred from Battlecrease House to the Graham family? Could the "they" who told Billy in "That's what they tell me, like" have been not his sister or his grandmother years earlier but his own daughter, in 1994????
Anne told Feldman that Granny Formby, "According to my father, his step-granny, of whom he was very fond, accompanied Yapp to the trial of Florence Maybrick." Here Billy Graham is made to seem like the authority on this tale, which is not at all the case in the taped interview. Note also the insertion of "of whom he was very fond" as if it gives more veracity to the tale or to Granny Formby's character.
And what of this story that Granny Formby "accompanied Yapp to the trial of Florence Maybrick"? This statement seems to imply that Alice Yapp and Elizabeth Formby travelled to the trial together and that they sat side by side in the courtroom in St. George's Hall, Liverpool. But the latter surely could not have happened, because Alice Yapp was a witness in the case, and by law, I believe, she would not have been able to sit in the courtroom for fear her presence might prejudice her testimony by hearing the testimony of other witnesses.
Best regards
Chris George |
Author: Caroline Anne Morris
Sunday, 06 January 2002 - 07:23 am | | Hi Paul,
Thanks very much for re-posting that particular message of Melvin's. I had forgotten some of the details.
It's not so much that Mike would have produced the Sphere book earlier if this had been his only tangible contribution to the diary's creation and a way to prove his involvement. It's more the fact that he wasn't sitting on the Sphere book at the time if we are to believe his story that he had lent the volumes to Jenny around the end of May 1994 in case her son could use them in his studies. If he knew the significance of what appeared before the eyes whenever vol.2 was opened (I'm still not sure I understand how this hardback book could 'fall open' at a certain page just by picking the thing up. Wouldn't it have to at least be picked up, opened and flicked through before the bias would become apparent?), I could understand him doing one of two things: destroying such incriminating evidence; keeping it in a safe place like lodging it with his solicitor. But what does Mike do? He nonchalantly lends it to a teenage boy he hardly knows - vital evidence that could later come back to haunt him or else be lost forever if he decided to confess - which is precisely what he did, some three weeks after letting the book go, if these dates are accurate.
What we don't know is when exactly Mike decided to see if Jenny still had the book and what triggered this decision. But it does appear to be quite some time after his first desperate attempts to prove he was the forger.
I wanted to say a bit more about Anne's curious "Did you nick it" question to Mike, in front of the investigators. Another thing struck me as rather odd about it, if it was a spontaneous and sincerely-meant suggestion, and RJ is correct about Anne knowing nothing at all about the diary's true origins. If I had been married to Mike, and he had come home with this strange parcel, it would have been at that point that such a question would have occurred to me, and in private - not months and months down the line and in company with strangers who had come to get to the bottom of it. And if I had been worried on that first day that Mike had pinched the diary from somewhere and was lying to me about it, I could have asked to speak to Tony myself during one of those phonecalls Mike allegedly made to him.
If Anne did none of this in the early days, why not? Lack of interest? Or because she knew Mike was telling the truth because she gave the diary to Tony? Why would she still be asking such a question, and in such circumstances, that much later on? If that was me, I'd have said again, just before we were due to meet the investigators, "Now look here Michael. Are you absolutely sure Tony gave you that diary? It's going to look very bad on us if you've done anything you shouldn't have and it gets found out by these people." These are the sort of private concerns I might have from the beginning (which also might have made me fight to stop Mike going public), but asking the question as she did, and when she did, like an afterthought, seems most odd. It's easier to explain if it was asked strategically to make sure everyone, including Mike, would not suspect she had any part in the unfolding drama.
Hi Chris,
I composed this post before seeing your latest on Formby/Yapp, which I'll read in a moment.
Love,
Caz |
Author: Caroline Anne Morris
Sunday, 06 January 2002 - 08:11 am | | Hi Chris,
Billy's statement:
'Well they talked about it for years--they all talked about when [Florence Maybrick] come to Liverpool...and my grandmother went with the skivvy. She was the one who opened the letter and she went to the Assizes',
doesn't suggest to me that Anne 'coached' him as such. It sounds more like a downright lie if she had only just told him about his granny going to the Assizes with 'the skivvy', and if 'they' clearly hadn't talked about any such thing 'for years'. And I think it would have suggested recent coaching by Anne far more if he had mentioned Alice Yapp by name. Surely she would have emphasised the name for him in her 'lessons' to make his version more believable. If she told him about the opening of the letter, there can be no doubt she knew this was Alice Yapp. And if she didn't get him to lie, he must have been referring to Yapp for the same reason, even if he couldn't bring her name to mind. (And somewhere in the back of my mind I have Keith Skinner saying Anne didn't seem to have made the connection that the Battlecrease servant was Alice Yapp until later, perhaps as a result of Feldy's research into the letter opening episode that Billy mentioned. No doubt Keith will comment on this when he reads it.)
I don't think the story that Granny Formby "accompanied Yapp to the trial of Florence Maybrick" implies any more than just that - that they travelled to the trial together. Why should it? If you attend a hospital appointment, for instance, you might well say afterwards that a friend accompanied you, but it wouldn't imply that the friend had gone with you into the consulting room. I think you may be assuming Anne made it all up and/or didn't realise that Yapp was a witness and therefore would not have been accompanied during the trial by Formby. If so I think you may be underestimating Anne's intelligence a bit. Either her story was carefully put together (and the luck still holds true about Formby and Yapp living very close to each other) but an invention, or it is indeed based on an oral family tradition and a fascinating link between the Graham family and Battlecrease that can't be ignored.
Love,
Caz |
Author: Peter Wood
Sunday, 06 January 2002 - 10:49 am | | John O.
Glad to see that you are enjoying yourself.
To make one thing clear - and it may surprise some people in here - but I don't always agree with everything that Paul Feldman says. Not just out of hand anyway.
You have noted in the past that Paul poses a lot of 'questions' - but I don't think that should qualify you and Chris T. G. to slate Paul's book as poorly written or researched. It is precisely because Paul doesn't have all the answers that he has to pose questions.
I am aware that Paul states his opinions quite forcefully and that can lead to people believing that he is utterly convince of everything he prints in his book. I don't know.
But, I don't agree with your assertion that, in order for the diary to be genuine, every letter you mention must have been written by James Maybrick/Jack The Ripper. Honestly John, I don't know just how much of this we can prove, but ultimately I don't think it's likely that PHF has the truth down 100%.
And that is why it doesn't bother me when Paul poses 'questions' instead of 'conclusions'. Paul is only honest in what he is doing, it would be entirely dishonest of him not to pose the questions.
Paul poses the questions and gives us the opportunity to make our own conclusions. And in that respect I think Paul's book has been a roaring success, because in tandem with Shirley's it has inspired ferocious debate and interest which remains unabated to this day.
So no, we don't have all the answers. And no, not all the letters have to have been written by Maybrick/Jack for the diary to be genuine. But if we can prove, or at least show that it is very likely, that one of the letters was written by James then that strengthens the pro diary brigade's case beyond recognition.
Whereas you, the 'anti' lot, need to argue against the letters on an individual, not a collective, basis.
Just one more point, John. PHF states quite unequivocally his own belief that the 'Lusk' letter is a forgery based on the 17 September letter! I don't pretend to believe that myself because as yet I haven't examined all the evidence relating to the 17 September letter. But it is Paul's opinion. I can't really state my opinion on whether or not the Lusk letter is genuine.
But for the purposes of diary examination it isn't absolutely vital.
As for the issue relating to Bill Waddell and the Galashiels letter, what you really want is for Bill to come round to your house and swear an affidavit in front of a judge as to his beliefs of a relationship between the Galashiels letter and Maybricks will, right? Don't worry, I may have something for you on that subject soon.
But still, it was nice for once to be able to correct you on a matter of fact as it is not something that I get the opportunity to do that often.
Cheers
Peter. |
Author: John Omlor
Sunday, 06 January 2002 - 12:37 pm | | Hi Peter,
The problem with Paul's book is that it much too often uses the rhetoric of fact and conclusion when it is merely speculating and dreaming. Page after page of his book takes its cue from his rather insulting title. It speaks over and over again as if it were arriving at legitimate conclusions when in fact it does nothing but make vague associations and then offer ellipses and exclamation points in the place of logical validity or a clear analysis of what the evidence does and does not allow us to claim. Even the page I opened to at random earlier this year did exactly that, using a clear language of conclusion about Jack the Ripper having to have written one of the letters when Paul had obviously established no such thing. And Paul even uses the word "must" over and over again, mostly for dramatic purposes, since, despite his own deceptive language, he actually arrives at no "musts" at all in his entire book, no matter what he chooses to call it.
Also, many of Paul's arguments rest on rumor, fragments of conversations, unsubstantiated stories and partial recounting of events. But he does not write them this way. He writes them using the rhetoric of revelation and exclamation. That is simply irresponsible scholarship. And we can go over page after page if you'd like and I can read you line after line where this sort of maneuver takes place, although I'm not sure what we'd accomplish, since it should be obvious to careful and critical readers that Paul's book is largely sleight-of-hand posing as argument and conclusions and that his "reasoning" in those pages would never pass the round of first readers in any peer review for any serious academic press.
And Peter, the diary itself suggests that the writer also wrote a number of the letters. This is why the diarist keeps echoing the letters -- Shirley and Paul have both pointed out the many passages that they think echo specific letters, including the kidney eating passage that's supposed to echo stuff in the letters. It's interesting that Paul believes the Lusk letter to be a forgery (I had indeed forgotten that one). I guess that means the Lusk letter forger was very lucky, since "the diary of the real Jack the Ripper" turns out to have the same account of eating the kidney that his forged letter did.
But let's turn to Paul for more goodies.
I quote you the following two sentence regarding the October 5th letter -- the one that mentions the treble event, just like over two dozen other letters sent around that time (see Evans and Skinner for all of them). This one mentioned the Whitehall victim discovered two days earlier. Now listen to Paul’s rhetoric of absolute certainty and then try and tell me he's a responsible scholar and a critical analyst of what the evidence allows us to claim.
Here is how Paul phrases his conclusion:
"This was convincing. The Ripper must have written these letters."
and the next paragraph reads:
"Whether the diary was genuine or not, the letter of 5 October must, beyond all reasonable doubt, have been sent by Jack the Ripper."
That's two "musts" and a "beyond all reasonable doubt."
That's irresponsible history, shoddy scholarship, and careless critical thinking for the sake of dramatic conclusions.
And that's what fills this book. Not just "questions," Peter. "Conclusions." "Musts." And they're not valid or established or reliable or well-founded conclusions. They are disguised dreams. And that makes this book either simply sloppy or deliberately misleading.
Mind you, nowhere on those pages or anywhere else does Paul actually prove that the Ripper "must have written these letters." Nowhere does he even come close to proving such a thing or even offering significant material evidence that would allow for such a conclusion. He just states it. And expects us not only to accept it uncritically but to allow him to go on and base further research and arguments on these completely unestablished conclusions. That, dear Peter, is sleight-of-hand.
And that's why Paul's book is not the "Final" anything, despite its pretentious rhetoric and its pretentious title.
And by the way, I might as well point out that the October 5th letter that Paul says "must" have been written by Jack looks nothing like either the Galasheils letter or the Baltic letter or the diary.
At a certain point, this becomes ridiculous. And I haven't even added the "Dear Boss" writing to the mix.
And yet the diarist implies he wrote that one, too. So that's at least five different documents Paul says that Maybrick must have written -- Baltic, Galasheils, diary, Dear Boss, Oct.5th, -- all in utterly different hands. (Oh right, we all have different handwritings all the time. I forgot. But they're not even close.... No matter.)
As for Bill Wadell, it was you Peter who cited him as saying that James Maybrick wrote the Galasheils letter. This was how you phrased it:
"Bill is claiming that 'James Maybrick' (the real one) wrote a letter about the Whitechapel murders."
It turns out that you were just citing Shirley who was just paraphrasing something Bill said about the two letters. It remains unclear whether your original statement is completely accurate. Therefore, in the name of responsible scholarship, it becomes necessary to verify that Bill Wadell actually believes that the real James Maybrick must have written the Galasheils letter. Until that's done, this remains second and even third hand info.
But why waste your time finding out whether anyone thinks that the writing on any letter matches any other document? Remember, Peter, as you so graciously reminded us, invoking Don Rumbelow:
"...very little reliance can be placed on handwriting comparison."
Unless, of course, it produces a result you want, I suppose. That's very convenient. Still, at least a little consistency would be nice.
Meanwhile, there is still no evidence whatsoever, of any meaningful or reliable or even material sort, that in any way links this diary to the real James Maybrick or Jack the Ripper or even to the 19th Century. And that is meant to be a conclusion -- about what evidence has so far been produced and what evidence has not.
And now it's time for lunch and football.
All the best,
--John |
Author: Peter Wood
Sunday, 06 January 2002 - 05:50 pm | | John
A very very quick post as a programme on miscarriage of justice has just turned up on BBC1.
I will answer you more fully next time, but please bear in mind that Feldman was not a ripperologist, had no interest in the ripper particularly and would have plumped for M. J. Druitt if asked before the diary turned up. Neither was he a writer, in fact I'm not sure how Paul made his money except for his obvious link with the Krays film and his work with the Pathe Year to Remember series of videos.
And Paul wasn't even planning to write 'The Final Chapter'. I may be correct in saying that he wanted Don Rumbelow to write it, but whoever it was Paul didn't have himself as first choice.
Paul was looking for a responsible approach to the subject. Paul even got his team of researchers to challenge his own conclusions for the sake of fairness.
And to damn Paul's book for the title of it is, seriously, beneath you.
It's just a book. It's just a title. Go to your local book store, go to True Crime, look up all the JTR books. Nearly all the titles have been used, right? And there are a few 'final' somethings knocking about, aren't there.
As for all of Paul's "musts", you are a scholar and I can't seriously believe that you cannot read between the lines and see that Paul is using his own form of shorthand, i.e.
"......(in order for my theory to work)the killer 'must' have written the 5 October letter.
Yes, Paul does leap to some conclusions, and no I don't agree with all of them. But then again we don't need all of Paul's conclusions to be true for James Maybrick to have been Jack the Ripper. And I am still utterly confused by all the research that he did on the Godmanchester Maybricks - not least of which is because one of the strongest points on which I disagree with Paul is that he has the "Manchester" of the diary as being 'Godmanchester' and not the Manchester which Chris will tell you is the other end of the East Lancs Road from Liverpool.
Neither do I agree with Paul's assertion that the "Thomas" referred to in the diary is not James' brother.
But I think Paul does a good job in difficult circumstances.
Virtually every other book that has ever been written on the subject has involved inferrence and speculation. 'The Final Chapter' is the only book that has hard evidence, i.e. the diary - and before your knickers get twisted even further John, I accept that it is not proven and should be subject to rigorous examination.
The only evidence that exists against other candidates is along the lines of the Littlechild letter and the McNaghten memorandum, both very interesting - but ultimately just one person's opinion (i.e. McNaghten and Littlechild)- and some people have built careers on McNaghten's memorandum!
Paul's work was never meant to be a scholarly book. It was a book that would appeal to the masses, written in language that the masses would understand.
And it works.
And that is it for tonight 'cos I have missed ten minutes of my programme.
Goodnight
Peter.
p.s. one of the all time great F.A. cup comebacks for Man U. But where is Carps when you want to discuss football? Just for the record Carps, I wouldn't have sent Smithy off for that, I'm afraid he's battling against his reputation now. |
Author: John Omlor
Sunday, 06 January 2002 - 06:31 pm | | Hi Peter,
Many of the excuses you offer for Paul are simply not acceptable -- not for serious and critical thinkers, in any case.
Whether or not he was a "Ripperologist" is irrelevant. The problems with his book have nothing to do with his familiarity with "Ripper studies." They have to do with his rhetoric, his thoroughness, the lack of care in his analysis, his rush to judgments, his deceptive linguistic practices, and his faulty logic. They have, in short, to do with his writing.
You write:
"Paul was looking for a responsible approach to the subject."
It's too bad he did not produce one.
Then you say:
"Go to your local book store, go to True Crime, look up all the JTR books. Nearly all the titles have been used, right? And there are a few 'final' somethings knocking about, aren't there."
Well, of course "nearly all the titles" have not been used. That's absurd. He could have called the book anything he wanted. He chose the presumptuous title because that's how the entire book is written, as I have shown over and over again by citing numerous passages on this board over the past months. And yes, there are a bunch of other "Final" titles out there, and if you read my posts over on the Mary Kelly board from a year or so ago, you'll see that I made exactly the same criticism of those titles and the rhetoric in those books. It seems to be a disease in this field -- announcing one's conclusions as if they were final and absolute and proven when they are nothing of the kind. Paul is just the most infected of the bunch that I have come across. But yes, there are plenty of others out there.
And it's not "just a title." Words mean something. They reveal attitudes and assumptions. And Paul's too often reveal his desires rather than his analysis or any legitimately arrived at results. So no, I do not believe such criticism is beneath me. I believe it's precisely on point.
Then you offer this lame excuse:
"As for all of Paul's "musts", you are a scholar and I can't seriously believe that you cannot read between the lines and see that Paul is using his own form of shorthand, i.e."
Peter, this is embarrassing. It is precisely because I am a scholar that I find Paul’s rhetoric of certainty and of proof and of absolute conclusions totally unacceptable and completely misleading and irresponsible. It is as a scholar that these things trouble me, because it is a scholar's job to be honest and careful and thorough about his conclusions and to write clearly and precisely and to be well-reasoned. What you call Paul's "shorthand," Peter, reveals that his writing is none of these things. He says "must" because he wants it to be "must," despite the fact that he has not made his case. It is deceptive and it is unfair and it is either sloppy thinking or it is deliberately misleading. And he says it over and over again, in instance after instance. And he never does the work necessary to make such logical claims to necessity or to knowledge. And it is as a scholar that I not only find this disturbing but that I find your casual rationalization of it also evidence of your willingness to let sloppy thinking slide because you want to agree with the conclusions it offers. This is not the process by which a careful critical mind operates, Peter. And I honestly believe you know that.
"But that's what I meant, you have to read between the lines, honest..." is just the sort of thing my Freshmen say when I call attention to the inconsistencies and sloppy thinking in their papers. It's an excuse for not having done the work properly and not having made the argument thoroughly and not having written the text clearly. I don't accept it from them and I certainly don't accept from a professional researcher and writer. And neither should you.
And precisely the same thing is true of this excuse as well:
"Paul's work was never meant to be a scholarly book. It was a book that would appeal to the masses, written in language that the masses would understand."
Paul's work was meant to be a careful and thorough investigation into the diary and the uncovering of the "truth." At least that's what the book says. It is neither. And it is written in a patently melodramatic and deceptive rhetoric of certainty in order to convince people not through reason or careful research or well-established readings of the evidence, but through exclamations, innuendos, rumors, fragments, ellipses and, perhaps most disturbingly, the pronouncements of unestablished conclusions as if they were certainties. Regardless of why the book was written and for what audience, this sort of practice is intellectually shallow and therefore any conclusions that might come from it are immediately suspect and should quite properly be criticized.
Consider a passage like this one:
"It is impossible for the diary to have been written since 1989.
"It is impossible that the marks in the watch owned by Albert Johnson were made after 1989."
Impossible. Why would a serious and careful scholar write such a thing when we know that such certainty has not been established, has not even come close to being established? Why not be responsible, make your best case, offer your evidence, suggest what it might allow people to conclude, be thorough and rational and careful and reasoned, and publish a respectable book? Why lapse into such pathetic wish-fulfillment disguised as conclusion? It's bad scholarship and bad writing. And it isn't really that dramatic, since there's no powerful reason to believe these absolute pronouncements anyway.
No Peter, I must respectfully insist that your excuses for Paul's unfortunate rhetoric and his misleading language do not change the fact that he has written exactly the book that Chris George and I first described and that, upon careful analysis and close and skeptical reading, not a single one of his "absolute conclusions" stands up as anything more than false bluster and soft supposition. And nowhere, in the entire book, despite all the unfortunate rhetoric of proof, does he offer one single piece of evidence of any sort that links this book to the real James Maybrick or to Jack the Ripper. Nowhere in over 400 pages does he ever actually offer one instance of reliable, material, documentary or testimonial or any other sort of evidence which in any way actually links this book to James Maybrick or even places it in the proper century.
Of course, to be fair to him, no one else has either. That's why any careful or reasonable case for the authenticity of the diary remains yet to begin.
And that's why we're all still here talking about Mike and Anne's curious behavior. So enough about what's wrong with Paul's unfortunate book. Perhaps we can agree to disagree in our reading of it and return to the substance of the debate.
All the best,
--John |
Author: Rosemary O'Ryan
Sunday, 06 January 2002 - 09:11 pm | | Dear RJP,
Find first: the circumstance by which the "Diary"
COULD find its way into the 'author's' possession,
and, a large quantity of 'oldish' ink, and, a knowledge of locality re, Liverpool crimes and the location of certain characters...an interest in local history...and, a love of the Bard and the lesser Elizabethan poets.
And, an acute unerstanding of what may constitute a criminal act of forgery!
Are we looking for a "workshop" of sorts? A room filled with old artifacts and brimstone?
Rosey :-) |
Author: Christopher T George
Sunday, 06 January 2002 - 11:06 pm | | Hi, all:
Peter Wood wrote:
. . . . bear in mind that Feldman was not a Ripperologist, had no interest in the Ripper particularly and would have plumped for M. J. Druitt if asked before the diary turned up. Neither was he a writer, . . . .
Oh, make excuses for Paul Feldman and Anne Graham and Patricia Cornwell shall we because they had no previous interest in the Ripper? But they are putting out books about the Ripper though aren't they? So they should take their knocks and expect to be judged as authors by their own standards alongside anybody else who publishes on the topic, shouldn't they?
I should say that Paul Feldman particularly is culpable because as John Omlor points out, Feldman floats so many trial balloons in terms of unfounded speculation, hearsay, and "somebody told me" or as in the Billy Graham interview, "That's what they tell me, like" and "As far as I know it was." As John notes, the book tries to convince us of certainty with ponderous statements and innuendo but ultimately the reader comes up empty handed.
Best regards
Chris George |
Author: Paul Begg
Monday, 07 January 2002 - 08:46 am | | Hi Caz/Chris
Regarding Bill Graham, I recall Keith’s impression being that Billy and the interview overall was overwhelmingly relaxed and natural and that what impressed those present was the apparent genuineness of Billy’s efforts to recall and make sense of disparate details of a story he’d heard years before. Expressions such as "That's what they tell me, like" and "As far as I know it was" are therefore precisely what would be expected in such a situation. They are not, I think, what we’d find in the narrative of someone re-telling a story they’d been coached on. In fact, I think such expressions would be avoided like the plague.
And we really can’t be sure of the veracity of anything that anyone tells us can we? All we can ever do is assess what we’re told as best as we can. And I think Caz is perfectly correct in saying that anything more detailed would smack of schooling in what to say. And I think they’d stick to a few basic facts and claim ignorance about everything else. Elaboration is something I’d expect to find in someone trying to make sense of a few memories.
On the whole, then, is there anything in what Billy said that strongly suggests schooling in the story? Or are Billy’s comments consistent with someone trying to recall and make sense of assorted disparate memories of things they never fully understood in the first place? If the latter then what we have is a core memory of something discussed years before which contained a link between somebody in Billy’s family who attended the trial with somebody in the Maybrick household. Whether that person was Alice Yapp is irrelevant – details do get attached to the wrong people as stories get embellished and embroidered. At best what matters is that somewhere there is a core of truth to the story of a connection between the Graham family and the Maybrick family, even if that link is nothing more than that the former knew a lowly servant in the latter’s employ.
However, the reference to opening the letter reasonably identifies the ‘skivvy’ as Alice Yap. Whether the “skivvy” was Alice Yapp remains to be seen.
Meanwhile, Caz, is it certain that the Sphere book was among the books Mike leant to his girlfriend’s son? My memory is that we don’t know whether it was or not and that all we knew for certain was that Mike leant the son some books which he thought might be helpful in the boy’s studies. We speculated, I think, that if it was among those books then Mike may have discovered the Crashaw quote at that time.
A point that has bothered me, though, is what other ‘academic’ books did Mike possess that he could have thought useful to his girlfriend’s son's studies? Could those books in fact have been no more than the complete set of the Sphere Guide?
Regarding Anne’s comment ‘Did you nick it, Mike’, the gist of the discussion when that was said was that Martin Howells had been questioning Mike, telling him that whilst it was accepted that he had been given the book by Tony Devereux, it was felt that there had to be more to that story than Mike was telling us. Mike had replied: ‘would you split on a mate?’ At that point Anne interrupted the conversation she was having with me and asked what Mike and Martin had been talking about. Martin explained and Anne said ‘did you nick it, Mike?’
Now, did Anne simply recognise that Martin Howells was pussyfooting around asking Mike if he and/or Tony had stolen the ‘diary’
and in a direct Liverpool fashion cut straight to the chase and asked the question outright.
There would have been no accusation in her question. She would simply have been expressing in plain language what Martin was trying to say. This seems to me a likely and plausible explanation of what was said, especially given the improbability of a wife expressing suspicion of her husband’s complicity in a theft in front of comparative strangers.
An alternative is that Anne meant (1) did you, meaning Mike, steal it, or (2) did you, meaning Mike {and} Tony, steal it.
If the latter, was she simply questioning whether Mike simply knew the ‘diary’ had been stolen by Tony.
I don’t wish to malign Tony Devereux in any way, but we have to consider the possibility that he may have stolen the ‘diary’ or otherwise acquired it illegally, hence his family knowing nothing about it. And hence Mike’s otherwise curious comment, “Would you split on a mate?” If the ‘diary’ had been acquired legitimately, why make this observation? Our authority for this incident, though, is Paul Feldman who doesn’t appear to have been listening to Mike and Martin’s conversation and otherwise recalled it only because of Anne’s reaction. As we know, Mike’s answer could have been purely rhetorical.
If we assume that Anne’s question to Mike was genuine and if we assume that Mike did get the ‘diary’ from Tony Devereux, then Tony’s possession of the Whittington-Egan book can be taken as confirmation that Mike discussed the ‘diary’ with Tony, which he wouldn’t have done if he’d stolen it from him. So Anne’s question therefore related either to how the ‘diary’ had come into Tony’s possession or to whether Mike’s claimed ownership was genuine (i.e., had he been given it or leant it by Tony?)
And now my brain is hurting from considering the various permutations. |
Author: Caroline Anne Morris
Monday, 07 January 2002 - 10:39 am | | Hi Paul,
You asked about the books Mike lent to Jenny's son. No, I don't think it's known for certain that volume 2 was among them, although I was under the impression that it was just the set of Sphere History of Lit volumes that Mike decided the lad might find useful. But we have a problem whether he included volume 2 or not, if the books were taken round at the end of May, some three weeks before his first confession. If he included it as part of the set it suggests he didn't realise what he was giving away. But if he held back that volume alone, it would suggest the opposite, and he'd have had it there all ready for Harold Brough. The other possibility, that the book fell open in the process of giving it to Jenny, revealing the quote to him for the first time, is also problematical. If he recognised the lines from the diary how likely is it that he would have gone ahead and left the book with Jenny's son? If, on the other hand, he did by luck and persistence come across the book in the library, it at least makes sense that he would then remember having seen the same book fairly recently when he dropped it at Jenny's and be able to retrieve it. The difficulty I have is in understanding why Mike would give this book away at all if he knew it was incriminating enough either to catch him out or to prove invaluable if he wanted to prove something about the diary's creation.
And I still don't understand why, if the composer did accept the Crashaw lines from Mike for inclusion in the diary, he would not have questioned him about the source and at least made sure it was safe to use. Can you imagine the composer slapping his head and going "D'oh!", if he were alive when it all came out that Mike had chosen it from a book he had indoors that fell open at that very page?
Thanks for giving us the context in which Anne's "Did you nick it, Mike?" question was asked. I agree that it does sound like she was just trying to make Mike aware as simply and as clearly as possible what Martin was driving at. So she was saying in effect, "What Martin really wants to know, Mike, is if you [or you and Tony, or just Tony] nicked it."
Love,
Caz |
Author: Paul Carpenter
Monday, 07 January 2002 - 12:04 pm | | Hi Peter - I'll just drop in for a brief off-topic post before I return to catching up with all the posts of the last month or so (should be done by mid-February!)
Smith has become his own worst enemy as anyone could see would happen. With his past, refs are bound to be watching him like a hawk. I think he's a liability - especially out of position in midfield. Hopefully he'll be back on the bench for a while when we're over our injuries.
Well done on the recent run by the way - if we get through our next few matches with 6 points or so, it could be down to just us two for the title!
Oh - and a happy new year to everybody else!
Carps |
Author: Christopher T George
Monday, 07 January 2002 - 01:19 pm | | Hi, Paul and Caz:
The "Did you nick it, Mike?" question from Anne to Mike, even if she was trying to illuminate for Mike the line of questioning Martin Howells was taking, to me, does seem to imply that Anne herself did not know the origin of the Diary, calling into question her later statement that the Diary had been in her family for years. In other words, even if the remark had been made part in fun or partly to explain to Mike what Martin was driving at, there is room for the thought that the question was an honest one on Anne's part in that perhaps she really did think at that point that Mike could have stolen the Diary from somewhere, making her later story a fabrication.
Best regards
Chris George |
Author: Caroline Anne Morris
Monday, 07 January 2002 - 03:04 pm | | Yes, Chris. I agree we must consider that possibility. But then we must also consider that, by supporting Mike's story with her own account of how Devereux came to have the diary to give to Mike, Anne was risking that the diary had come from somewhere else entirely and Mike would then know for certain that she was lying.
Mike doesn't appear to know if Anne's story is true or not, which suggests to me that he did get the diary from Devereux and that Anne was either counting on that being the case or knew very well it was.
And if, as you have said, you don't think Mike passed the Crashaw lines on to the composer from his Sphere book, and you don't think Anne knew anything, are you saying the book wasn't connected with the diary's composition and is a red herring?
Love,
Caz |
Author: John Omlor
Monday, 07 January 2002 - 04:28 pm | | Hi All,
Here's a random question that occurred to me as I thought more about Anne's story.
How many families that have a long enough history in Liverpool would, over the years, have passed on or developed some family story or another that linked some relative to the Maybrick trial or to someone associated with the case in general? Would this have been likely or at least possible regardless of what family "discovered" the diary, if their presence in the area went back far enough? Or would it have been relatively rare?
I honestly don't know, so I'm asking. Is it the stuff of local urban legend and the sort of thing around which family stories might have grown, regardless of their truth?
Genuinely curious,
--John |
Author: Paul Begg
Monday, 07 January 2002 - 05:05 pm | | Hi Chris
I don't think Anne cutting to the chase to get rid of Martin's suspicions means that her later 'in my family for years' story is untrue. Indeed, knowing that she'd given it to Devereux and that Mike didn't steal it may have made her all the more inclined to quash that line of thinking.
However, you are absolutely correct and there is definitely room for supposing that Anne's question was an honest one.
But if an honest one, what did it mean? That Anne thought Mike had stolen it from Tony Devereux? That she thought Mike and Tony had together stolen it from somewhere else? |
Author: Paul Begg
Monday, 07 January 2002 - 05:07 pm | | Hi Caz
First of all an apology. On checking through assorted bits and bobs and some past posts I found two posts you put up on the Boards on Keith Skinner's behalf quoting a note he made of an answerphone message from Shirley Harrison on 12th October 1994: 'Shirley phoned Jenny (MB's current girlfriend) who corroborated MB's story that during the summer he had taken books around to Jenny's son, James, who was studying for his O levels. MB thought books (which he had acquired for Hillsborough Disaster Auction) might help him - but, in fact, they were too advanced. Ann [sic] apparently denies all knowledge of these books and the auction.
During Mike's serious week at library, when he found the reference, he later recalled that he had these particular books, which were the ones he had loaned to James. Mike insisted he discovered the reference for himself at the library - and nobody did it for him.
Mike has appt this pm with solicitor (to discuss divorce) - will take book with him.'
My emboldened text shows where, according to Shirley, Mike said that the books he took were the books that contained the quote. |
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