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Caroline Anne Morris
Inspector
Username: Caz
Post Number: 439
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, October 14, 2003 - 2:05 pm: |       |
Hi John,
It would be refreshing if you could tear yourself away from repeating your claim and start to explore what it actually means - that, assuming Mike lied about finding the quote in the library, he still made the claim for some reason, and swiftly followed it with the admission that he had owned the book since 1989.
So does this mean Mike must have known his book was used in the forgery all along, or that he was the one who found the quote and suggested it to the forger? If not, does it mean that someone else must have used Mike's book without telling him at the time? If so, who? If not, what else could it mean?
If you are not prepared to take your claim any further, and see where it leads, fine. But please don't question the sanity and scholarship of those who want to know how it all fits together.
Love,
Caz
|
Christopher T George
Inspector
Username: Chrisg
Post Number: 357
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, October 14, 2003 - 2:41 pm: | |
Hi all--
Robert Smith wrote:
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.
I think the difference here is that as a Liverpudlian and as a non-believer in the Diary I feel this is a clear mistake by the composer of the Diary, that the Poste House of present day is meant. Since Robert is a believer in the Diary's genuineness and he knows the Poste House was not known by that name in 1888 of course he would have us believe a "post house" in Dale Street is meant. I am pleased to disagree with Robert and with others who hold the view that it could have been any "post house" that is meant, as indeed Paul Begg argued on the old boards on a number of occasions. However, for me, again, as a native of Liverpool, the meaning is clear, as I believe it was to the person who penned the Diary.
If one looks at an aerial close-up of Liverpool's city center, including an overlay of the streets, we can see how close Cumberland Street is to Whitechapel. See
Liverpool
The pub is close and about equidistant from the site of the old Liverpool Exchange, to the west on this close-up map--Exchange Flags is the pink square area near the northern end of Castle Street on the left of the map--and to Whitechapel, a few hundred yards south and southeast of the junction of Cumberland Street and Victoria Street where the Poste House can be found at 23 Cumberland Street. In the Diary, it is clear to me from the mention of "Whitechapel, Liverpool" that the writer, allegedly Maybrick, says he took refreshment in the "Poste House" known today.
Melvin Harris wrote in "The Maybrick Hoax: A Guide Through the Labyrinth":
". . . the Poste House of the Diary is the hostelry in Liverpool. It was put in the Diary text, simply because the fakers lived in Liverpool, and knew that the Inn was near the old Exchange. They were taken in by 'ye olde' name, imagining it to be something antique. It is, in fact, a twentieth-century re-naming."
Best regards
Chris George
P.S. Andy Aliffe and I "took refreshment" -- a half of bitter each -- at the Poste House during the Liverpool Ripper convention last August 15.  |
John V. Omlor
Detective Sergeant
Username: Omlor
Post Number: 145
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, October 14, 2003 - 2:41 pm: | |
Caz,
What my claim "actually means" is precisely and exactly what it says. No more and no less.
What it means is that Mike lied about the miracle of the Liverpool Library.
It says nothing at all about Mike's "reasons" for lying (speculating on which, I would think experience has by now shown, is often a waste of time and impossible to do in any rational way).
It says absolutely nothing, in fact, other than what it says. Mike was lying about finding those five words for the first time in that book in that library in that way.
I have sketched out the facts clearly and precisely in my post above. I have concluded from them that Mike lied.
I am certain of that.
I have not drawn any other conclusions in this forum.
I hope that is clear.
--John
|
Mark Andrew Pardoe
Detective Sergeant
Username: Picapica
Post Number: 112
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, October 14, 2003 - 7:09 pm: | |
Whatho all,
I have mentioned the following in the past but from my fellow posters, comments came there none. However, I think it worth trying again.
There is a tradition of renaming pubs after their nickname (I know of at least two cases in Nottingham). So, although the pub has an official name, many people prefer to refer to it by another name. This second name becomes so popular the pub owners change its name to the more popular nickname.
Therefore, I suggest although the pub's official name was the Midden Muck (I hope I've got that right), the locals who used it often may have called it the Poste House. Eventually the house's owners bowed to public opinion and changed its official name to its nickname.
So although on all documents the house was known by the sign of the Midden Muck, the Scousers who used it called it the Poste House.
Now, I know nothing about the history of Liverpool's pubs and so I do not know whether this theory holds any water (I would prefer a pint of Caine's) so I must leave this part to the thoughts of any handy Liverpool bloke who is passing. Perhaps Mr Christopher George can shed some light (and tell us which ale he drank in the Poste House).
My own thought is this theory is wrong because it would have been spotted by the pro-diaryist but, not the less, the theory should be considered and knocked on the head.
Cheers, (mine's a Kimberly Bitter please) Mark |
Chris Phillips
Detective Sergeant
Username: Cgp100
Post Number: 120
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, October 15, 2003 - 7:29 am: | |
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.
I'm not 100% sure where the police inventory of Eddowes's possessions is, but after scanning through the "A-Z" it does seem most likely to be among the inquest papers at the Corporation of London Record Office.
Feldman says that the list was rediscovered in 1984, and first published in 1987 in books by Donald Rumbelow and Martin Fido.
Perhaps in theory it could have been seen by someone before then, but inquest records are normally subject to closure for 75 years, so that would take us to the 1960s at least, and by far the likeliest explanation is that it was taken from one of the published books. (Feldman stresses that the empty tin match box was not referred to in contemporary press reports.)
Of course, both Harrison and Feldman suggest that Maybrick was able to include these details because he had murdered Eddowes. Surely this can be discounted, as the diary quotes the exact phrase (tin match box empty) that appears in the inventory, a very unnatural one to use otherwise. To say nothing of the unlikelihood of the murderer spending some minutes going through the victim's possessions, opening match boxes and so forth, and then presumably neatly replacing them on her person! (The diary also mentions the tea and sugar that appear in the inventory.)
To my mind this in itself is conclusive that the diary is a modern forgery, even without bringing in all the other evidence pointing the same way.
Chris Phillips
|
R.J. Palmer
Inspector
Username: Rjpalmer
Post Number: 180
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, October 15, 2003 - 8:37 am: | |
Caz--Hi.
"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."
But you don't need to accept my speculation here; you have Anne Graham's own words:
"Paul Feldman eventually found out where I was living. He was ringing everyone: my best friend Audrey, all the Barretts---everyone. Then one night Mike's sister rang me---she was furious* * *...I was really embarrassed and worried. ***I thought he (Feldman) was mad! Paul appeared to believe that I knew more than I had been telling and was determined to get it out of me by fair means or foul. I thought 'I've got to get this man off their backs.'"
pg. 287-288 (Harrison, Blake edition) |
Caroline Anne Morris
Inspector
Username: Caz
Post Number: 443
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, October 15, 2003 - 2:08 pm: | |
Hi RJ,
But your speculation said nothing about why Anne was 'really embarrassed and worried', and desperate to 'get this man off their backs', if, as you were speculating, she really did know nothing more than she had already told him, and presumably suspected Mike and Tony had been into something dodgy which she herself had tried to put a stop to.
Why would she have been 'embarrassed' by any of this - months after she'd washed her hands of Mike?
The question remains.
Love,
Caz
|
Jennifer D. Pegg
Detective Sergeant
Username: Jdpegg
Post Number: 119
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, October 15, 2003 - 2:14 pm: | |
john v o.
i am uo for that chal;lenge name me five words, a sentence if you will and i will go look for it. try not to quote me something you know exists be random!#
i don't much care about proving anything it just sounds like fun!!!
jennifer |
Caroline Anne Morris
Inspector
Username: Caz
Post Number: 444
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, October 15, 2003 - 2:17 pm: | |
Hi John O, All,
Long post alert!
It has been argued that one of the forger’s fatal mistakes was to put ‘Oh costly…’ in the diary, because a man like Maybrick couldn’t possibly have been into Crashaw, and therefore could never have owned or consulted a book containing these lines. Well, in a hundred years’ time, if you and I didn’t know different, some literature scholar would be saying exactly the same about Mike Barrett and his trusty Sphere volume - guaranteed.
Except wait a minute. That healthily sceptical literature scholar in a hundred years’ time may well ask how we knew Mike Barrett had owned this book. At first glance it would appear highly improbable that a man like Mike would have been into English poetry and prose from 1540 to 1674, and therefore equally improbable that he would ever have owned or consulted a book on the subject. Yet we are expecting this future scholar to accept the fact that Mike did indeed have such a book, and that he kept it in his home for five years, from 1989 to 1994.
And what did we rely on for this ‘fact’? You guessed it – Mike’s word.
Now, my own reason for not dismissing Mike’s unsupported word out of hand on this occasion is that his Hillsborough Appeal story is, for once, coherent and plausible, and he has never tried to change or deny it when taking off his forger’s hat. John, I’d be interested to learn your own reasons for swallowing whole Mike’s claim to have owned a copy of the Sphere book since 1989.
I can understand the appeal (no pun intended), given your conclusion that the diary is a (very) late 1980s creation; given the fact that Mike presented it to Doreen in April 1992, almost three years to the day after the Hillsborough Disaster; given the fact that Mike was the first to come up with a source for the poem at the end of September 1994; and given that he allegedly handed over a copy of the Sphere book to Alan Gray about two months later, in the early December, when he finally decided to use it to support the forgery confession he had made in the June.
Unfortunately, neither you nor I have been able to see this copy, nor have we been able to confirm Mike’s story of how he came to be in possession of it, let alone when he first opened it to the page with the ‘O costly…’ lines and saw their potential. How do you know Mike wasn’t lying about getting the book as early as 1989, just so he had something to back up his otherwise false and utterly pathetic forgery claims? The man, as you keep repeating, is ‘a pathological liar’. He lies. ‘All the time’. He even admits as much himself, saying, “I told so many lies it just wasn’t true”.
The only way anyone declares that it is ‘true’ and ‘beyond doubt’ that this man actually owned a book on 16th and 17th century literature back in 1989 and kept it for the next five years just because he said as much in 1994 (when he had been desperately trying to prove he forged the diary), is if they are desperate to believe it for one reason or another (perhaps because it fits with their total conviction that the diary was forged in 1989 or later.)
‘That's simple desire and wish-fulfillment.’
If Mike had done a little red 1891 diary on himself, and said that the set of books had arrived from Sphere in the summer of 1992, you would have thrown this out as an obvious lie, because it would have been too late for Mike’s copy to have played any role in the diary forgery.
So I’m sorry John. But I don’t believe you when you say you only claim to know that Mike didn’t find the lines in the library. You also claimed to know for a fact that a copy of the Sphere book was in Mike Barrett’s possession by April 1992. Any later and you would not have even considered such a claim a possibility.
If these two ‘facts’ haven’t led you to conclude that Mike was part of the forgery conspiracy you believe in, please explain why not, for those of us who are either not sane or thoughtful or literate or scholarly enough to understand.
I’m now going back to the library with Mike in late September 1994.
For some reason (ok, let’s not even wonder why), Mike was determined to claim that he searched there for the ‘Oh costly…’ lines and eventually found them. A man who sails through life unhindered by the intellect and knowledge you are blessed with, Mike may neither have known nor cared whether under normal circumstances this would have been a mission impossible unless he already knew exactly where to look. But are we allowed to assume that Mike did visit the library, to see if a copy of the Sphere book was on the shelves, before going ahead and telling this ‘impossible’ lie? And can we assume he would have opened at least one copy to see the words there in black and white? If so, he would have had an opportunity to see for himself whether what he was about to claim had any chance at all of being believed. I’m not saying he would necessarily have taken advantage of this opportunity, at least not consciously. But if there were three copies on the shelves, not too many rows of books similarly on the subject of old poetry, and if the copy he checked happened to open for him at the right page, he could have ended up feeling more confident than you say he had any right to feel that this lie was one he might actually get away with.
Anyway, Mike pressed home his claim and waited to bask in the back-slapping and admiration. But before anyone could say ‘clever clogs’, the general astonishment level went off the scale as Mike let Shirley into a little secret that could explain his success – he had not only seen the book before, but he had owned it at the time he had taken the diary to Doreen. Little could he have appreciated the irony that, while the ‘recognition’ factor – the possibility of being strangely drawn to these particular volumes in the library because he had only recently held his own copies – could only now be added retrospectively to the other factors that might have made his original claim more believable, the ‘possession’ claim cancelled out his claimed miracle completely.
But if one accepts that all of the above is possible, it doesn’t take an awful lot to switch a couple of Mike’s accepted lies and truths round, reconsider whether he could have found the quote eventually under all the circumstances we know about, and make some sense of a decade’s worth of his words and actions and lies in the process.
Of course, it doesn’t work for those who concluded long ago that the diary was created circa 1989, because you then have to choose Mike’s ‘true’ lies according to this belief, and it becomes a fact that Mike’s possession of the Sphere book since 1989 is the only possible explanation for how he knew, five years later, where the quote could be found.
When I, who have reached no conclusions at all, try to take your claims and arguments a little further than you want to go with them, you accuse me of ignoring common sense in favour of a desperate willingness to believe a liar.
Well, talk about judging others by your own standards.
Love,
Caz
|
John V. Omlor
Detective Sergeant
Username: Omlor
Post Number: 146
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, October 15, 2003 - 3:58 pm: | |
Hi Jennifer,
The trick would be that you'd have to look for it by hand. No computer searches of any kind.
If you're willing to try that, in any library, I'll happily give you five words and send you on your way.
Let me know,
--John |
R.J. Palmer
Inspector
Username: Rjpalmer
Post Number: 181
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, October 15, 2003 - 4:25 pm: | |
Caz--Hi. I don't understand your response. Why wouldn't Anne Graham be embarrassed? Feldman is calling her in-laws and her own friends with his strange speculations. Mike Barrett (still her husband) is on the front page of the Liverpool Post next to Maybrick's tombstone saying he is a forger. He was still living with Anne Barrett when the diary was published. Fair or unfair, complicity is assumed. Indeed, she did cooperate to some extent in the publishing of the diary ---witness Robert Smith's photograph of her standing placidly next to Barrett on the steps of Battlecrease.
Really, it should be painfully obvious why Mike's sister called Anne---clearly Mike was out of control and she wanted the sane person of the partnership to deal with Feldman & Co., not her brother who was battling his own private demons.
I don't see where there is one shred of evidence that Anne Graham had ever seen the Maybrick diary before Mike came home with it from Tony Devereux's. Billy Graham's testimony is meaningless; he admits that he never read the Maybrick diary, he is merely recalling having seen a book --some book, any book--45 years in the past.
In July, 1994, Anne comes to the conclusion that "something must be done" to get Feldman ('the enemy', she calls him) off the Barrett's backs. She calls him, and agrees to meet with him at the Moat House.
I am not saying there was any evil plot, or that Anne Graham had any particular strategy in mind. In fact, I don't think she did. Perhaps she just wanted to plead with Feldman.
But what manner of man was Feldy? Let me quote someone you respect, Keith Skinner. ""Paul bases a theory upon a hypothesis, sinks it deep in speculation and confounds it with mystery."
Now I ask, is it possible, is it even probable that Feldman would have been probing Anne Graham about the provenance of the Maybrick diary? Is it conceivable that Anne Graham--in desperation--might have been willing to go along with his speculations? It may have started out almost innocently.
You see, in retrospect, Anne Graham's revelation seems like a big deal. It need not have been at the time. She couldn't have forseen that Feldman would make it the cornerstone of his book---still unwritten---or that it would eventually end up being written about in three other books. All this was in the future; at the time it might have been merely expedient.
Personally, after following this saga for several years, I've come to the conclusion that Anne Graham has little or nothing to do with the Maybrick diary. Just my opinon. RJP
P.S. Speaking of quotes. Two years ago I suggested "the red right-hand of slaughter." No one found it, if they even bothered trying.
|
John V. Omlor
Detective Sergeant
Username: Omlor
Post Number: 147
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, October 15, 2003 - 4:48 pm: | |
Caz,
First of all, historically speaking, your comparison to modern times and Mike's owning the Sphere Guide is not relevant, since I have already researched and published on the old boards the small number of editions and the extremely limited runs of each of these editions available in 1888 of Crashaw's work which included this poem, and we do have reliable history about the distribution of those runs and there is simply no reasonable way that the real James Maybrick is casually quoting those five words from that poem in that way -- and every literary scholar and historian and expert I have consulted has said exactly the same thing. So just saying "well, it could be" and falling back on the random monkey logic of anything is vaguely possible becomes yet another way of ignoring common sense and solid scholarship.
In such ways, with such willfully turned blind-eyes, are "mysteries" quietly but deliberately kept alive.
As for my "swallowing whole Mike’s claim to have owned a copy of the Sphere book since 1989," I'm not sure what you are talking about. My claim was that Mike never went into the library and discovered for the first time that quote in that space in that source in that way. It didn't happen; whether or not Mike's claim about when he owned the Sphere Guide is true or not.
If you are now claiming that Mike did not have the Sphere Guide in 1989, that he was never given it for any reason back then, including the Disaster Relief reason, that he never had such a book until years later, then present the evidence for that claim and I'll judge it accordingly. But that is not the claim I am addressing at the moment. So I'm not sure why it's being discussed.
Once again, I'm claiming that the miracle of the Liverpool Library simply never happened and that Mike lied about it. Nothing you've said so far suggests anything otherwise.
You then go on to pester me to make further claims that, once again, I have absolutely no interest in nor any intention of making.
Why you either fail or refuse to understand this remains a growingly deep and profound mystery -- but you simply trudge on as if I've never said it, despite my having repeated myself now to the point of genuine nausea.
Let me hit the replay button.
I have not claimed nor am I claiming anything about Mike's reasons for lying about the Miracle of the Library or about his direct or indirect involvement in the production of this forgery or about any of his other possible lies or anything else for that matter.
So the act of asking me "If these two ‘facts’ haven’t led you to conclude that Mike was part of the forgery conspiracy you believe in, please explain why not, for those of us who are either not sane or thoughtful or literate or scholarly enough to understand." only dramatically demonstrates your complete unwillingness or your complete inability to read what I have already written (and thereby, sadly, begins to justify my now growing questions concerning, as you list them, your sanity, your thoughtfulness and/or your scholarly abilities).
Why? Why is asking me this question a sign that you refuse either to read or to understand my simple and repeated words?
Because you insist on asking me a question which begins by assuming a premise that I have never assumed, asserted, claimed, or otherwise put forward in this discussion. I have not said anything about what facts have or have not led me to conclude anything about Mike's involvement or lack of involvement in anything. Consequently, since the premise of your question does not apply to anything I have written, the question does not apply to me.
I don't know what other ways I can find to say this or in what more simple and elementary terms I can spell it out so that even you are able to understand it.
But let's try.
1.) I am claiming that Mike lied about the “discovery” in the library.
2.) I am claiming that what he claims happened there did not happen there in the way he has described it.
3.) I am not claiming anything else. Nothing about why he lied, nothing about his involvement in the forgery, nothing about when the book he had at home got there or what it was or was not used for. Nothing.
Again, nothing.
And again, nothing.
Is there anyone out there who does not feel I have made myself clear on that point? Is there anyone other than Caz who sees any other claims being made here?
Anyone?
I am doing the best I can to make this clear, but when you have at least one reader who insists that you are or must be saying things you are not saying, it becomes almost impossible to communicate because obviously the rules of normal linguistic operations and understanding simply no longer apply.
Perhaps if I wrote it in another language?
One more shot at English....
Mike was handed five words. Mike did not carry those five random and unidentified words into the Liverpool Library, knowing absolutely nothing at all about them and never having seen them before and, out of the entire history of the written language, find those exact five words in the middle of a prose essay (the wrong genre for the words) in the middle of modern book (the wrong time period for the words) which also just happened to be a book that he had at home.
That, I am saying, never happened. That, I am saying, is another one of Mike's many lies.
And nothing Caz has written anywhere above (or anyone has written anywhere that I have seen) even begins to suggest any other conclusion is remotely possible.
I am saying Mike lied.
I am guaranteeing that Mike lied.
That is all I am saying. That’s it. Period. End of claim. Nothing more. Zip. Nada. Nothing. Finis. Over. Done.
I am hoping that this has been simple and clear enough for even Caz to finally understand the extent of my claim here.
But perhaps that too will prove to be a baseless optimism.
Let's watch.
--John
|
Christopher T George
Inspector
Username: Chrisg
Post Number: 364
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, October 16, 2003 - 8:36 am: | |
Hi, John Omlor:
Your post of Wednesday, October 15, 2003 - 4:48 pm is fine in making it clear that your sole point is that Mike is lying when he said he found the quote in the Liverpool library just by chance without knowing beforehand where the lines came from. Fine.
Hi, R.J.:
I forget whether anyone did come up with any sort of answer on the old boards as to the answer to where your mystery quote "the red right-hand of slaughter" can be found. This may not answer you either but there is the similar Scottish dialect phrase,
Gif he is takin with reid or hait hand of slauchter
--which can be translated as "if he is taken with red or hot hand of slaughter." This saying is given as a possible origin of the phrase "caught red handed" on the English sayings derivations website at
"Take Our Word For It, page two, Words to the Wise"
R.J., if this is not the origin you mean as to where the wording may be found, my next best guess is that it might have something to do with the Red Hand of O'Neill of Ulster fame.
R.J., if I am wrong in either of these options and no one else provides the answer to the conundrum you have posed, do set us at ease as to the exact place to find the quote.
All the best
Chris
|
Alan Sharp
Detective Sergeant
Username: Ash
Post Number: 92
Registered: 9-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, October 16, 2003 - 9:13 am: | |
RJ
Oh thankyou very much. I now have the words "you're a microscopic cog in his catastrophic plan, designed and directed by his red right hand" running through my brain almost incessently. Cheery fella that Nick Cave, ain't he? Still, presumably he knows where the original quote is from. |
John V. Omlor
Detective Sergeant
Username: Omlor
Post Number: 148
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, October 16, 2003 - 9:52 am: | |
Hi Chris,
Thanks. By the way, as I'm sure you already know, your own fine attempt to ID the phrase RJ mentions can't really be used in discussing the case of the Miracle of Liverpool Library, since Mike would not have had access to any web sites or search engines or computers to make his "discovery" for him.
All the best,
--John
|
Christopher T George
Inspector
Username: Chrisg
Post Number: 365
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, October 16, 2003 - 10:25 am: | |
Hi, John:
Yes indeed I am aware that Mike likely would not have been able to do a computer search back then.
All the best
Chris |
R.J. Palmer
Inspector
Username: Rjpalmer
Post Number: 183
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, October 16, 2003 - 12:20 pm: | |
Hi. It doesn't really matter where the phrase came from---I hope to gawd nobody spends much time looking for it (I made sure it wasn't on the net). The real point is the hopelessness of tracking down a citation that isn't indexed, let alone finding it in your own attic.
Does it really strike the nail on the head to say that Mike Barrett "was desperate to prove he wrote the Maybrick Diary?" I wasn't there, and some people who were insist that Mike was desperate. But hearing the details, and listening to one of Mike's tapes, it isn't my impression at all. Although I've come to an opposite conclusion about the diary than Shirley Harrison, she does seem to be one of the only people that grasps Mike's odd personality. He seems incapable of telling a straight story. Which isn't at all the same thing as saying he has no inside information. |
Jennifer D. Pegg
Detective Sergeant
Username: Jdpegg
Post Number: 120
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, October 16, 2003 - 3:01 pm: | |
hiu john, everybody
i forgot i put up that last post how i smiled when i remembered!
anyway i don't ever use computers! (joke) but seriously, i meant it i am always up for challenges,
th other thing to remember is however, whatever quote we are arguing about got there saomeone needed to find it at one point.
i promise no computers, i'll have a go, but i may not start for a few days!!!!!!
how good is liverpool library, leicester library, not so good uni library a ok so i'll try a fair comparision at the library of choice......... i say not v. good its alright!
jennifer |
Ally
Detective Sergeant
Username: Ally
Post Number: 76
Registered: 4-2003
| | Posted on Friday, October 17, 2003 - 9:47 am: | |
I have been reading the points and counterpoints and points and counterpoints. Here are the two basic arguments:
1. No way, no how did Mike randomly pick that book off the shelf and find those 5 words.
2. The possibility that he was drawn to that particular book because he owned it and plucking it off the shelf, it opened to that passage as the binding made it wont to do.
My question would be this: how distinctive is the Sphere spine? I love books and I have several books that I can recognize the front cover from across the room but would be hard pressed to recognize the spine. Considering it is highly doubtful that Mike spent hours pouring over his own copy of the Sphere, how likely is it that he would be drawn to it's spine.
Not very likely, I think. |
Christopher T George
Inspector
Username: Chrisg
Post Number: 367
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Friday, October 17, 2003 - 10:20 am: | |
Hi, Ally:
You don't have to be drawn to the spine. I have had books with binder problems. You don't have to know anything about the spine, do you, if the book happens to fall open by itself, which appears to be the case here? It appears that a large batch of copies of this volume of the Sphere guide all fall open at the same page, so the quote would have been evident to anyone who looked at a copy of the book that had that problem. The question though is, Liverpool Library Miracle or not, does the fact that Mike could give the origin of these arcane lines from a seventeenth century poem in any way indicate that Mike put the words in the Diary or knew who put the words in the Diary, or only that he figured out where the quote came from, i.e., a poem by Richard Crashaw?
All the best
Chris |
R.J. Palmer
Inspector
Username: Rjpalmer
Post Number: 184
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Friday, October 17, 2003 - 10:57 am: | |
Chris--Hi. I don't think that's Ally's point. She's asking--and rightfully so--- 'why would Barrett be drawn to the book in the first place'? One argument in the past has been that Barrett might have been 'drawn' to the book in the Liverpool Library because he recognized it as the same volume that was in his attic. But, while on a library shelf, all that is visible is the spine. The spine in question (if its the same edition I have seen) is merely plain white with small lettering---indistinguishable from tens or hundreds of thousands of other books. And, evidently, the book for some odd reason was shelved in the International Section. The scenerio isn't exactly credible.
But hark, I think I hear John-O groaning with pain.. |
Caroline Anne Morris
Inspector
Username: Caz
Post Number: 447
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Friday, October 17, 2003 - 11:03 am: | |
Hi RJ,
Your post about Anne again strikes me as being balanced and reasonable. The conclusion you reach is, as you say, just your opinion, to which you are perfectly entitled. I wish I could reach just a few conclusions myself, but am finding the old adage truer with every passing day - the more I find out, the less (I think) I know. 
Hi All,
John O wrote:
‘As for my "swallowing whole Mike’s claim to have owned a copy of the Sphere book since 1989," I'm not sure what you are talking about.’
I was talking about John’s claim that it was ‘true’ and ‘beyond doubt’ that Mike owned the Sphere book.
And the claim that he repeats here, in English, is:
Mike was handed five words. Mike did not carry those five random and unidentified words into the Liverpool Library, knowing absolutely nothing at all about them and never having seen them before and, out of the entire history of the written language, find those exact five words in the middle of a prose essay (the wrong genre for the words) in the middle of modern book (the wrong time period for the words) which also just happened to be a book that he had at home.
I am claiming nothing at all here, and I don’t know how or when Mike came by the copy he handed to Alan Gray in December 1994, which no one has been able to examine since, despite repeated requests. Maybe he acquired it in 1989, maybe he didn’t, and it’s just another of Mike’s many whoppers. But my point is that John’s claim is still being supported with the ‘fact’ that Mike ‘just happened’ to have the same book at home as the one he identified in the library.
And I just asked how John knew that Mike had the book at home by this point in time. It’s really no big deal if he’d rather not be pushed any further on this one, or think about the consequences if Mike lied about this too. I’m happy to mentally scrub the last 13 words of John's latest claim unless he produces some evidence for it.
I’m sorry I’ve caused John such a headache.
Have a relaxing weekend all – please.
Love,
Caz
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Ally
Detective Sergeant
Username: Ally
Post Number: 77
Registered: 4-2003
| | Posted on Friday, October 17, 2003 - 11:13 am: | |
Thanks RJ, that was exactly the point I was trying to make. Unless the Sphere book has a very distinguished spine, I don't see how he could have recognized or been drawn to it.
|
Caroline Anne Morris
Inspector
Username: Caz
Post Number: 448
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Friday, October 17, 2003 - 11:22 am: | |
Hi All,
You can see the spine of these volumes in a photo in Ripper Diary. The books are fairly large, and the words on the spine clearly visible, and include: English Poetry and Prose 1540-1674.
When we talked at length with Mike a year ago, he told us (for what it's worth!) that he hadn't appreciated the quote was even from a poem until Shirley highlighted the fact that no one had been able to find where it came from. He also said he was chatting to a student in the library when he began looking for the quote, and the student said it sounded like it could be 'old English'. Mike then described looking at shelf after shelf.
Whether he really did have this specific volume at home, or just other similar looking books, has unfortunately not been established. Once he knew the source, by whatever means, I don't know how difficult it would have been to find another copy of the same volume.
Hope this helps.
Love,
Caz
|
Ally
Detective Sergeant
Username: Ally
Post Number: 78
Registered: 4-2003
| | Posted on Friday, October 17, 2003 - 12:30 pm: | |
Well this then begs the question --if Barret was started on his search by a student saying it sounded Old English, why would Mike have been looking in the International section being--you know..in England.
If someone told me a particular passage sounded "old American", I wouldn't go to the international section to find it. And of course, the fact that the 1540s-1670s weren't "old english".
So I am not sure how anything that Mike claimed, even if we suppose it's true, would have helped him locate the Sphere.
P.S..anyone know what the dewey number on the library sphere book was? |
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