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** This is an archived, static copy of the Casebook messages boards dating from 1998 to 2003. These threads cannot be replied to here. If you want to participate in our current forums please go to https://forum.casebook.org **
Archive through July 25, 2001
Casebook Message Boards: The Diary of Jack the Ripper: General Discussion:
Forensic Evidence:
Archive through July 25, 2001
Author: Martin Fido
Saturday, 26 May 2001 - 05:36 pm |        | I am, as Melvin’s quotation of my misspelled and erroneous summary of the scientific work on the diary proves, no scientist. For this reason I skimmed the mass of scientific material which came to me from various interested parties in the first half of the 1990s, and apart from constantly warning Paul Feldman and Shirley Harrison that I thought they were being altogether too cavalier about the forthcoming, and then completed tests being made by Analysis for Industry, I didn’t involve myself in matters which, by and large, I couldn’t understand.
But in going through my files at this time I have uncovered copies of three absolutely fascinating letters from Alec Voller, the Diamine head chemist. I have remarked before that he was treated like a ping pong ball, as each side communicated with him to get him to change opinions he had given that they didn’t like. Melvin’s claim that he, rather than Shirley Harrison, was the first to speak to Mr Voller, with the extraordinary suggestion that Mr Voller might have been playing games with her since he didn’t give her the clear scientific explanation he gave Melvin, is rather typical of the way in which Mr Voller’s spoken communications have been reported with a touch of spin. There is absolutely no reason to imagine that Mr Voller ever played games with anybody: rather, there is explicit evidence in the letters that he was very annoyed by the hostile adversarial positions taken up by diarists and non-diarists which he rightly regarded as impeding the route to truth. And he equally explicitly apologised to Shirley in one letter for the length it took him to explain a given position, where he could have tossed out a few figures to a fellow-scientist who would have understood at once. Hence his vague phraseology for the benefit of the lay person.
A general point first. Mr Voller was absolutely consistent in thinking th Leeds tests vastly inferior to the Analysis for Industry tests. The latter he thought almost exemplary, given their brief. The Leeds tests, on the other hand, shocked him by admitting contamination in their first effort, and subsequently seemed to him inadequately calibrated to detect the small amount of sodium present. (Leeds, of course, responded warmly to Mr Voller’s criticism. But they wrote for scientists and I never understood what their case amounted to, and in any case my copy of it was received on a thermal fax which, has now faded to invisibility). But this does not mean that Mr Voller ever endorsed the view that Aims for Industry had either proved or disproved that the ink was or was not Diamine. And while he did indeed recommend testing ink inscribed with a steel nib on old paper, he was asking for something very different from Nick Warren’s perfectly honourable establishment of a rate of bronzing. Now let Mr Voller speak for himself:
On 27 December 1994 he wrote to both Shirley Harrison and Nick Warren, recommending that Dr Baxendale’s report be set aside; noting that he had only seen the published account of Dr Eastaugh’s report, which might have enabled him to assess it; and making his very firm comparison of the A for I and Leeds reports. Of Aims for Industry, he wrote, “The methodology employed seems faultless and there is therefore no reason to question the result obtained. Nevertheless I have very serious reservations about the value of this in the context of the overall task of authentication of the diary. Firstly, a matter of this importance cannot be allowed to depend on a test for just one potential constituent of the ink. Secondly, I understand that the samples for this test were obtained by some indirect means. This is clearly unsatisfactory as it may give rise to doubts about their authenticity. Thirdly, Analysis for Industry were clearly not able to perform control tests upon the blank diary paper; a matter of crucial importance.
“You will have gathered by now, that I regard the question of the authenticity of the diary as unresolved.”
Now the first point Mr Voller makes her is the one which seems to me crucial, and which has never been addressed by any of the parties to the dispute. As Melvin Harris pointed out in an earlier posting, Mr Voller supplied the full chemical formula for pre-1992 Diamine MS ink, and urged that those with the facilities to do so test the diary accordingly for precise quanitities of iron or the unique (he believed) presence of oxalate. I will quote the tests he proposed later, and it will at once be apparent that they go beyond testing for speed of bronzing with certain controls. To the best of my knowledge the serious analysis he proposed has not been tried by anyone: Nick Warren’s excellent tests for the bronzing speed of pre-1992 Diamine MS is offered as though it were a substitute.
The second point is, I think, quite irrelevant, and a result of the sort of outrageous pressure both sides brought to bear on Mr Voller, so that he is here accepting the absurd suggestion that Melvin Harris or Nick Warren might have supplied a contaminated sample to Analysis for Industry.
The third point: that any valid control test should be carried out on blank diary paper has, again, never as far as I know been attempted, and neither side really seems to want to have Mr Voller’s firm recommendation on this crucial aspect stressed.
Mr Voller goes on in this letter to voice his just censure of the parties consulting him for their inability to work harmoniously together, and suggests that the absence of an ink specialist has always vitiated the scientific proceedings, at least by causing delays. He notes, for example, that Dr Eastaugh used Quink blue-black for some control experiments, which any specialist could have told him was pointless. (He does not say anything about the Wolfson (Leeds) Laboratory’s long connection with the Parker Pen Co and the Cortauld Institute which, I believe, are cited to suggest that they really are ink specialists).
He then however, makes some absolutely crucial observations about the identification of the ink. I quote him again:
“It now seems established beyond reasonable doubt that the diary ink is of the iron-gall type, but what of the temporary dyestuff, the ‘sighting colour’ which must be prsent? It seems to have been generally accepted that this must be Nigrosine (C.1.Acid Black 2, Coupier 1867) but I regard this as unproven and quite possibly wrong because there are two other dyestuffs which have beenvery commonly used in inks of this type. These are Ink Blue (C.1.Acid Blue 93, A.W.Hoffmann 1858) and Naphthol Blue Black (C.1. Acid Black 1, M.Hoffmann 1891). It is virtually certain that the diary ink will contain one of these three, but which one? All three are made up of precisely the same chemical elements ie Hydrogen, Carbon, Nitrogen, Oxygen, Sulphur and Sodium (although of course in differing proportions and molecular arrangements) so how can a technique which only tells us which elements are present distinguish between them?”
Here again, he makes points which seem to have been studiously avoided by all parties to the case when they discuss the science. As will be seen later, Mr Voller seems to conclude that it may be possible to prove scientifically that the ink is NOT Diamine MS if some definite constituent is missing or some unwanted constituent is present. But the laboratory tests so far undertaken (and competitively brandished at each other by Melvin and Shirley) don’t even rule out the possibility of quite different Victorian inks using two dyestuffs other than nigrosine.
The second letter, addressed to Shirley Harrison on 1st February 1995 is perhaps the most valuable of the three. It reports the results of Mr Voller’s own attempts to extract and identify nigrosine from a sample of Pre-1992 Formulation Diamine Ink that had been allowed to rest on paper for one week before being tested with various solvents, including those used by Dr Eastaugh and the Leeds laboratory. And the results?
“The results are absolutely negative. The ink has proved totally solvent resistant and no detectable trace pof nigrosine has been extracted. This suggests three possibilities:
“1) I am doing something wrong.
2) The dyestuff extracted from the diary ink by Dr Eastaugh et al was not nigrosine (and I regard this as being at least possible), in which case the diary inl is not Diamine MS.
3) The dysetuff extracted by Dr Eastaugh et al was nigrosine but rather different from the nigrosine used by Diamine Inks (more about this later), in which case once again the diary ink is not Diamine MS.”
Point (1) alone gives Mr Voller credibility in my eyes which sets him far above anyone else who has ever made any observations on the ink science! I know that on another board Melvin, or somebody else citing a 1995 letter to him from Mr Voller, made the point that Mr Voller admitted having omitted to suggest artificial heat ageing in making tests, and it seemed that this was being put forward with the implication that Mr Voller was not reliable. I prefer to see Mr Voller’s ability to acknowledge his own slips, omissions and freedom from infallibility as being a proof of his extreme reliability, and would also add that he was undoubtedly badgered to restate or withdraw opinions given in conversation as everyone at one time or another has had something to gain by quoting him and something to lose by quoting something else he has said. The omission in regard to these tests is quite unimportant, anyway, as Nick Warren used it, and one gathers Mr Voller endorsed the practice.
I now jump to the end of the letter to give Mr Voller’s explanation of the phrase ‘rather different’ nigrosine.
“As you will have disovered from your own research, nigrosine is not a single chemical compound but a highly complex mixture of substances, the detailed composition of which remains unknown to this day. The problem here is not so much the fact that the composition is unknown but that it is not necessarily fixed. I know from experience that the water solubility of nigrosine can vary markedly from source to source, a good enough indication of varying composition and this could be what lies behind the fact that I could not extract nigrosine and others did.”
Important indeed! And maybe the reason why we hear little about nigrosine these days, from those who used to make a big point of it.
Obviously Mr Voller felt that restricting the search for pure Diamine constituents to chloracetamide had failed, as he gives the full formula of pre-1992 Diamine Black MS Ink in percentages W [by weight?], thus:
Gallic acid 0.84
Tannic acid 0.42
Ferrous (Iron II) sulphate 1.26
Nigrosine 0.42
Dextrine 1.88
Oxalic acid 0.52
Chloracetamide 0.26
Artilene black 2.32
Water 92.08
He then recommends testing first for the presence of iron in the dry ink, suggesting that if it falls outside the range of 6.1-7.1% it can be confidently stated that the ink is not Diamine. Recognising, however, that this might not satisfy everyone, he proposes that if the ink does fall within the range of Diamine (as Victorian inks might have done) then a further test for ferrous oxalate should be made. In this case weights would not be important, as “I do not know of any ferrogallic ink other than Diamine MS in which it was present. So if the diary ink is found to contain no trace of oxalates, then it is quite definitely not Diamine.”
This last and crucial test, unfortunately, is the one which I do not believe has ever been attempted. And still more unfortunately, as Mr Voller’s logical mind recognized, if oxalate were detected, it would prove that as far as he knew, and only as far as he knew, this would rule out all other inks but Diamine MS. He was even more explicitly cautious in ruling out chemical tests to date the ink, saying that, “The very most that you could hope for would be a result showing that the ink MIGHT be old and in view of the controversy surrounding the diary, this is obviously not good enough”.
The third letter, to Paul Feldman on 23 May 1996, is clearly a response to some more badgering, and firmly confirms what Mr Voller had said over the telephone, that the Leeds test was badly flawed, using the wrong sample with no iron, and failing to find sodium because their test wasn’t sufficiently sensitive. The sentence showing the flimsiness of all current claims to have‘provd’ scientifically that the diary is a modern fake using Diamine ink is this: “If one makes an educated guess as to the sodium content of nigrosine (and one can do no more than this, since its precise composition is unknown) and another educated guess as to the likely nigrosine content of the diary ink, then the conclusion to be drawn is that the sodium content of the diary would be less than 0.5%, possibly much less.” Of course, that sentence is also intended to demonstrate resoundingly that Leeds have definitely failed to prove that the ink is NOT Diamine.
This all suggests to me that my longstanding impression that the scientific ‘proofs’ advanced by either side are worth incredibly little, are strongly endorsed by the considered and written opinions of the man whose capacity for self-criticism and willingness to acknowledge the exellence of others’ work without any bias toward the conclusion, makes him the most reliable scientific guide I can find through the maze. His expertise in ink chemistry, I believe, outweights that of anyone else who has addressed these problems. I trust that the use made of this material will all be directed to examining its scientific content, and not to discrediting Mr Voller: a tactic which has been used all too often when unwelcome new material is presented.
With hopes that this proves useful,
Martin Fido |
Author: Caroline Anne Morris
Sunday, 27 May 2001 - 08:10 am | | This last and crucial test, unfortunately, is the one which I do not believe has ever been attempted.
I wonder how much it would cost?
And, more to the point I suppose, I wonder if anyone would be swayed from firmly held beliefs, whatever the test showed?
Love,
Caz |
Author: Martin Fido
Sunday, 27 May 2001 - 08:34 am | | Mr Voller took the money point into account, Caz, regretting that his own lab was too small to do the work without using up all the diary ink, and advising Shirley to get further opinions before spending a lot. He really comes across as a lovely unpretentious man.
The unswayable belief systems? Ah, Too true! Too true!
Martin |
Author: John Omlor
Sunday, 27 May 2001 - 10:00 am | | Dear Martin,
Many serious thanks for your thorough and clear review of the Voller information. It was, to say the least, fascinating.
Clearly the history of the past nine years and the conflicts and personal agendas and pressures that have helped shape that history now appears to be something of a template for how not to conduct an objective investigation into the authenticity and origins of an allegedly historical document. The investigation apparently took on a polarized and adverserial character very quickly, perhaps with the peculiarly excessive rhetorics of Messrs. Harris and Feldman adding to the difficulties. And clearly the scientific experts were among the victims here of some powerfully devout and almost cult-like pressures from the opposing sides.
But your review of Alec Voller's words was indeed enlightening and quite useful here for those of us still trying to see what evidence really does exist and what it fairly allows us to say.
By the way, as long as I'm teetering close to the edge of sycophancy, I should also like to say that your recent review of many of the boards and the questions lingering on them was also most impressive and wide-ranging and provocative and I appreciate all the excellent writing and the carefully considered judgments. Your posts on those boards and here seem to me to be fair and responsible and I do appreciate that.
Thanks again,
--John |
Author: Joseph
Sunday, 27 May 2001 - 01:39 pm | | Hello Mr. Omlor,
My apologies to you, and to everyone for going way off topic, but I'm curious about a subject you're familiar with, and I didn't want to privately e-mail you about this question without your permission in advance.
My question is: What is knowledge acquisition, (Acquisition of knowledge) and how might it benefit me?
Best Regards |
Author: John Omlor
Sunday, 27 May 2001 - 01:49 pm | | Hi Joseph,
Go ahead and send me a note at omlor@tampabay.rr.com and I'll give you the details of that particular course (it's an epistemology course actually, named rather pompously, I'm afraid, "Acquisition of Knowledge," by the University Honors Program).
Thanks,
--John |
Author: Simon Owen
Sunday, 27 May 2001 - 06:16 pm | | Does this mean that the Diary is old then , or not ?
yours in curiosity , Simon |
Author: Paul Begg
Monday, 28 May 2001 - 04:36 am | | Just to add to what Martin has written above, Mr. Voller saw the ‘diary’ for the first time on 20th October 1995 and very quickly pronounced that the ink was not Diamine. He said he’d read the Leeds and AFI reports but that “none of those were really conclusive, but what is conclusive is the physical appearance of it [the ink]. If this were Diamine Manuscript Ink or at least if it were Diamine Manuscript Ink of fairly recent manufacture, that its to say of the last twenty or thirty years, it would be blacker or more opaque than this. The opacity of this is very much poorer than one would obtain from Diamine Manuscript Ink.”
Martin also quotes Mr Voller’s comments in a letter of early 1995 about the possibility of two dyestuffs (ink blue and blue-black) other than Nigrosine having been used. On visually examining the ‘diary’ in October 1995 he was able to dismiss both alternatives: “Well, from your point of view it’s good news actually – as far as the dyestuff is concerned there was always three possibilities. One was Nigrosine. The other two were acid blue, there would never be any dispute that this was a permanent ink. But not all permanent inks are black to begin with. Some of them are blue… So ink blue was the second possibility for the dye stuff. And the third possibility, which would have been distinctly bad news for you would have been blue-black which wasn’t discovered until 1891. This, however, is definitely Nigrosine… This means that it is not a Registrar’s Ink, it’s definitely a manuscript ink, and since Diamine Manuscript has been the only one of its kind for many a long year and this is not Diamine Manuscript, it pushes penmanship some considerable distance into the past.”
Mr Voller then went on to speak about the fading and the bronzing: “The fading the occurs is quite characteristic of permanent manuscript inks that are of some considerable age. One does get this effect. They don’t fade evenly. You can get two consecutive lines of writing, one of which remains quite legible and the other fades quite badly. The chemical process that’s involved is not fully understood.”
On the subject of bronzing, he observed: “Again this bronzing effect is a chemical process which is not fully understood. The anti-diary camp have made much of the fact there is no pronounced bronzing. You only get very pronounced bronzing where the ink is a blue-balck. That is to say when the dye is not nigrosine but is in fact ink blue. With a Nigrosine base the bronzing is less obvious. The dyestuff here is clearly Nigrosine…I have seen a considerable number of documents like that where there has been very little bronzing…”
So, in Mr Voller’s opinion, the ink definitely contained Nigrosine, but was either not Diamine Manuscript Ink or not a Diamine Manuscript manufactured within ‘the last twenty or thirty years’, which he concluded pushed the penmanship back ‘some considerable distance into the past’, a judgement apparently confirmed by the uneven fading and the onset of bronzing. (That some effect could have been achieved with an oven or a sunray lamp was a suggestion he apparently dismissed by saying that this would have caused a bleaching of the paper – I have not seen any correspondence on this matter, but am repreating what has been said elsewhere on the Boards).
I’d just like to offer a minor observation on a remark made by Martin, who said that at one point Mr Voller was “accepting the absurd suggestion that Melvin Harris or Nick Warren might have supplied a contaminated sample to Analysis for Industry.” There were two ink tests, one found chloroacetamide and the other did not. Paul Feldman believed that Melvin Harris had handled the ink sample and the chloroacetamide in the test where chloroacetamide was found and he suggested that contamination could have taken place. Paul was wrong, the chloroacetamide having been provided by Nick Warren and never touched by Melvin. I know of no evidence that Paul ever suggested that contamination was possible after he was made aware of this fact by Melvin. And I have not personally seen any evidence supporting the claims that Melvin was accused of deliberately contaminating the ink tests or, as Melvin has himself expressed it, that he rigged the ink tests. Until such evidence is produced, I think we should avoid what may be a completely false allegation by Melvin or an allegation based on a misunderstanding. Apart from that, I don’t think Mr. Voller was referring to any such allegation about contamination, but was expressing concerns about the authenticity of the ink samples – (the ink samples were obtained "by some indirect means. This is clearly unsatisfactory as it may give rise to doubts about their authenticity.".
So, as of October 1995, Mr. Voller's opinion appears to have been that the ink contained Nigrosine, but was not Diamine Manuscript Ink, the only ink in recent years to have used Nigrosine, or it was a Diamine Ink of twenty or more years ago, so the ink had been applied to the paper some considerable time earlier. Which was confimed, in his view, by the irregular fading and minimal bronzing. |
Author: Martin Fido
Monday, 28 May 2001 - 05:30 am | | May thanks for the kind words, John.
My trawl through the old archives of all boards is now on hold, as my recent visit to England generated a little more 'real' (i.e. could be money at the end of it) work, and the board trawl is essentially for my own information, enlightenment and amusement.
With all good wishes,
Martin |
Author: Martin Fido
Monday, 28 May 2001 - 05:42 am | | Ai see that the unfortunate omission of an 'n' makes mai opening sentence above sound laike a veddy affected British accent.
Mai apologies to all,
Martin Fido |
Author: R Court
Wednesday, 06 June 2001 - 05:57 am | | Hi all,
Just a quick point on the ink question. There are other methods available nowadays to determine the exact chemical composition down to ion-level of any particular compound. This includes the possible chemical breakdown products with time, plus e.g. reaction of an ink with the paper and/or chemicals in the paper.
I am involved in laser-flourescence spectrography, which is one method, albeit not necessarily the best, of non-chemical analysis. In this destructive (minute amounts of the matter under test are laser-ablated) method it is possible to detect minute traces of not only compounds, but the elements in fractual percent contained therein, within certain limitations.
The problem here is that while accurate values can be detected and listed, the interpretation of what that would mean must be left to experts in inks, which I and my colleagues are not.
Does anyone see any purpose in attempting such tests?
Regards,
B Court |
Author: Caroline Anne Morris
Wednesday, 06 June 2001 - 07:44 am | | Bobby! How the devil are you? Long time no see.
I trust Robert Smith will read your post and hopefully will be able to give his view on whether such tests would be advantageous, and could be organised and funded.
It would be great if we could finally get an accurate and definitive list of the diary ink ingredients and their proportions.
Love,
Caz |
Author: Rosemary O'Ryan
Wednesday, 06 June 2001 - 07:49 pm | | Dear Martin,
English...I think you mean?
Rosey :-) |
Author: Mike David
Thursday, 07 June 2001 - 03:44 pm | | Remainder of Melvin's posting - apologies as on the 'Professional Standards' board.
From Melvin Harris
Re: Eastaugh's ink tests.
Dr Eastaugh is being misrepresented by Mrs Harrison's words, "There is no nigrosine." I have queried this with Nick, and as I suspected, his remarks about the ink not being based on synthetic dyes have been misread. The basis of the ink is iron-gall, but such an ink needs a sighting colour, since the iron-gall part is almost colourless unitl it oxidises to black. This temporary colour is a dyestuff, and in the case of the Diary ink nothing rules out niogrosine. Indeed Alec Voller on seeing the diary said, "This is definitely nigrosine".
[Mike interjects: I'm not sure if this will be apparent to everyone from the above, but as I understand it it's important to know that nigrosine is used in ink manufacture in two different ways. It can be used a) as the basis, the principal colouring agent, in synthetic inks, or b) as a 'sighting agent' in iron-based inks - this being essentially a means of seeing what you're writing as the iron component only becomes visible on drying. Dr Eastaugh's comment was, I gather, to the effect that the diary ink was not based on nigrosine - that it was, in fact, based on iron - not that nigrosine was not present at all. Indeed his finding of significant quantities of sodium makes it highly likely that it was.]
From Melvin again
It was the Leeds report of December 1994 that came up with the maverick conclusion about the ink saying:
"Nigrosine ... contained sodium salts. The presence of sodium was not detected in any of the materials examined except the Diamine Manuscript Ink ... "
But in October 1992 Dr Eastaugh, using similar techniques, found sodium in every test sample of the diary ink. And this sodium was there in major amounts, not just minute traces. Nick's findings and graphs were put on screen by me and are still there for those who wish to check. |
Author: Robert Smith
Wednesday, 13 June 2001 - 06:29 am | | In Melvin’s post of 7th June (Forensic Evidence via Mike David), he accuses Shirley Harrison of misrepresentation, drawing attention to her words, “There is no nigrosine”, which appear in a four-line summary of Dr Eastaugh’s tests on page 365 of the Blake edition. What did Nick Eastaugh actually write on 2nd October 1992? He tested the ink with ‘reagents’ and reported, “little reaction was observed, suggesting that the ink is not based on a synthetic dyestuff; however, low levels of a synthetic dye might not be revealed by this approach”. In a summary, Shirley could have more accurately written about Dr Eastaugh’s report: “No nigrosine or other synthetic dyestuff was observed”. Her paraphrasing could certainly have been more precise, but it hardly classifies as misrepresentation. The fact is, that Dr Eastaugh did not find nigrosine in the diary ink. Even if he had, so what? It was used commercially in inks from 1867 onwards.
However, in his enthusiasm to press home Shirley’s alleged misrepresentation of Dr Eastaugh, Melvin actually does “misrepresent” Dr Eastaugh’s findings. He emphasises in bold type that Dr Eastaugh “found sodium in every test sample of the diary ink”. True enough, but Melvin continues: “and this sodium was there in major amounts, not just minute traces”. No it wasn’t. Table 1 of Dr Eastaugh’s report lists sodium as a “minor” element in all four samples of the diary ink.
He wants, of course, the diary ink to be high in sodium, because it is in Nigrosine, which is known to be a key ingredient of Diamine ink, and so reinforces the idea that the diary is written with modern Diamine ink. While he is insisting wrongly that sodium is a major element in the diary ink, he ignores the presence of the actual major elements of the diary ink, identified by Dr Eastaugh. These are Silicon, Sulphur and Aluminium, none of which are in Diamine ink. My post of 18th May 2001 listed Eastaugh’s findings, ie that Sodium is a minor element and that Silicon, Sulphur and Aluminium are major elements. Melvin really needs to take care before he throws around accusations of misrepresentation.
Even more gobsmacking is Melvin’s selective quotation of Dr Voller in his same post of 7th June. In his keenness to cast Shirley in the role of misrepresenter of Dr Eastaugh, he refers to Alec Voller’s comment, on first seeing the diary ink: “This is definitely nigrosine”. He neglects to quote the rest of the paragraph. Why? Because Dr Voller concludes it by saying the diary ink is “definitely not Diamine manuscript ink”, the very last thing Melvin wants you to know. For the record the complete text reads: “This is definitely nigrosine. This means it is not a registrar’s ink, it is definitely a manuscript ink. And since Diamine manuscript ink is the only one of its kind for many a long year, and this is definitely not Diamine ink, it puts the penmanship some considerable distance into the past.” Just who is doing the misrepresenting here?
In his “Some Farewell Facts” post of 7th June, he becomes touchingly solicitous towards Alec Voller, and proposes, “that Voller should be left out of any further discussions”. Does Melvin, having retired from the boards, and taken what he can find of use to him in Dr Voller’s reports, mean us now to stop referring to his reports and letters? Well, not before Melvin reports one more quotation from the much abused Voller. Surrounded by lots of omission dots, comes this partial quote from Dr Voller in a letter of 19th May to Melvin: “…I agree that the ink of Nick’s letter has taken on an appearance similar to that of the diary, as regards fading and bronzing…”
Why do I think we are not getting Dr Voller’s whole story? First, remember that in October 1995, he said: “It’s barely visible, in one or two places there is some very slight bronzing.” Then in May 2001, on looking at a “colour photocopy” of a test letter written by Nick Warren in 1995 with Diamine ink, Dr Voller observes “fading and bronzing that are apparent in your copy of Nick Warren’s letter.” Goodness knows how he or we are meant to accept a photocopy as evidence of true colour. Even more startling, if Alec Voller hasn’t seen the diary since 1995, when he could only detect “very slight bronzing”, which was “barely visible”, how can he now say that Nick’s letter, where the bronzing is “apparent” “has taken on an appearance similar to that of the diary, as regards fading and bronzing”? We will only ever know what he really said, if and when Melvin posts or publishes the full text of his letter, together with his own letter to Dr Voller.
If Dr Voller and Dr Eastaugh are fed up with people contacting them about the diary, then it is perhaps Melvin, who should stop bothering them. As far as I know, no one else has tried to contact them for an opinion for quite some time.
I happen to believe that the diary is an original Victorian document, but how can I be 100% sure? Melvin and others assert vehemently it is a modern hoax, but lack any reliable evidence on who produced the document, how it was done and when. With the Hitler diaries, the whole thing was solved in a matter of days.
Melvin, however, is 100% sure that the diary is a hoax, and tells us finally: “Anyone who needs factual questions answered will have to search though my past postings until they find them.” Is that it, then? There’s nothing more to find out about the diary? It’s been cracked? Sounds a but like Melvin’s arch enemy, Paul Feldman, to me. We may be at or near the end of a phase, but we are not done with the diary yet, nor it with us. |
Author: Caroline Anne Morris
Thursday, 14 June 2001 - 10:56 am | | Hi All,
Does anyone believe that the scientists Voller, Eastaugh, Wild and Turgoose would feel their work and opinions on the diary and watch had all been represented fairly and openly on these boards over the years, by a scrupulously impartial Melvin Harris?
Or do people feel that there may have been a tendency by Melvin to highlight anything and everything that suited his own theory, and play down, ignore, try to have modified, or rubbish, all the bits that went against his particular grain?
I think most of us here appreciate that Feldy was guilty of being selective, and putting his own desired interpretations on certain events and material, although we don't really know if this was more to do with over-enthusiasm, wild and wishful thinking or self-deception, and less to do with downright dishonesty.
What we do know is that Melvin set himself up as a paragon of virtue, to knock down anyone who failed to reach his own supreme standards of integrity and accurate reporting. So it is infinitely more shocking to imagine that Melvin himself could possibly have been guilty of Feldmanlike weakness – even if it has nothing to do with deliberate misrepresentation of evidence for the purpose of misleading his readers.
Wouldn't it be interesting to hear what these four professionals make of all the relevant discussions here, in which their individual views have been cited (or omitted altogether), then accepted or rejected to make an argument? I’d be very interested to learn who they would vote for, as having represented them the most fairly and completely overall. Perhaps they should all be made aware of what has been written here, so they will have the opportunity, if they wish to take it, to speak for themselves – fully next time.
Love,
Caz
PS But sorry, I forgot. We are not supposed to drag Voller into any further discussions - Melvin is worried that the man has been through enough. |
Author: Peter R.A. Birchwood
Tuesday, 26 June 2001 - 07:02 am | | RECKLESS AND WRONG Melvin Harris
Robert Smith is certainly reckless. With a Diary record like his it would have been in his best interests to have kept his head down and stayed mute. But folly rules! In 1993 Kevin Rendell described him to me as "A hopeless case." I came to know full well what he meant when I found Robert incapable of understanding some quite simple propositions. And in the past, among other things, he has used an obviously bogus transcription of the Maybrick Will to cast doubts upon an authentic document. He has advanced an impossible "two hands at work" claim to try to denigrate the holographic will. He has made ludicrous claims for the rarity of the Diary information. And he has never publicly revealed the complete text of any of the ink test reports or watch test reports. Yet he is now posing as a guardian of the truth and insists on throwing around charges of misrepresentation on my part.
The truth is that he simply does not understand the report he is quoting. Dr. Easthaugh's report does not deal with a fluid ink and its component compounds. It deals with samples that have dried out and are etched onto paper. No analyses of an iron-gall ink that has been so used will ever be an exact match for the ink in its liquid form, because of oxidation, paper contaminants and extraction problems. Furthermore, this report does not attempt to identify compounds. It is plainly a rollcall of elements and their relative magnitudes, as such it does not differentiate between essential and non-essential substances. His Table 1 and his supporting graphs do indeed show two major elements as Aluminium and Silicon but these play no part in the ink in any way. They add no colour, they are not preservatives or binders. And they are not added to the original brew as part of a formula. They are just unrelated items, mere contaminants. If they were eliminated in their entirety, then the ink would be unaffected. It would still appear the same, write the same and age the same. The fact is that these two elements are foundboth in the mains water used in the ink and in the Diary paper which contains large ammounts indeed; most probably from the Hydrated Aluminium Silicate that has been used since Victorian times as a paper filler. So that leaves just three elements that are consistently there, well above trace ammounts: they are Sulphur, Iron and Sodium. It is those three that are the major components of THE INK ITSELF since the relativity factor shifts as soon as the new parameter is drawn.
As for his further statement that there is no sulphur in diamine ink, this is a real schoolboy howler. He took chemistry so how does he think the iron content of Diamine MS Ink gets there? From a discarded horseshoe, perhaps? Well, the formula shows it to be added in the form of ANHYDROUS FERROUS SULPHATE. And that kills off Smith's "no sulpher" Fantasy. It also provides yet another example of his failure to understand even simple propositions, since in his posting of May 31st he writes of Ferrous Sulphate being present in the Diamine Ink!
Many of the other cheap points he tries to make have been dealt with in full, in the past. He should try reading back before writing anything more. He will then find that Voller's views have been dealt with by me earlier on. Thus his sneers are based on blatant ignorance and a lack of logic. For logically, Voller's 1995 observations on opacity, irregular fading and bronzing have to yield to the results of Nick Warren's experiment with the original Diamine Black MS Ink. Both Easthaugh and Voller have urged that such tests should rightly take place on blank pages of the diary to make the most exact comparisons, but Smith has never taken that step. Now it is too late since it would take another three years to match the results gained by Nick Warren. But Smith has sole control of the blank pages. Even so, did Mike Barrett have independent legal advice BEFORE he signed over the Diary to Smith Gryphon for One Pound? He says not. And since Smith Gryphon went into liquidation, who now owns the Diary? |
Author: Caroline Anne Morris
Wednesday, 27 June 2001 - 05:25 am | | I thought at first Peter was saying "Reckless and wrong, Melvin Harris", and I nearly fell off my chair. 
I think I like the sound of this 'reckless' Robert Smith - although I do appreciate a man who keeps his head down and stays mute. 
Love,
Caz |
Author: Robert Smith
Friday, 29 June 2001 - 07:18 am | | More “Farewell Facts” from Melvin Harris
When Melvin signed off from the Professional Standards board on 7th June, he announced in measured and dramatic tones: “I have no more time to spare, so I am withdrawing from this board”. It is sad that his strong and dignified resolve to bid us farewell broke in just 19 days. Even sadder, that the impulse which drove him to end his vow of silence, was his overwhelming desire to hurl an abusive diatribe against me. His Sun-style headline sets the level for what followed.
He runs through a list of my supposed sins over the last nine years, which must have been as incomprehensible to anyone reading these boards, as it was to me. He then proceeds to show how dim I am at understanding chemical analysis, a point I made against myself, by the way, in my post of 18th May. Melvin explains away the major elements present in the diary ink, Aluminium and Silicon, as being “mere contaminants”, telling us that they “are both found in the mains water used in the ink”. My point was that those elements are not found in Diamine ink, so Melvin’s logic must be that mains water was not used in the manufacture of Diamine ink. Is that really so? Melvin, in making this and other assertions, has moved well away from the scientific reports of Nick Eastaugh et al. So what are his sources? I don’t remember Dr Eastaugh, Alec Voller, or Leeds University drawing attention to the dry ink being of a different chemical composition to fluid ink. Again, what expertise is Melvin relying on? If his own, what are his formal qualifications entitling him to set himself up as an expert in the chemical behaviour of inks. Anyway this kind of discussion is clearly getting us nowhere. So Melvin, here is your big opportunity to prove the diary is a fake.
I would agree to an amount of Diamine ink being applied to the blank diary paper, if Melvin or others were to commission Dr Eastaugh to conduct independent tests on authenticated pre-1992 Diamine ink, which parallel his tests on the diary ink conducted in 1992, and if Dr Eastaugh then concluded definitively that both inks are chemically identical. Can I be fairer than that? If Melvin were also to commission Sue Iremonger to compare Mr Kane’s handwriting with the diary handwriting, resulting in a positive identification by her, then he really will achieve a pinnacle in his career as hoax-buster general. So Melvin, put up or shut up.
Melvin complains that I have not posted the scientists’ complete reports on the boards. He knows very well, that I did not commission any of the diary and watch tests, and that the copyright in them is owned by the authors of the reports. As far as I am concerned, Melvin is free to seek the appropriate permissions required from those, who commissioned the reports, and from those, who wrote them, and then post them himself.
Melvin already knows the answer to his final question on who now owns the diary, as he has read my post of 18th May, in which I confirmed to RJ Palmer, that I own it. In answer to Melvin’s final insidious question: “Did Mike Barrett have independent legal advice before he signed over the diary to Smith Gryphon, for one pound”, the answer is: Yes, Mike received advice from a lawyer on the transfer of ownership, prior to signing the agreement. Incidentally, Smith Gryphon has not gone into liquidation, but is in administrative receivership.
In a telling phrase, Melvin says, that I am “now posing as a guardian of the truth”. It is obviously asking too much of him to consider that I, in common with almost everyone else on the boards, am genuinely trying to discover the true status of the diary. It is against the code currently being observed on these boards to be gratuitously and abusively hostile to other posters. Words and phrases, written by Melvin in reference to me, like “lies”, “ludicrous”, “schoolboy howler”, “cheap points”, “sneers”, “blatant ignorance” and “misrepresentation”, don’t contribute to rational debate. It was only because Melvin unjustly accused Shirley of misrepresentation, that I took him to task on his own misrepresentations. I will only respond to Melvin’s points in future, if he agrees to cut out the personal invective.
In any case, I think Melvin and I are in agreement that we have said all we need to in debating the forensic evidence. I have made my offer, which will allow him to prove, whether or not the diary was written with Diamine ink. A short answer indicating his intent is all that is required right now.
Robert Smith |
Author: shirley harrison
Saturday, 30 June 2001 - 01:09 pm | | Robert….I think your money is safe! It is an excellent idea. Since Melvin knows the diary is a forgery and has told us so many times but does not wish to share his proof, it is unlikely he will take up the gauntlet you have thrown down. He has no need of further proof.. Besides, I suspect that you, like me, are off his visiting list.
But I am very heartened to see that Alec Voller’s contribution is being aired again. Martin you are right – he is one of the good men in this story. I would love to see more tests done but could never afford it. I think Nick Easthaugh was sound too, sadly he and I had to part company rather suddenly due to the size of his bill but he was genuine and conscientious.
It also occurs to me that the fact you were given copies of Alec’s letters to me indicates the atmosphere of openness that has always existed between us despite our differing views. Now I am looking forward to attempting to establish similar relations with Peter Birchwood although I fear there may be some ground to make up first.
I do slightly take issue with the charge of badgering Alec – because I am no scientist and find the scientific tests very difficult I needed to speak to him quite a lot but actually backed off discussing things when I realised that he was becoming irritated with Melvin’s telephone manner. Because my knowledge is less than some of you on the boards I do not want to add any more but maybe to learn by reading what you have to say.
But does it not strike you all as strange that, eight years on, despite the fact that most of you believe the diary is a modern forgery, you are now all dissecting its content in a way that would be totally unecessary had you proved your case? Like Robert I think the diary may have the last laugh, |
Author: John Omlor
Saturday, 30 June 2001 - 04:09 pm | | Hi Shirley and Robert,
I think it is very clear, logically speaking, that almost nothing has actually been proven, that no case has been established beyond a doubt, concerning any important aspect of the diary situation.
I think what often gets lost in the hostile, schoolyard rhetoric of Melvin Harris's unfortunate prose style, which mixes a child's love of the insulting phrase with a striking amount of self-promotion, is the simple fact that Melvin has never offered any real, reliable evidence concerning who wrote this book or why or even exactly when or how. The science is clearly conflicted at best, the Kane rumors persist but remain completely unsubstantiated, for whatever reason, and the voices of those who thought they had a convincing case against the Barretts as authors or co-authors have gone silent even as it became apparent that such a "case" amounted mostly to speculation, preferred interpretations of conflicting data, and stories that are told by unreliable sources and remain in conflict with other stories that are equally problematic.
We are reading and, as Shirley says, "dissecting" the diary's content more for fun and to see what reactions the prose might spark and just more for a set of general impressions than anything else. We are not "proving" anything there.
We all have our ideas, of course, about the diary's authenticity and the likely nature of its author(s). I have given my own opinions based on the language and rhetoric of the text, at some length. But I know nothing for sure, and I am more than willing to admit that.
The rhetoric of certainty and conclusion that sometimes haunts Melvin's prose only serves to disguise a noticeable lack of decisive evidence concerning the scene of this book's composition and the establishment of very few "facts" indeed.
But I am having fun watching what happens.
You both have my admiration for your honesty and integrity and the way you have handled what has obviously been a difficult professional situation. You are to be congratulated, also, for your restraint in the face of some unfortunate hostility and some unnecessarily accusatory rhetoric.
Stand in there and know that you have the admiration of many, even some of us who might disagree about what the text itself seems to suggest.
All the best,
--John
PS: Shirley, needless to say, I've heard nothing from the solicitors either. |
Author: Christopher T George
Saturday, 30 June 2001 - 08:06 pm | | Hi, John:
I see you are doing your level best to enable yourself come to the notice of Melvin Harris which has so far eluded you. 
Chris |
Author: R.J. Palmer
Saturday, 30 June 2001 - 09:39 pm | | | John--I'm genuinely amused that you believe that the reason the diary critics have left the discussion has something to do with you having proven a point--rather than that they merely tired of pointing out that the Emperor has no clothes. In regards to format, handwriting analysis, historical accuracy, provenance, etc. etc., indeed in every reasonable standard that a questioned document must meet the diary has failed. The only reason the debate has continued to go on is that Shirley & Robert & Paul & Keith & the rest (yes, all very fine people) have refused to 'topple their king'. That's what it looks like to me. Best wishes, RJP |
Author: John Omlor
Sunday, 01 July 2001 - 08:08 am | | Hi Chris,
I'm afraid I have given up on that pretty dream of having greatness thrust upon me. 
Hi RJ,
I certainly do not think I have "proven" anything, but if you read the sentence in question above more closely, you'll see that I spoke of voices going silent not in the debate over whether the diary is genuine at all. I spoke of voices going silent in the discussion of the identity of the diary's author(s), especially those voices which once claimed to have made an established "case" against the Barretts, and I spoke of the status, at the moment, of that "case," which does indeed remain, at this point, mostly "speculation, preferred interpretations of conflicting data, and stories that are told by unreliable sources and remain in conflict with other stories that are equally problematic."
The reason the debate has continued to go on, even if we agree on the book's lack of authenticity, is that no one knows who wrote this book or why or how or even exactly when. And if you read my post above, you'll see that what I said about the evidence offered concerning the answers to these questions is simply true at this point in the discussion. Neither Melvin nor anyone else, as I wrote above, has offered any decisive evidence concerning the scene of this book's composition or the identity of its composers. Those mysteries remain.
--John
|
Author: R.J. Palmer
Sunday, 01 July 2001 - 08:29 am | | John--to be fair, you also stated 'I think it is very clear, logically speaking, that almost nothing has actually been proven, that no case has been established beyond a doubt, concerning any important aspect of the diary situation'
I would think that the diary's authenticity would fall under the heading of "any important aspect".
But I'll leave it at that.
As for 'when', I would suggest that considering the diary's reference to 'Poste House', the police list, etc., that some might argue that this has been established beyond a reasonable doubt. Of course, this has received considerable resistance. But more on the 'when' in a few short weeks. RP |
Author: John Omlor
Sunday, 01 July 2001 - 09:02 am | | Hi again, RJ.
The opening paragraph which you cite said nothing about why voices went silent on the boards or "the reason the diary critics have left the discussion," which was the subject of your initial response to me above. To be precise, the paragraph in my post which discussed that question clearly concerned itself with the question of and the debate surrounding our author's identity and the status of any "case" against the Barretts.
And if you look again at both of my posts above, you'll see that in both cases, the precise phrase was "exactly when." Even if we were to agree that the book is not likely to be one hundred years old, nor even fifty, we still have not decisively established a specific time of composition.
But I can wait a few short weeks.
--John |
Author: Caroline Anne Morris
Monday, 02 July 2001 - 11:51 am | | Ah, but John, perhaps RJ is happy in his certain knowledge that the diary cannot in reality be any more than around 14 years old at most. If he feels that establishing "exactly when" is superfluous to his own requirements, perhaps he thinks it ought to be superfluous to everyone else's. If this is so, it is entirely unrealistic IMHO. If anyone seriously wants to rid the likes of Shirley, Robert and Keith of their continuing and sincerely-held beliefs that this artefact could be decades old, it looks like they are going to have to try to establish as much about the scene, exact timing and circumstances of the composition as possible. Anything less will inevitably leave the door open for certain people to say "not proven". If others are happy with that, I guess they can trot out the usual 'burden of proof' argument and leave things there. But in my experience to date, many of the staunchest diary critics have tried to 'leave things there', only to find themselves returning 'ere long to do a bit more arguing! But I look forward to any future help RJ is able to give us with the "when".
'The diary critics' may well have, as RJ suggests, 'merely tired of pointing out that the Emperor has no clothes.' I, on the other hand, will never tire of, or fail to be amused by, seeing another Emperor parading on these boards in his birthday suit (and I do hope his excellence will grace us with his presence again shortly, by way of yet more 'farewell facts'. )
RJ, you also wrote:
'The only reason the debate has continued to go on is that Shirley & Robert & Paul & Keith & the rest (yes, all very fine people) have refused to 'topple their king'. That's what it looks like to me.'
Well, Keith, for one, has told you that he doesn't care about being right and that he only wants the truth to come out, whatever form that truth takes. He and Shirley have been trying to get Melvin to produce the very proof that will 'topple their king', as you quaintly put it, haven't they? Your words very clearly imply that you doubt these people's objectivity or their word, or both, or at least that you think they are deluding themselves - that, in reality, they are simply refusing or unable to see 'sense', in the same way that you are able to see it so very clearly.
Do you not believe that anyone is seriously struggling with this thing being modern, in the light of everything they know about the few individuals involved in the saga?
Love,
Caz |
Author: R.J. Palmer
Monday, 02 July 2001 - 11:12 pm | | Caz-- [How did I know you would respond? ] Yes, of course, I believe some 'people are seriously struggling with this thing being modern', and no, I don't doubt anyone's word. I've candidly told you on these boards in the past --and I'm sure you remember-- that I don't know how I would react if a host of seemingly sincere people consistently told me that they had nothing whatsover to do with the production of the diary or the watch. Yes, there are some oddities here, such as the Johnsons' repeated visits to the jeweler's shop. And I think I've given the old hoax theory more of an ear then most. But, on the other hand, I think you & John both tend to undervalue some very compelling reasons for suspecting that this is a recent forgery, and show little but disdain for some solid research by Harris & Birchwood & others. Reading some of John's posts, one would think that it is nothing but "whim" that so many experts have come to the conclusion that this is a modern hoax. But this is ridiculous. The 'Poste House' reference alone would convince many people that the diary is at least as young as the 1960s.
I do regret my chess analogy, though. In retrospect it comes off a little mean-spirited. Of course Keith & Shirley can battle down to the last pawn if they sincerely believe this is an old document. But I genuinely can't understand how certain mistakes in the diary can be ignored--such as Sir Jim (or any other Victorian, for that matter) saying that Michael Maybrick wrote lyrics. Doesn't this more or less settle the matter that this isn't a Victorian document? And what about the police list or the coroner's papers? If it is shown that the diary doesn't demonstrate any complex research, doesn't this strongly suggest to you that these references came after 1987?
Best wishes, RJP |
Author: Caroline Anne Morris
Tuesday, 03 July 2001 - 05:53 am | | Hi RJ,
To be fair, the diary author does know that Michael Maybrick writes music - 'Michael is well, he writes a merry tune.'
And how does it possibly 'settle the matter that this isn't a Victorian document', just because our diarist has Michael down as better able to compose verse than his poetically-challenged brother James? One was a musical composer, t'other a cotton merchant, neither made their living from writing 'lyrics', and our diarist never suggests otherwise, does he? If one is struggling to be as good as a sibling at something, why must it be related to their profession at all? If James had been moaning about losing to Michael at chess, would you seriously see that as a howler, because the latter wasn't a famous chess professional?
My response to you was prompted primarily by your chess analogy, which you now regret. I felt it showed how little you understand why and how Shirley, Robert and Keith have arrived at their individual positions and beliefs regarding the diary. There is a whole lot more to it than your impression that 'a host of seemingly sincere people' have consistently told them 'that they had nothing whatsover to do with the production of the diary or the watch.' This really is an over-simplification of the years of interviewing, questioning and monitoring the words and reactions of those involved, and the conclusion that no one has so far been found who remotely looks like they helped create the artefacts, on their own, or as part of a team.
John can speak for himself, but nowhere have I seen any evidence from his posts that he thinks 'that it is nothing but "whim" that so many experts have come to the conclusion that this is a modern hoax.' The "whims" only feature when he talks about other people's need to have the Barretts - or Kane, or Devereux, or even Billy - somehow involved in the creation, because it makes for an easy and tidy solution, regardless of the problems when we start to look a bit deeper. If it turns out that none of these people knew when or where the diary originated, which is what some of us truly suspect to be the case, where the hell did Mike get it from? That has to be explained somehow, in conjunction with any internal evidence that points to a post-1987 creation.
This wouldn't be a struggle at all if Mike had been able to prove some involvement. It should have been a case of, "It's a modern fake, this is how I know, and here's the proof", back in June 1994. But it was never that simple. Mike tried every which way to make his confessions believable, yet failed with each twist in the tale, and with each new tale, as old ones were found to have nothing going for them. Two years later, in 1996, Alan Gray was still urging Mike to cough up the goods, which is odd when you consider Melvin and others have said that producing the Sphere Guide was the equivalent of Mike coughing up the goods back in December 1994.
Love,
Caz |
Author: John Omlor
Tuesday, 03 July 2001 - 07:09 am | | Hi RJ,
Yes, Caroline is correct when she makes a distinction between what I write concerning the document being old (I don't particularly think it is, but not necessarily for the specific textual reasons you cite above) and what I write concerning who wrote it (where whim and speculation and preferred interpretations of conflicting data and problematic personal narratives are almost all I have ever seen).
Regarding the contributions of Mr. Harris, I wrote this above:
"Melvin has never offered any real, reliable evidence concerning who wrote this book or why or even exactly when or how."
This is true.
It is true for Peter, too, by the way.
It is true, as far as I can see, for everyone.
Even our best modern hoax theories cannot pinpoint a definitive time or the scene of composition or a motive or our author's identity with any reliable, material evidence.
This does not mean the diary is not a modern hoax, (I happen to believe, at the moment, that it probably is). It means neither Melvin nor Peter nor you nor anyone has really helped us much at all with these latter, more detailed questions.
Neither have I, of course.
Thanks go to Caroline for her accurate reading of me.
Bye for now,
--John |
Author: Peter R.A. Birchwood
Monday, 23 July 2001 - 01:56 pm | | READ AND DIGEST
Dear robert Smith: when I left this board I made it plain that this did not leave an open field for misrepresentation. But you chose to misrepresent my views, partly because of your lack of knowledge and partly because you failed to check back on my earlier posts. Your remarks were made from a standpoint of someone who was in a state of darkness, and I rightly saw them as evidence of ignorance. This is not personal invective but a bare statement of facts. And when I point to your illogicality, I am reminding you that opinions reached in October 1995 have to be set aside when new, time-based evidence emerges.
Do you really imagine that you past actions can be just brushed to one side? By writing an "Introduction" to the hardback and a "rebutall" of the Rendell Report you became part of the action and part of the problem in dealing with this fake. Among other things you used an obviously bogus transcription of the Maybrick Will as part of your promotion of the Diary. Yet a three-minute comparison of the final page of the holograph will with the bogus text you used, should have shown you that your cherished MacDougall version could NEVER have existed. I warned you about that but little seemed to penetrate your made-up mind. That is why that damning final page has never appeared in any of the editions of Mrs. Harrison's book, or in Feldman's book. You will find it only on page 206 of my "True Face..."
And let me remind you of your inability to understand quite simple propositions. In downgrading the real Maybrick Will you used the argument that his extra insurance policy for £3,000 was not mentioned in the Will. I pointed out to you that the Will contained an all-inclusive "blanket" instruction which covered EVERY existing Life Insurance Policy (except the two made out in his wife's name,) as such there was no need to Itemise ANY policies old or new, and indeed, not one was specified. Now I explained that to you patiently and I thought you understood this quite simple point. But No! You rang me a week later and brought up the very same argument. I went through the details once more. Incredibly, though, you you rang once again and still brought up the "missing policy!" I went over the ground with you in a last attempt to inject some sanity into a cuckoo situation. It was an exercise in supreme patience and I thought simple logic had penetrated. Not in the least! The same cuckoo argument was still being used over three years later, in Feldman's book and in Mrs. Harrison's Blake edition.
This same strange ability to misunderstand simple issues now shows itself in your remarks on the water used in Diamine Ink. You keep on repeating that Aluminium and Silicon are not found in Diamine Ink. It is the Life Insurance farce all over again. Those two substances form no compound that is used to create INK. Understood? But the Diary paper contains plenty of both and the mains water used to mix the ink contains the same elements. You simply do not know what you are talking about when you pontificate about the Diamine ink composition, since its major fluid content is NOT analysed in any way, it is simply listed as 92.08% WATER. Why? Because its composition is irrelevant. Understood? But you must know already that all mains water contains a number of compounds, some from nature, some added. Therefore you must know that, unless an ink uses distilled water, (and this is rare,) its water compounds will influence any analyses, even if they have no effect on the ink itself.
To understand my point on fluid and dried-out iron-gall inks just grasp this simplified example. If such an ink is made with its colour components as 50% dye and 50% iron-gall, then day-old writing made with this will give us a 50-50 colour yield when dissolved. A month later the extraction ratio will alter as less of the iron-gall part dissolves because of oxidation. as the months go by, so the ratio of iron-gall to dye declines rapidly, (light, heat and humidity play their parts here.) Add to this any contamination from the paper itself and you will see why the dried ink is never an exact match with its fluid form.
Finally you sem quite out-of-touch with the work posted here when you speak of my "...big opportunity to prove the diary is a fake." It has already been proved to be a fake. And if you look at everything I have written you will see that I have NEVER promised to name the fakers, indeed I have felt that aspect to be of little importance. It is the easily-studied artefact that has always counted for me. But is it necesary to know the identity of fakers BEFORE concluding that an artefact is a fake? Of course not. Such a proposition is rejected outright by all competent investigators the world over. The clamout to know who, when, how and why , is at best a simplistic and unreal position; at worst it is excuse to avoid facing the hard facts. It is the noise from an inexperienced and tiny minority who have contributed absolutely nothing of value to this investigation.
I note your offer to agree to the use of the original Diamine MS Ink on a blank Diary page, in conjunction with retests by Dr. Easthaugh. For the record, please note that one, extremely well-experienced chemist doubts the value of Dr. Easthaugh's use of these SEM/EDS tests and equally Leeds use of the SEM/EDX tests. His grounds are that the identity of an ink rests on its compounds but these tests are not able to identify compounds, only elements. That apart, your offer comes far too late and is no longer important. If this step had been taken back in 1996 then, today, we could have matched the results. You then had the chance, but the opportunity was missed. Now, even if you wrote on a blank page tomorrow, it would take over 18 months to match the conditions that Dr. Easthaugh dealt with in October 1992, and at least three years to match Nick Warren's visual aging signs. And it would be pointless, since all the evidence that the work is a modern fake has now been gathered.
Melvin Harris |
Author: John Omlor
Monday, 23 July 2001 - 04:23 pm | | I quote, from the Master:
"The clamout to know who, when, how and why , is at best a simplistic and unreal position; at worst it is excuse to avoid facing the hard facts. It is the noise from an inexperienced and tiny minority who have contributed absolutely nothing of value to this investigation."
HEY! This is almost me! Sort of. I mean, I'm not mentioned by name, yet. But I think this at least includes me! That's almost like being mentioned. I've nearly made it. My heart leaps with joyous expectation. Maybe Mr. Melvin really does know that I'm here -- that, like the little people that Horton hears, "we are here, we are here, we are here." Maybe.
Sigh.
Once again, there is almost nothing in this post but a series of attacks on Robert Smith and the claim that the science can no longer help us and the simplistic and egotistical claim that, now that Melvin feels he has proven this thing is a modern fake, everything else, every other question, suddenly becomes irrelevant, simplistic, or somehow "unreal."
Man, I wish I had that sort of ego.
Just think... Once I have proven something, all related questions go away and everything else becomes trivial and pointless.
Imagine what that must be like.
Anyway, Melvin once again writes:
"And if you look at everything I have written you will see that I have NEVER promised to name the fakers, indeed I have felt that aspect to be of little importance."
Then what was all that talk about Mike and Anne being merely placers and their handwriting not matching according to his own analysis and the three unidentified flying forgers? And how come he was listed as one of the select and chosen few who got to see the Kane samples if he's not interested in who wrote the diary?
No, Melvin is rewriting even his own personal history here, either because he's just tired or because, like the rest of us, it turns out that he too has absolutely no evidence and no idea who wrote this book or why or where and is simply unable to bring himself to admit such a thing in print (just as he's unable to admit how much of the evidence he uses in his own analysis of the book is open to multiple possible interpretations, for instance).
Well, I can admit it. I don't know who wrote this book and I would like to know who wrote this book.
And frankly, I suspect Melvin might be being just a touch deliberately disingenuous when he says that he is not interested in these questions. Speculative moments in his own earlier work suggest this is the case, at least.
***********************************
Finally, and most importantly: let's look at this one perfectly lovely and rhetorically delightful sentence again, to see if it makes any sense at all:
"The clamout to know who, when, how and why , is at best a simplistic and unreal position; at worst it is excuse to avoid facing the hard facts."
First of all, is a "clamout" anything like a "clamor?" Or is it just a big digging party -- like the one we have all been involved in for so long?
Either way, the sentence is silly.
Look:
It is arguing that the search for an author and a history for this book and the request for Melvin to share any information he might have about the book’s origins is "at best a simplistic and unreal position..."
But it's not a position at all. It's a series of questions. It's an investigation. It's a search. It's a request made for Melvin to participate. But it is certainly not yet a "position" in any way, shape, or form. So this simply makes no sense.
Also, Melvin's charming little sentence tells us that the search for who wrote this book and the request for Melvin to participate in such a search or to at least share whatever information he might have concerning the origins of this diary is, at worst, an "excuse to avoid facing the hard facts."
Putting aside the grammar problems in the original sentence at this point, Melvin seems to be saying that seeking the author, and asking for Melvin's input, is somehow the same as avoiding some hard facts.
But how can asking for information and searching for the identity of an author be an excuse for avoiding anything? The act of asking these questions does not avoid any hard facts. It does not even contradict or challenge any hard facts, including the alleged hard facts that Melvin thinks prove the diary is a recent forgery. In fact, many of us who are "clamouting" (can it be a verb?), are also of the opinion that the book is likely to be a recent forgery. How we can possibly be accused of avoiding the facts that would claim to prove what we ourselves believe is completely beyond me.
I do wish he would be careful about the logic in his sentences. I realize his rhetoric tends to get the better of him sometimes, but this sentence is simply bizarre.
Again:
"The clamout to know who, when, how and why , is at best a simplistic and unreal position; at worst it is excuse to avoid facing the hard facts."
What?!
The desire to know who, where, when, and why and to have Melvin share any information he might have about such questions is not a "position" at all -- simplistic, unreal, or otherwise.
"Unreal?" What the hell can that mean, anyway?
"I'm sorry sir, but your clamout is an unreal position."
Who talks like this?
What can such a claim signify? Isn't it simply nonsense?
And "it is excuse to avoid facing the hard facts."
Come again? Is this some sort of Anglicized-Chinese or something?
How is it an "excuse?" To avoid which facts? The ones many of us already agree with? What does this have to do with wanting to know who wrote the book and with wanting Melvin to share any information he might have?
Not only is the writing here almost indecipherable, the claim seems simply to be either nonsensical or utterly wrong. Honestly, one can "clamout" to learn who wrote this book and still face and even believe and accept the "hard facts." We do it all the time.
So this really is silly.
And I'm still not mentioned by name!
Ah, well. Maybe next time.
--John |
Author: Christopher T George
Monday, 23 July 2001 - 08:47 pm | | John:
Please know that we are all clamouting for you to get a mention. Hopefully in the next edict handed down from the magic mountain?
Chris |
Author: Caroline Anne Morris
Tuesday, 24 July 2001 - 07:30 am | | Hi John,
I'm so sorry to burst your bubble, but Melvin, in his READERS DIGEST sequel to MORE FAREWELL FACTS, obviously didn't include you in his half-baked clamout (or should that read half-outed clambake?), since he was clearly talking about those who:
aren't of the opinion that the book is likely to be a modern forgery; are trying to winkle out (aaahh, winkle out – clam out, get it?) the whos, whens, hows and whys; are refusing to face any hard facts; do get themselves into simplistic positions; but can also manage some unreal positions (it’s beginning to sound a bit more interesting than shellfish at this point) - which kind of lets you out on all counts except probably about two, by my reckoning - sorry.
Now, I’m rather good at extracting clams at my local tapas bar. But, as for the perishing diary, I can have no fixed-in-stone opinion on its age, because there are just too many conflicting, but strongly and sincerely-held opinions and interpretations, coming from intelligent, serious-minded, civilised people (well, for the most part) on all sides.
As an aside, when I first read Feldy’s book (before reading the diary itself), apart from wishing he had not been quite so determined to show the world how hard he had toiled, on stuff that led him absolutely nowhere (mind you, the book would then have ended up more of a pamphlet  ), I was able to form some very clear impressions of most of the key players (including some of the researchers, Ripperologists etc, I’ve had the good fortune to meet and come to know in person). And none of my first impressions, good, bad or indifferent, have yet let me down, or been proved false by anything I've read or heard subsequently – in fact, they have tended to grow stronger and clearer, or been confirmed for me one way or another.
I think I’m reasonably good in the department of accepting hard facts. What I’m not so good at is throwing out soft ones, that might one day be needed to replace any that turn out not to be quite man enough to do the job. And then we come on to simplistic positions. These do not appeal much to me, I have to admit. I like to have the proof spelt out, if people are trying to tell me that “The diary was written by James Maybrick”, or “The diary was very possibly written by Gerard Kane, very probably with the help and knowledge of Mike and Anne Barrett”, or “The diary is a modern fake – no one need worry about the poor buggers this simplistic position automatically implicates in fraud.”
Unreal positions I leave to your and my individual imaginations - I wouldn’t want to frighten the other readers (must be all those clams ).
No, it’s no good. I don’t think Melvin could have been including me in his clamout either.
And I am left wondering who exactly was doing the hoping, back in December 1994, when Melvin said, “It is hoped that the identities of the three people involved in the forgery will soon be made known”, if it wasn’t a hope he shared. Ah, of course – another case of failing to print the entire quote. Perhaps it should have read “It is hoped that the identities of the three people involved in the forgery will soon be made known. But don't think it's hoped by me, because it's not - oh no. This clamout, hoping to know who, is at best a simplistic and unreal position; at worst it is excuse to avoid facing the hard facts. It is the noise from an inexperienced and tiny minority who have contributed absolutely nothing of value to this investigation.”
Love,
Caz |
Author: Christopher T George
Tuesday, 24 July 2001 - 09:00 am | | Hi, Caz:
Just to extend the joke a bit further, didn't you know that the people who want to know who did the forgery are very shellfish?
All the best
Chris |
Author: John Omlor
Tuesday, 24 July 2001 - 10:29 am | | Hi Caz,
No. I refuse to believe it. You must grant a man his dreams, at least. Otherwise you are being cruel.
I know, deep in my heart, that I am one of the "inexperienced and tiny minority who have contributed absolutely nothing of value to this investigation."
I must be. It's the only way I can go on.
By the way, one would think that the number of people who "have contributed absolutely nothing of value to this investigation" would actually be quite large -- much larger than the number of people who have contributed to the investigation in some material way. And therefore, the non-contributors, like me, would actually not be a "tiny minority" at all, but an overwhelmingly large majority. No? The "tiny minority" would actually be those who have shown us the light and solved the case by proving the diary is a recent forgery. It would be our Master who is in the tiniest of minorities, I would think -- and I would think he'd be proud of his minority status. I'm not sure why he feels inexplicably compelled to thrust in onto the rest of us.
Meanwhile, the disturbing implication in Melvin's post is that since he does not know and is not interested in the answer to a question, the search for such an answer, and even the question itself, must be pointless, or "simplistic" or somehow "unreal."
Must have made him a hell of a lot of fun in philosophy and theology classes.
Anyway, contrary to Melvin, I must say that I find the questions of who and why much more interesting than the question of when, in this case. (And the question of when remains to be answered as well, in precise terms anyway, even if we eventually all agree that this is a "modern forgery.")
For instance, I think someone might be able to prove that a person or persons really did kill a number of women in Whitechapel in 1888. That can be proven.
But it's the questions of "Who?" and "Why?" that remain fascinating -- fascinating enough that even Melvin wrote a book about them. The questions to which we do not have the answers are the ones that often remain the most important and intriguing.
Well, perhaps it can be demonstrated convincingly that someone wrote a diary pretending to be James Maybrick as Jack the Ripper, sometime in the last fifty years or so.
Still, it is the questions of "Who?" and "Why?" that remain the fascinating mysteries.
-- even if Melvin can't answer those questions and therefore feels strangely compelled to tell us he has no interest in them or in their answers (despite textual evidence to the contrary).
There is a little bit of an old childhood routine about all of this.
You know the one.
When your two friends are whispering to each other and you ask them what they are saying and they refuse to tell you, so you finally just turn from them in a snit and say, "Fine. I don't really want to know anyway. I don't care." And you think you've shown them. But you still don't know. And it bothers you. So you have to insist to them again that you don't want to know, just to prove your point.
Well, in any case, I do want to know.
So if anyone has any further evidence or ideas concerning who actually wrote this damned book and why, and how they are or are not currently profiting from it, please let me and the rest of us here know, whether Melvin thinks it is important or not.
Thanks, and enjoy the day,
--John |
Author: Caroline Anne Morris
Tuesday, 24 July 2001 - 11:00 am | | Hi Chris,
Your joke almost made me clam up - almost.
Hi John,
I don't wish to be cruel, so I will grant you your dream. From henceforth I will think of you as Sir Clamout - or he of the overwhelmingly large majority - who has been chosen by the O Costly One to represent everyone in the world who has contributed absolutely nothing of value to this investigation.
But I must stress this is a one-off grant. I can't go around granting men's dreams all day all by myself - not with such a tiny minority. Too cruel.
Love,
Caz |
Author: Scott Nelson
Tuesday, 24 July 2001 - 02:58 pm | | | OK, I'll interject here briefly just to try and lift the spirit of the investigation along. Since I can't keep up on this stuff on a day to day basis, permit me one or two possibly dumb questions that may have been discussed before. I recall that several (?) months ago, when the discussion was at its zenith about who wrote the diary, there were four posts that Keith Skinner said he was forwarding to Anne Graham. I think they were by Caz, R.J. Palmer, Chris George and Peter Birchwood (if I'm not mistaken), and dealt with the question of the Barretts' role as possible handlers/placers, authors or if the thing had been in the Graham family for years. Any response yet from Anne Graham? Sorry if I'm putting certain people on the spot, but I haven't heard anything yet. |
Author: Christopher T George
Tuesday, 24 July 2001 - 03:34 pm | | Hi, Scott:
I am glad you have brought this up. To my knowledge there has been no response reported from Anne Graham. Perhaps Caroline Morris could follow this up for us with Keith Skinner.
Best regards
Chris George |
Author: Caroline Anne Morris
Wednesday, 25 July 2001 - 10:31 am | | Hi Scotty,
I'll be passing all the posts on to Keith as usual, and I'll also try to speak to him about this. I have a feeling, though, that regretfully Anne will not be giving the board a response. I’m not sure we can blame her, being in a no-win situation, whatever she has or hasn't done.
Hi All,
Well, perhaps it’s time for a quick summary of the current state of affairs, since Melvin keeps popping back from retirement to remind the clamouting minority that he has already proved his case. All the evidence that the diary is a modern fake has now been gathered.
(Sounds like harvest festival – all is safely gathered in.)
That’s it then – that’s our lot - Melvin has finished gathering all the available evidence for the diary being a recent hoax – the total sum of his findings. So he doesn’t regard the Kane samples as evidence of anything (whether anyone has had them professionally analysed or not), nor the information he had but couldn’t share. He can’t do - unless, by ‘all’ and ‘gathered’, he means that some of it remains outside of the public domain. But, in that case, he can’t seriously expect us to stop our clamout on the basis of “I’ve proved it to my own satisfaction and I don’t need to prove it to anyone else’s, so stop asking silly questions”. This really would be an astonishingly simplistic and unreal position to adopt, in trying to put the lid on things, after all the years, and the hundreds of thousands of words written on the subject, and still being written. Come off it, Mel. You could have said as much in the first place, and been done with it, considering your admirers love to boast that it’s such an obvious fake that they would never have let themselves be taken in by it anyway. If they didn’t need the services of a great hoax-buster to tell them “This diary is not in James Maybrick’s handwriting, therefore you can be sure it’s a fake”, and that was really all Melvin thought anyone needed to know, what was it all about? Did he put all that time and effort in (and still does, every time he posts yet more farewell facts), just to preach to the majority already converted, if he thinks the tiny minority of agnostics and non-believers don't need to know any more?
But if Melvin really doesn’t have any more evidence out there, other than what we already know, it follows that the claims he made about the roles taken by the Barretts can be no more than speculation, based on circumstantial evidence and Mike’s word.
And Peter, Karoline and RJ’s opinions (unless or until they possess the evidence that Melvin lacks), that the Barretts were involved to some extent in the diary’s production, and not just the handling and placing, will remain only opinions, for all their arguments here over the past two and a half years. And I still haven’t heard a good reason for Peter’s objection to the October meeting being recorded. He appears to be more interested in ridiculing Keith and his working methods than he is in helping with the diary investigation. Peter ought to be viewing this meeting as an important first step towards healing past wounds, and getting on with the job that Melvin says is over as far as he is concerned. Peter can take all the swipes at me that he likes, if he thinks it will help. But they won’t be a substitute for one good reason why a tape should not be made to protect everyone at the meeting.
I am still willing to help out financially, if Peter seriously feels an analysis of the handwriting of Anne, Mike and Gerard Kane is likely to lead us directly to the penman. Eliminating people on this basis won’t get us any nearer to knowing who was involved (or Shirley a jot nearer to proving that Maybrick did write the diary, of course). And I’m not sure where we go from there, if, as I am beginning to suspect more and more, all three were to prove negative, or worse, inconclusive.
Love,
Caz |
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