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John V. Omlor
Detective Sergeant
Username: Omlor
Post Number: 139
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, October 11, 2003 - 2:29 pm: |       |
Chris and RJ,
Re: Trained monkeys...
Yes, and if you put those monkeys in a room and chain them to typewriters and teach them to hit the keys, they might type out the text to Hamlet.
But you know what?
They won't.
All the best,
--John
PS: Alan, I'm not sure what you're saying. That wasn't my claim at all.
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Shannon Christopher
Detective Sergeant
Username: Shannon
Post Number: 133
Registered: 9-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, October 11, 2003 - 7:58 pm: | |
Jennifer, your right. The best way to prove the diary is real is to have it reveal something about the murders that no other sourse has to date revealed, and have that new revelation proven to be a fact at some point in the future after the discovery. To prove the diary is a fraud you need only find one instance in the diary about the murders which has been proven to be untrue since the discovery of the book.
The physical book is genuine, only the words placed on the pages are in question. I have a journal my grandfather kept during the depression. I find it a fascinating book about life in the 1930s. If I were of a criminal mind, I could take a pencil from the period and with a few well placed facts and vague references claim that I was the one who kidnapped the Lindberg baby. The experts would have no problem authenticating the book, only they would debate on the text for the next 100 years.
Shannon |
Chris Phillips
Detective Sergeant
Username: Cgp100
Post Number: 116
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, October 12, 2003 - 4:13 am: | |
To prove the diary is a fraud you need only find one instance in the diary about the murders which has been proven to be untrue since the discovery of the book.
Or indeed, which was known to be untrue when the book was discovered (whenever that was!).
The error over where Mary Kelly's breasts were placed, and the reference to farthings at the scene of the murder in Hanbury Street are the two most glaring, but there are a number of other errors and anachronisms that have been discussed in the past. There's a wealth of detailed information on these in the "Dissertations" section of this website.
Chris Phillips
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Shannon Christopher
Detective Sergeant
Username: Shannon
Post Number: 135
Registered: 9-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, October 12, 2003 - 5:49 am: | |
Chris, my point exactly. There are numerous errors in the book the true killer would not have made had they actually decided to write about the murders.
Nicely done
Shannon |
Richard Brian Nunweek
Inspector
Username: Richardn
Post Number: 303
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, October 12, 2003 - 2:05 pm: | |
Hi,
I have read the Diary over and over again many times, to me it is nothing more than an attempt to cause sensation, and to profit .
Every detail of what was known at the time of the finding of the diary Late 1980s, is included, with descriptions like ' No Heart' written in a deranged mans eye.
If the diary was from a less historic person, say a Joe Bloggs from Bethnal green, it could be at least 30 per cent believable, but James Maybeck, a cotton merchant from liverpool never,
In my opinion the work has about as much plausability, as suggesting the Duke of clarence as the killer.
Sorry to appear so possitive in my opinion...
Richard. |
Caroline Anne Morris
Inspector
Username: Caz
Post Number: 427
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Monday, October 13, 2003 - 12:24 pm: | |
Hi Chris P,
You do present a good argument and you may be right. If it has been proven beyond doubt that “Eight Little Whores” was a completely original poem, not written until the 1950s, and if everyone else is happy to accept that the diary author was inspired by this particular poem – Bingo! I’ll be happy too. Now, if only one could prove a negative, ie that no rhymes existed in Victorian times, which in turn could have inspired “Eight Little Whores”...
Love,
Caz
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Caroline Anne Morris
Inspector
Username: Caz
Post Number: 428
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Monday, October 13, 2003 - 12:30 pm: | |
Hi All,
And if only we had some idea of who could have composed/penned the diary and used Mike’s Sphere guide in the process….
As RJ wrote on another thread only yesterday:
The weakness of any conspiracy theory, though, is the weakness of all conspiracy theories. Loose lips sink ships, and people love to talk.
No one is talking, or at least the only one who has talked so far has, for whatever reason, done everything but talk anyone through this particular conspiracy theory, who was really involved, how it was conceived, planned and executed, and what were the individual motivations, expectations etc.
These and other complete unknowns are what make the diary and its origins a compelling mystery to many people. Those who claim to know that they know how the Crashaw lines got into it, for example, only think they know that they know. And their opinions are now turning into facts ( RE: The Miracle of Liverpool Library… Once again, it never happened.)
I, like the original Diary inmates, know what I don’t know, and know why I don’t know it. I believe that most of those involved, with hindsight, wish with all their hearts that they had been able to conclude that Mike knew he was pushing a modern fake back in April 1992.
But those who have concluded that the diary and watch can safely be dismissed as modern forgeries are not going to worry about little things like the continuing inability of anyone (from Mike to Melvin) to identify the forgers and provide full details of the two scams. It’s sad, but I’m beginning to wonder if it bothers some people whether their verdict is safe or not - or, more to the point, how their definition of ‘safe’ would compare with my own.
Love,
Caz |
Caroline Anne Morris
Inspector
Username: Caz
Post Number: 429
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Monday, October 13, 2003 - 12:49 pm: | |
Hi RJ, All,
I’m sure we’ve been through the ‘on the library shelves’ evidence before. Some of the details are also in Ripper Diary. On 30 September 1994, Mike claimed to have found the quote in a library book. By 6 October, less than a week later, Shirley had got the reference from Mike and confirmed with the library that the book was available to the public. They also faxed her a photocopy of the relevant page (which process could have left this copy with more of a tendency to open there than others).
Keith Skinner’s additional information is as follows:
During February and March 2002 he wrote and made several visits to Liverpool Central Library. On 23 Feb 2002 he wrote to Janet Graham (Humanities Dept.) and part of this letter is as follows:
To this end, I wonder whether you could help to resolve or clarify a problem area which has generated much debate and discussion since 1994! It concerns the availability or non-availability of the 'Sphere History Of Literature' - Volume 2 - Edited by Christopher Ricks.
On 27 Feb 2002, Keith met with Janet Graham in Liverpool Library to try and resolve the contradictory responses to Shirley and Melvin's independent enquiries. Keith’s notes from this meeting are as follows:
JG [Janet Graham] was embarrassed that staff had apparently failed to do a precise bibliographical check. Possibly search was done under RIX spelling of surname or possibly the books had not been entered on the computer catalogue at the time of Melvin's telephone enquiry, (it's a pity Melvin failed to write to the Library), and the staff member, (it's a pity Melvin didn't make a note of who he spoke with), did not think to check the paper catalogue. However, I have now ascertained there are 4 copies at the Central Reference Library - three of which the public have immediate access to in the International Collection, whilst the fourth is "stacked" in a repository, (to which the public have no access), which serves the Humanities Section. Members of the public wishing to look at the copy in Humanities can, of course, call it up.
Keith then checked the old style paper catalogue himself and found all three books (1 copy 1970 edition: 2 copies 1986 edition) in the card index, which he photocopied for reference. The 1986 copies had an accession date of 12.9.86. All three copies were on the shelf when he checked and between 27 Feb 2002 and 23 Oct 2002, no member of the public borrowed them from the library. On 23 Oct 2002 (I was there with him, and one of the books opened at the right page for me – possibly the one they photocopied for Shirley back in 1994), Keith borrowed the two 1986 editions, (returning them both on 2 July 2003), hoping to make forensic comparisons with Mike Barrett's copy, but this was never made available to the Ripper Diary authors, either by Melvin Harris or Alan Gray.
Now, none of this proves anything apart from the fact that Mike could have confirmed the book was in the library before claiming to have found the quote there. We don’t know the strict dating or order of events, but we do know the following:
At some point in the summer of 1994 Shirley suggested to Mike that he do something constructive like try to find where ‘Oh costly…’ could have come from.
Now, if Mike knew very well where it came from, but had possibly forgotten, or not appreciated the importance of this knowledge before, Shirley’s suggestion would have changed all that. He would now have considered his options: produce his Sphere book at once to support his June confession, or leave it with his friend Jenny until a better opportunity to cash in on it may present itself?
He appears to have decided on a third option, towards the end of September, which would have taken at least a bit of thought (and some preparation, unless he just guessed the book would be available in the library): impress Feldy, then Shirley, by pretending he managed to find the poem in the library. So far so good.
Except that if Mike does now decide to take advantage of his own copy, he knows he will first have to admit that the library find was rubbish. If he was planning to say: “Look, forget everything I said about finding it in the library. I didn’t. I’ve known all along where that poem came from because I’ve had the book since 1989 and it was used to forge the diary”, it came out instead more like: “It was only after finding it in the library that I realised I’d had the same set of books indoors right up until fairly recently. I last saw the volumes only weeks ago, when taking them round to Jenny’s.”
This could of course have been just one more lie, but it doesn’t sit at all comfortably alongside the library story, and achieves absolutely nothing as told to Shirley. It devalues at a stroke not only Mike’s supposed cleverness at finding a quote in a book he’d never seen before, but also the one piece of hard evidence he was presumably keeping in reserve to reinforce his June confession as and when the time was right.
One can argue that this was just Mike being Mike, and that nothing he says or does, or in what order, has to make a blind bit of sense. But this nonsense is what we are stuck with, so what harm can it do to look at an alternative scenario – however impossible it may seem – that Mike really didn’t know about the poem when Shirley suggested he look for it in 1994? He certainly appears to know nothing else about the entire forgery scheme.
But then we'd be in 'unsafe' territory, because we'd have to ask ourselves how Mike's Sphere book could have been used to put Crashaw in the diary without him knowing anything about it?
And heaven forbid that I make anyone here feel unsafe with my questions.
Love,
Caz
|
Peter R. A. Birchwood
Sergeant
Username: Pbirchwood
Post Number: 22
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Monday, October 13, 2003 - 1:21 pm: | |
"I’m sure we’ve been through the ‘on the library shelves’ evidence before. Some of the details are also in Ripper Diary. On 30 September 1994, Mike claimed to have found the quote in a library book. By 6 October, less than a week later, Shirley had got the reference from Mike and confirmed with the library that the book was available to the public. They also faxed her a photocopy of the relevant page (which process could have left this copy with more of a tendency to open there than others)."
Please refer also to Keith's book page 242/243 where after the comment about the book he and Coral found at Liverpool possibly being the one that Shirley photocopied he states:"However the experience of forensic genealogist Peter Birchwood who reported that a copy of the book he bought in July 2002 in a second-hand shop in Welshpool also opened at the right page, has to be taken into account."
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Caroline Anne Morris
Inspector
Username: Caz
Post Number: 430
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Monday, October 13, 2003 - 1:39 pm: | |
Hi RJ,
Your current reasoning about Anne's role sounds quite plausible and balanced. But then you wrote:
It was an irresponsible attempt at being responsible; an attempt to get Feldy from pestering Barrett's family and the Devereux household.
What I can't quite grasp is why Anne, in the summer of 1994, would have been so worried by what Feldy was putting Mike's and Tony's families through (why would she care, if she believed Mike and his pal Tony had been involved in something dodgy that she herself knew nothing about and wasn't responsible for?), that she was prepared to divert all Feldy's attention so he would put her and her elderly sick father through it all instead.
What had she or her father ever done to deserve this? Why would she have made such a sacrifice in order to protect the families of a man she could no longer live with and one she apparently didn't even know?
Love,
Caz |
Caroline Anne Morris
Inspector
Username: Caz
Post Number: 431
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Monday, October 13, 2003 - 1:52 pm: | |
Thanks Peter.
Exactly so. (I remember those words as if we wrote them yesterday.  )
So, as Peter confirms, it's not clear how many copies of this same volume may open at the right page, but it's evidently not unique to Mike's own copy. One of the two volumes I picked up in October 2002 did open at the right page, while the other didn't. Certainly one would expect any such tendency to become even more pronounced and established in copies where the page has been referred to more than other pages, photocopied and so on.
Love,
Caz
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John V. Omlor
Detective Sergeant
Username: Omlor
Post Number: 140
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Monday, October 13, 2003 - 4:19 pm: | |
Nice try, Caz.
You write, citing me (but not reading me):
"Those who claim to know that they know how the Crashaw lines got into it, for example, only think they know that they know. And their opinions are now turning into facts ( RE: The Miracle of Liverpool Library… Once again, it never happened.)"
But of course, claiming that the miracle of the Liverpool Library never happened (it didn't) is not at all the same as claiming that I "know how the Crashaw lines got into" the diary.
I am saying that Mike lied about just finding, for the first time anywhere, that single unidentified line, in a book which he just happened to pull off the shelves of the public library which just happened to be a book of prose essays (not poetry) that had, excerpted in the middle of a critical essay, the very same single unknown line from the very same author from the very same century that he just happened to be searching for.
Let's put it this way.
Mike was given five words.
That's it. He was handed five words.
And he was sent to the library with just those five words in his hand.
No name, no time, no historical context, only a sense that they might be poetry.
Five words.
And he then goes to a shelf, with no idea what he's looking for and never having seen these five words before, and pulls down a book of prose essays and finds in the middle of one of the essays in that book, conveniently excerpted...
those five words.
That never happened.
I guarantee it.
--John
PS: If I give anyone here a piece of paper with five words on it, only five words, that they have never seen before and with nothing else accompanying them, and they cannot use any computer research tools, but must simply walk into a library and discover the origin of those five words in that order; and they must then tell me where in the entire history of the written language those five words appear in that order, the chances that they are coming back having found those exact five words (of poetry) conveniently excerpted in, of all things, a prose essay from a book they also just happened to have at home (but didn't know contained those same five words)....
Well, I still can't believe sane and thoughtful people are seriously discussing the possibility that this was anything but another of Mike's many lies.
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Caroline Anne Morris
Inspector
Username: Caz
Post Number: 433
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, October 14, 2003 - 7:05 am: | |
Hi John O,
I am saying that Mike lied about just finding, for the first time anywhere, that single unidentified line…
Well, ok, so this is the opinion of yours that has miraculously turned into a fact. Once you start doing this, John, there’s no end to your capacity to make miracles happen.
The rest of that sentence, however, (and the rest of your post, which says much the same thing in much the same way) is not as loaded with meaning as you would like it to be, because we know for a fact that Mike (or even that trained monkey) would have pulled the right book off the shelves in that library eventually; could have recognised it as one we know for a fact he had seen only recently; and could (thanks to Peter Birchwood’s testimony) have opened it at the page where we know for a fact that the two lines would have stood out like sore thumbs.
Anyway, thanks for your guarantee that it could never have happened this way. But actually, no one is asking you to believe it. The point is, since you don’t believe it, where do you believe Mike found the quote and, more importantly, when? If you don't know the answers, or if you haven’t really given them much thought, perhaps it doesn’t matter to you that Mike has been unable to tell anyone a single coherent fact about the actual creation of the diary, and that everything he has ever said indicates that this is because he doesn’t know anything.
But if Mike didn’t forge it himself, and didn’t help anyone else to do so, he nevertheless knew, by the end of September 1994, where the quote could be found. So how and when did he find out? When he took the books to Jenny perhaps? Or, er, in the library, where we know there was at least one copy, if not three, sitting on the shelves waiting to be opened by one of at least three people who had been sent to search specifically for the quote? If Anne had had more time and determination than Mike, and had picked up books with the word ‘poetry’ on their spines, and pre-20th century dates, at random, after having no luck with other methods, and had come across the quote first, and Mike had later produced the Sphere book that had been in the marital home, what guarantees would you now be giving about Anne’s find being miraculous and therefore fabricated?
And in any case, what is so very difficult to grasp about the fact that until the finding of the quote can be linked back – sorry, forward - to the actual forging of the diary, your guarantees are ultimately meaningless?
Sorry if that sounds harsh, but it’s no harsher than your stated belief that I wouldn’t be asking such questions if I were sane and thoughtful.
I thought you were done with the personal stuff.
Love,
Caz
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Caroline Anne Morris
Inspector
Username: Caz
Post Number: 434
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, October 14, 2003 - 7:13 am: | |
Blimey, someone is quick on the draw today with their lone stars. At least it shows that not everyone is ignoring me. 
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John V. Omlor
Detective Sergeant
Username: Omlor
Post Number: 141
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, October 14, 2003 - 7:47 am: | |
Forget it, Caz,
If you are going to claim that my last comment, about the discussion here and the incredible suspension of disbelief it would take to believe Mike's impossible story about the miracle of Liverpool LIbrary, is a "personal" attack on you, then you are either simply hypersensitive or deliberately trying once again to drag this discussion back down into the rhetorical gutter. In either case, I'm not playing along this time.
Mike was lying about the library and finding the unidentified five words there, in that book, for the very first time.
That's all I've said, and I know it's true.
Yes, given an infinite amount of time, a monkey trained to hit typewriter keys at random could bang out the entire text of Hamlet -- but he won't. And if someone walks out of the monkey's room with a copy of Hamlet in his hands and tells you the monkey typed it, and you believe him, then you deserve whatever else he does to you. And you are simply choosing to believe him despite common sense.
Mike owned the book that had the obscure five word quote excerpted in it. Mike owned the diary. The diary had the same quote, unidentified. Mike was the first person to tell everyone where the quote was from. And Mike lied throughout the entire investigation.
He did not find those five words, without ever having seen them before, and having no idea where in the entire history of the written language they might appear in just that order, by simply pulling a book (written in the wrong genre and from an entirely different time period) off the public library shelves and opening it to those exact five words. No way.
And, frankly, I have no interest in whether you (or anyone) feels than my guarantee that this never happened is "meaningful" or not. It doesn't change the fact that the miracle never happened and that Mike lied about it.
That's all I have to say.
--John
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Tiddley boyar
Unregistered guest
| | Posted on Sunday, October 12, 2003 - 7:54 pm: | |
Of course, it may be that the Diarist knows best and it is the others that are erroneous. |
Robert Smith
Unregistered guest
| | Posted on Monday, October 13, 2003 - 2:22 pm: | |
Why, after 11 years, are so many words and so much time devoted to discussing the Diary, by those who are 100% certain of it being a modern forgery?
For many, the clincher is that Mike Barrett owned a copy of Volume 2 of the Sphere History of Literature, containing two lines from a Crashaw poem, which appear in the Diary, and which Mike claimed to have found in Liverpool Central Library on 30th September 1994. John Omlor (9th October) describes the poem as “obscure” and “a literary-historical howler”. John Hacker (9th October) observes “how rare that poem is” and reports not being able to find it, “despite looking in virtually every library and bookshop I have been in for years”.
It is perfectly logical to conclude that, if the Diary is a modern forgery, the Sphere book was the source for the two lines by Crashaw. But, just for a moment, imagine that the Diary were written in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Then the obscurity argument vanishes. Shirley Harrison notes several different editions of Crashaw’s poetry, that were published in the second half of the nineteenth century, in the Blake edition of The Diary of Jack The Ripper. To find them, one must go to the antiquarian bookshops. I purchased for £10 a copy of a popular edition of the Complete Works, edited by William R Turnbull, a barrister at Lincoln’s Inn, and published by John Russell Smith in 1858. There, at the very top of page 187 are the two lines.
In another antiquarian bookshop, I found recently two illuminating essays on Crashaw.
Chambers Encyclopaedia of English Literature, edited by David Patrick LLD, published just 15 years after the Ripper murders, after noting that Crashaw’s poetry “had few admirers” in the 17th and 18th centuries, refers to his direct influence on the romantic poets Shelley and Coleridge, and states: “Many poets and critics in the latter half of the nineteenth century have acknowledged Crashaw’s fascination”.
An even more interesting volume in the same shop was “The Poets: Geoffrey Chaucer to Alfred Tennyson” by William Stebbing, Honorary Fellow of Worcester College, Oxford and published by Oxford University Press in 1907. Writing specifically about Sancta Maria Dolorum (the Diary’s quotation is the opening lines of the third stanza), he raves: “The eleven stanzas are an inspiration, I would almost say incomparable in hymnology…..I think it Crashaw’s furthest, his highest, effort in the region of sacred song”.
In short, from the perspective of the second half of the nineteenth century, Crashaw’s poetry in general and Sancta Maria Dolorum in particular, were not at all “obscure”. So, why does John Omlor consider the inclusion of Crashaw’s lines in the Diary to be “a literary-historical howler”?
The line which precedes the quotation from the poem is: “Her eyes bleed tears. His wounds weep blood!” Either consciously or coincidentally, the Diary writer picks up these images in the paragraph immediately preceding the quote by using the phrases “blood pouring from the bitches” and “see if their eyes pop”.
Many people have tried to prove a fatal flaw in Mike Barrett’s claim to have found the quote in Volume 2 of The Sphere History of Literature in Liverpool Central Library on 30th September 1994. RJ Palmer refers to Melvin Harris being told in 1995 by a librarian that they didn’t own the volume. My recollection is that Shirley Harrison immediately established that there was at least one copy on the shelves at that time. When Keith Skinner went to Liverpool Central Library to check the situation in February 2002, there were three copies of Volume 2 on the shelves, one from the first edition of 1970 and two from the second edition of 1986. All of them, according to Skinner’s enquiries, have been fully accessible on the public shelves since the 1980s. Barrett could hardly have missed them! There is a photograph of two of the copies in situ in the Library, in Ripper Diary by Linder, Morris & Skinner. The book confirms that Barrett was in the Library for a week, and as both Harris and Skinner have noted that these copies tend to open at the pages, on which the quote appears, it is perhaps not so surprising that Barrett found it. It is true that no one else found the quote, but no-one else had a week free to spend in Liverpool Central Library looking for it.
The case against Barrett rests solely on his possession of a copy of the Sphere book, sent to him by the publishers as a contribution to the Hillsborough Disaster Appeal Fund in 1989. That is indeed a coincidence, but coincidences do happen. It would have been suspicious if Mike had used knowledge of the quote’s author prior to 30th September 1994. But he makes no mention of the Crashaw quote in his June 1994 confession to forging the diary or in the succeeding three months.
It beggars belief that in this period when Barrett was desperate to prove he had forged the Diary, in the full glare of publicity, courtesy of the ever-helpful Sunday Times, he did not use this crucial piece of evidence to support his claim. The only explanation is that it is true, that he was not aware of the quote until he found it in Liverpool Central Library on 30th September 1994, and that only subsequently (on 12th October 1994) did he realise he owned a copy of the Sphere book. Even his private investigator, Alan Gray, was not aware of the quote until November 1994. Linder, Morris and Skinner reproduce his written confirmation, in which Gray refers to the taped recording of a meeting between himself and Barrett on 7th November 1994: “If the tape you refer to as being made in early November shows indifference on my part to the Sphere book, this is no surprise because at that time no person had even mentioned that it could be of great importance, and that includes Mr Melvin Harris”.
Mike’s possession of the Sphere book is therefore not evidence that he knew about the Crashaw quote prior to 30th September 1994. Indeed it is hard to imagine the less than erudite Mike idly thumbing through a volume of literary criticism on 16th and 17th Century English Literature looking for what would be the only literary quote in the whole Diary, unless he was planning to prove at a later date that he did write it, in which case he clearly forgot about the plan. Without the Crashaw quote, there is no evidence whatsoever to prove that Mike contributed to a forgery of the Diary - no drafts, no evidence on his computer, no possession of ink or pens, no receipt of buying the Diary at Outhwaite and Litherland, and no handwriting identification – absolutely nothing.
John Omlor’s mantra is: Mike brought the Diary to a literary agent; Mike owned a copy of the Sphere book; and Mike found the Crashaw quote. Mike is therefore the begetter of the forgery. But if Mike was not a party to the forgery, then the modern forgery theory falls apart.
Chris George (8th October) draws our attention to “One tin match box empty” and to “the Poste House”. These two examples cannot be proof of a forgery. For instance, I agree that no Victorian would not have identified the Poste House as being in Cumberland Street, given the pub’s small size and its position on a narrow side street. The Liverpool coaching inns were on the main thoroughfare of Dale Street. But as the diarist did not mention “the Poste House” as being in Cumberland Street, it cannot be evidence of a modern forgery. Similarly, Crashaw’s poem was written in the 16th Century, not post 1889. Neither reference is anachronistic.
I am with RJ Palmer in his prediction of a stalemate. It is unlikely, that anyone will ever prove who wrote the diary or when it was written. But if you want to continue to try, then it is essential to refer to Ripper Diary by Linder, Morris and Skinner for a readable and accurate record of the story so far, backed to the hilt with precise data and documentation. It is no longer acceptable to guess, when the information so painstakingly researched and verified in their book, can now be accessed.
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Caroline Anne Morris
Inspector
Username: Caz
Post Number: 435
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, October 14, 2003 - 8:51 am: | |
Hi John,
If you didn't want me to react to your comment about the sanity and thoughtfulness of anyone who is not entirely convinced by your guarantees, perhaps you should have thought before making it.
Your guarantee has now turned into "I know it's true, so there" - much like Melvin's claims about the forgers in the end boiled down to "It's good enough for me".
If Mike walks into Doreen's office with the Maybrick diary, and two years later tells the world he wrote it, or helped write it, and anyone believes him, then they deserve to have their beliefs questioned.
But where have I said I am 'choosing' to believe Mike? I have no idea whether he found the quote in the library or not. I simply asked you how you could 'guarantee' that he didn't.
Do you believe Mike when he claimed that his Sphere book was actually used in the forgery? Since you appear to be unwilling to go so far as to 'guarantee' that his copy was used, what real use is any of this episode as evidence of anything at all, miracle or otherwise?
Oh, I'm sorry, you're finally out of things to say. Shame really, because once upon a time you reckoned you might be able to coax the truth out of Mike if you met him, where everyone else had apparently failed. Now we'll never know.
Love,
Caz |
Chris Phillips
Detective Sergeant
Username: Cgp100
Post Number: 119
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, October 14, 2003 - 9:58 am: | |
Chris George (8th October) draws our attention to “One tin match box empty” and to “the Poste House”. These two examples cannot be proof of a forgery.
...
I am with RJ Palmer in his prediction of a stalemate.
Just out of interest, what is the pro-diary counter-argument to the point about "One tin match box empty"?
Chris Phillips
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John V. Omlor
Detective Sergeant
Username: Omlor
Post Number: 142
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, October 14, 2003 - 10:50 am: | |
Caz,
Actually, the original comment called the people here who were continuing to take this story seriously "sane and thoughtful" and it went on to say that I could not believe that such people were considering this as anything other than yet another of Mike's many lies.
I still can't.
And since you asked, I have plenty of professional credentials to support my guarantee that the library miracle never happened. Although I don't really need any credentials at all to determine that the monkey did not type the copy of Hamlet.
I just need a little common sense.
Mike lied.
Robert Smith asks:
"Why, after 11 years, are so many words and so much time devoted to discussing the Diary, by those who are 100% certain of it being a modern forgery?"
Because the only way to maintain the interests of historical truth and the integrity of the field of research is constant vigilance against bad logic, nonsensical leaps of faith, invalidly drawn conclusions and complete manipulation of the evidence and the written narratives of events.
Robert Smith asks:
"So, why does John Omlor consider the inclusion of Crashaw’s lines in the Diary to be 'a literary-historical howler'?
Because the diary does not have a dedicated Catholic poet or a Catholic scholar or a Catholic literary historian or a Catholic theologian or a Modern poetry critic after Eliot's rediscovery of the Metaphysicals or even a reader of Catholic devotional poetry casually citing an obscure line from the middle of one of Crashaw's lesser known works. It has James Maybrick doing it. And it is therefore, a literary-historical howler. And I have independently confirmed this with several PhDs who specialize in the history of English 17th Century poetry and several experts in the history of the nineteenth century and its literature. And my own PhD level training in literature also confirms it. And nothing in Robert's post above is in any way evidence that the appearance in such a work by such an (alleged) diarist of such lines is anything but a dead give away that there is no chance this book is authentic.
But then, apparently, Robert can't read either. He cites me as saying:
"John Omlor’s mantra is: Mike brought the Diary to a literary agent; Mike owned a copy of the Sphere book; and Mike found the Crashaw quote. Mike is therefore the begetter of the forgery."
I have stated the first three clauses here frequently. Every single one of them is beyond doubt. They are all true.
I have never written the fourth clause or even any similar clause that begins with "therefore."
I have said simply that there is no way Mike Barrett, carrying only five unidentified words in his hand, having never seen those five words before, and knowing absolutely nothing about those five words, simply walks into a public library, pulls down a book from the wrong genre and the wrong time period, and finds those five words, out of the entire history of the written language.
It does not happen.
And the only way anyone believes that it happens, especially when claimed by a well-known, pathological liar, is if they are desperate to believe it for one reason or another.
And that's not scholarship. That's simple desire and wish-fulfillment.
And there is no arguing in any reasonable fashion with that.
And because this has become simply an argument between scholars and those who are willing to believe the impossible to further their own position, RJ is correct. A "stalemate" is inevitable, since common sense is being ignored in favor of a desperation that is willing to believe anything, including that a liar’s claim to have done the impossible must be true.
This is no longer a debate about history or scholarly research or probability or common sense or truth. It's simply an absurd exercise in desire at this point, and so nothing will change and the mess will remain a mess.
And no one should be surprised.
--John
PS: Robert Smith also offers us the following piece of scholarship:
"Crashaw’s poem was written in the 16th Century..."
Sigh. It does help, sometimes, to know what you are talking about.
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Caroline Anne Morris
Inspector
Username: Caz
Post Number: 436
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, October 14, 2003 - 1:18 pm: | |
Hi John,
I suppose you will now deny calling Robert illiterate too. Insults are insults however you dress them up and they don't make a very effective substitute for civil discussion - especially when your idea of a discussion is to repeat your beliefs over and over as if they have more chance of becoming knowledge the more you do so.
There is no monkey and no Hamlet.
I don't need professional credentials to tell me that your repeated analogy is no guarantee of anything at all where Mike Barrett and his Sphere book are concerned.
My questions remain: can you 'guarantee' that Mike knew his Sphere guide was used to create the diary? And if not, can you 'guarantee' that someone used Mike's copy to create it? If you wish to answer either or both questions we can move the discussion on from there. Your choice.
Don't forget that, as Robert pointed out, the line which precedes 'O costly...' in the complete poem is: “Her eyes bleed tears. His wounds weep blood!” But a forger using anyone's copy of the Sphere guide would never have seen this line, and could not therefore have been influenced by these words when composing the paragraph that precedes 'Oh costly...' in the diary, containing the words: “blood pouring from the bitches” and “see if their eyes pop”.
Another coincidence, obviously, if the forger had never seen the whole poem. I'm not saying it proves anything, but unlikely coincidences can and do happen - all the time.
As I said before, I don't claim to know where the truth lies. I don't even have a belief about where it lies. I don't have to have a belief of my own in order to justify questioning someone else's. And if you know your belief is beyond all question and above all challenge, you will be happy to have said so once, leaving others to address my remaining questions.
Love,
Caz
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Caroline Anne Morris
Inspector
Username: Caz
Post Number: 437
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, October 14, 2003 - 1:26 pm: | |
Hi Chris P,
I don't know what the current 'pro-diarist' argument would be in relation to the empty tin match box. Neither do I know exactly when the Eddowes inquest papers were closed to public inspection. Was it around the 1950s? As I say I'm not up on such dates.
Maybe there are other readers who could help.
Love,
Caz |
John V. Omlor
Detective Sergeant
Username: Omlor
Post Number: 143
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, October 14, 2003 - 1:39 pm: | |
Putting aside the amateur poetry analysis that confuses words with "images;" here, for our dear readers, are the facts:
The diary contains five words from an unidentified source.
Mike Barrett, the person who brought the diary forward, happens to own a book that just happens to fall open to a page of prose that has, excerpted right in the middle of it, those very same five words as a quote.
Mike Barrett is the first person to identify for everyone the obscure source of the five words.
Mike Barrett claims to identify the author and the source for these words by walking into a public library and "discovering" not the source poem or the author, but those five words excerpted in the middle of the very same page of the very same essay in the very same book that he also just happens to have at home.
And he claims to have walked into that library having never seen these five words before, having no idea where they might have come from in the entire history of the written language, and then locating them in that very same book (in a different genre than the source and from a different period than the source).
And Mike Barrett lies. All the time.
When a compulsive liar tells me he's done something impossible to believe, guess what?
I don't believe him.
And when the same guy walks out of the room with a copy of Hamlet and tells me that the impossible happened, that the monkey typed it, I conclude (and guarantee) that he's lying.
I can guarantee that Mike is lying about walking into that library and finding, for the first time ever, those five words in that particular source.
That is my only claim.
I'm sorry, Caz, if you want me to claim more (or less). I won't.
--John
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Caroline Anne Morris
Inspector
Username: Caz
Post Number: 438
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, October 14, 2003 - 1:42 pm: | |
Hi John,
I see you are now resorting to accusing Robert of not knowing what he is talking about on the basis of what is highly unlikely to be more than a typo.
You mention 'bad logic, nonsensical leaps of faith, invalidly drawn conclusions and complete manipulation of the evidence and the written narratives of events'.
If you have read Ripper Diary, could you give any examples of where the authors have been guilty of any of the above? Thanks. I don't want any readers to think your accusations are connected in any way with our presentation of the information available to us. It's all getting a bit nasty again.
Love,
Caz
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John V. Omlor
Detective Sergeant
Username: Omlor
Post Number: 144
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, October 14, 2003 - 2:00 pm: | |
Caz,
Don't worry, I was not describing your book in the particular paragraph you cite. I had other moments in this sordid history and other works and acts in mind.
--John
PS: I hope you're right about the typo. Scholarship, as this entire affair has repeatedly demonstrated, is not for everyone. |
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