Lord Orsam's Blog

[Mr. Poster]

He was a writer (of low brow tabloid tat it would seem) who had a few articles printed in low brow tat rags.

Except for those who enjoy (or are compelled to)sticking to rigid definitions to support half arsed arguments, being a writer of such drivel does not compare to being a published author.

That one has hinged ones thesis to such definitions says as much about the proponent as it does about the thesis.

[Paul Butler]

He was a writer (of low brow tabloid tat it would seem) who had a few articles printed in low brow tat rags.



P

He was. And those that actually knew him think it highly unlikely he managed to do even that unaided.

[Kattrup]

And that is the point, Kattrup: whether they did or not. Why the hell should I, or anyone else, 'accept' that they did, simply because some people happen to have convinced themselves of it and believe they cannot possibly be wrong?

You don’t have to accept that they did it but you should accept that they were capable of doing it.

On the handwriting side of things, if it's not in Mike or Anne's handwriting, they could not have handwritten it. [This is like Trump telling people a self-swab is something you can do yourself.]

yes, if they did not write it then they did not write it. The point is that no-one has shown that the writing is not theirs. So AB certainly could have held the pen. If you maintain your stance that Iremonger would have somehow detected if AB’s handwriting sample was not in her usual style, please provide some sort of support for that belief, besides “I think she would have noticed”. Please take a look at the example (the word “things”) from Orsam’s blog that I reposted earlier and let us know whether you see a similarity or not.

On the intellect side of things, if you seriously think Mike could have been behind it, or helped with the text, we'll just have to agree to differ. I can only think you must know something about Mike's abilities that I don't, and are not willing to share it with the rest of us.

Barrett worked as a freelance journalist for years. The idea that he was incapable of writing the diary is laughable. Konrad Kujau never worked as a writer yet he forged 60 volumes of Hitler diaries. Then you point out Barrett often made spelling mistakes. Do you know why magazines and newspapers hire editors and proofreaders? Also, there are mistakes in the diary and funnily enough they are similar to mistakes made by AB in her correspondence.

As for opportunity, if Mike could have seen the Maybrick diary for the first time in March 1992 [and there is zero evidence of anyone on the planet seeing it or knowing about it before then, it would follow that he and Anne may not have been able to create it.

Yes, how astute. If they hadn’t seen it they cannot have seen it.
As for zero evidence anyone saw it earlier, did not AB claim to have seen it earlier since it had been in family for decades?

So again, I need solid evidence that it had been, to Mike and/or Anne's knowledge, in its creative stages before March 9th 1992, or I reserve the right to my opinion that they knew bugger all about it until that date.

Again, what you need is to stop claiming that Barrett or the Barrett’s were incapable of forging the diary. They absolutely were.

It’s disappointing that someone whom the venerable Begg praised as having the stamina to try and get to the bottom of the diary origins has lost that stamina. All you seem to want is to prevent anyone from concluding anything about this non-mystery. How about contributing? Read Orsam’s post about similarities between AB handwriting and diary handwriting. Then give an opinion about it, rather than just “he’s a waste of space”. At least he contributes to the discussion- shouldn’t you?

[Mr. Poster]

[QUOTE]freelance journalist[QUOTE]

A writer of crap based apparently on interviews with c grade celebrities and printed in rags filled with endless vacuous crap for their vacuous readers.

For a man who some claim to be a published author and now a journalist........ his verbal acumen seems strangely at odds with the level of articulation one usually associates with those who have credible claims to either title.

But Im sure all the hack freelance copy writers gushing about Myleene Klass and her bosom matching shoes and pants in the red tops are delighted that some consider them to be "published authors" and "journalists".

P

[Gary Barnett]

not
at all.
he was a published author. he knew how to write.

btw whos your avatar?

Hi Abby,

Paul seems to have overlooked your question and I can’t resist the temptation to answer it - Yes it is!

[Paul Butler]

Hi Abby,

Paul seems to have overlooked your question and I can’t resist the temptation to answer it - Yes it is!

Very good Gary!

[Gary Barnett]

Very good Gary!

Should’ve been Yes he is.

The original and the best IMO.

[Paul Butler]

Should’ve been Yes he is.

The original and the best IMO.

Seconded.

[R. J. Palmer]

It's a stupid argument, Mr. P. And it shows an almost astonishing lack of insight into human behavior.

Who creates literary hoaxes? Published authors like William Faulkner and E.M. Forster and Doris Lessing? Or is it struggling literary hacks with a drink problem and a criminal record and a mortgage payment?

Being a half-arsed literary hack is not an alibi. It's a blinking neon arrow.

Anyway, if Barrett's career as a literary hack is so irrelevant, and so meaningless, why did he take such pains to hide it? Because hide it he did, with the result that we see in Shirley Harrison, Paul Feldman, Keith Skinner, etc., Mike being inaccurately portrayed--or at least naively portrayed--as an "ex-scrap metal dealer." We were also fed the wrong date for his purchase of the word processor and the wrong reason why he bought it. Why was that? How did it come about?

Personally, I've seen a heck of a lot more documented evidence that Barrett was a struggling literary hack than a scrap metal dealer. Where exactly was this mythical scrap yard and how long did Mike operate it? Can anyone give me the address and the years of operation?

Shirley Harrison once reported that Barrett belonged to a "writer's circle" in Liverpool. Strange behavior for an illiterate! Mike's fellow members should have been tracked down and interviewed. They could have given more insight into Barrett's ambitions and abilities than some scribbled note he made while drunk out of his mind three years after the appearance of the Maybrick Diary.

[Mr. Poster]

It's a stupid argument, Mr. P. And it shows an almost astonishing lack of insight into human behavior.

Ya think RJ ?

Mikes ability, for want of a better name, extended to, demonstrably, writing infrequent, poor quality, turgid drivel.

He was soooo good at this that he couldnt make a semi-regular living from it even though being an alchoholic bar fly should have been a positive plus for writing of this quality.

At no point did he ever show signs of getting better. No signs of ever having more literary talent than a few infrequent crapticles of the worst kind.

No sign of more talent than that. Needed money most of his life but never managed to rise to Womens Weekly, to the lofty heights of writing pub reviews, football match reviews, gardening columns, nothing.

Then, overnight, lurched from a couple of crap 4-letter word treatises on gutter bound starlets to penning a long piece of relatively credible historical text displaying apparent insights into a number of fields with a fountain pen over 11 days or so.

And never being able to, ever after, display any evidence of how he did it or even cough up a coherent tale of how he managed it.

Not a weak argument at all.

At least my contention that penning (assuming there is any evidence he did) a couple of bits of Titbits filler is no evidence of his capacity to produce a text that could, if itvwasnt up to snuff, land him in pokey.....is more sensible than calling him "a published author" or "journalist" to attempt to prove he was some literary madtermind.

P

[Abby Normal]

Hi Abby,

Paul seems to have overlooked your question and I can’t resist the temptation to answer it - Yes it is!

haha i get it!!! took me a little bit because ive never seen dr who.

[Paul Butler]

Being a half-arsed literary hack is not an alibi. It's a blinking neon arrow.

.....and one that led the finder of the diary straight to him.

[Caroline Brown]

well if he needed help with his articles (and there is no evidence that he did anyway) then perhaps ann helped him with those too just like she did with the diary.

Mike and Anne both admitted - independently - that she had to help him with his articles. Why would Anne have said this if she had helped him create the diary? Why would Mike have said it if he had been capable of doing the articles unaided, and to a standard that was acceptable to a publisher?

When he first boasted that he had faked the diary, he made out that it was all his own work, leading his solicitor to retract the statement on his behalf, appreciating just how bonkers it was. Mike must have come to realise why such a boast would never fly - at least not among those he wanted to convince - which is why he went on to accuse his estranged wife, his dead pal and even his father-in-law, of helping him with the diary's creation. That made it easier for people to latch on to Mike's forgery claims and made them look less foolish than if he had continued to assert that it was all his own idea and his own creation.

Melvin Harris, hoaxbuster supreme, knew only too well that Mike didn't have the 'capacity' for it, and he also didn't have Anne down as the one who held the pen. Without his presumed 'nest of forgers', he didn't have a leg to stand on and he knew it.

Love,

Caz
X

[Caroline Brown]

not
at all.
he was a published author. he knew how to write.

btw whos your avatar?

Takes one to know one, I guess.

[Gary Barnett]

An ‘honourable mention’?

In ‘Who Was the Worst Jack the Ripper Author?’ Lord Orsam presents what he sarcastically describes as a ‘quick honourable mention’ of Keith Stride

Of course, His Lordship doesn’t deal in ‘honourable mentions’. His preferred tools are the snide comment and the personal insult. And as he develops his theme, we see he is acting true to form.

He latches onto a passing comment by Stride:

Barnett’s life after the Kelly murder remains a mystery.

and, focussing the full beam of his Lordly intelligence on it, destroys Stride’s reputation as the Barnett expert at a stroke:

Seriously? This is the state of knowledge by [sic] the person who is supposed to be the expert on Barnett in the field of Ripperology? Does no-one pay any attention to anything?

We do know something of Barnett’s life after the Kelly murder.

Indeed we do. He was interviewed by the police and the press and gave evidence at Kelly’s inquest; he seemingly went on to marry a woman named Louisa/Emily and can be found living in Red Lion Street, Wapping in 1911 - and there’s more...

But his Lordship eschews all that inconsequential detail to concentrate on the most significant event in Barnett’s post-Kelly life, as evidenced by an impeccable source. With a stonkingly muppetish flourish he introduces us to an article by Arthur Warren - one that Howard had posted on the Forums as far back as 2013:

https://jtrforums.com/showthread.php...=Arthur+Warren

Bearing in mind that it appears that Warren had only moved to London in December, 1888, it’s quite amazing how much of an ‘expert’ he had apparently become by the end of that month. And what a stroke of luck that when he visited Dorset Street and asked to see 13, Millers Court, it was Barnett, looking just like the sketches of himself in the press, who offered to conduct the guided tour. And as if the uncanny resemblance hadn’t been ID enough, we have McCarthy calling Joe by his surname and making it clear from his comments that he was Kelly’s unfortunate former paramour. If there’s such a thing as ‘journalist’s luck’, Warren must have had it in bucketloads.

And from this almost too good to be true anecdote Lord O constructs the death blow to Stride’s reputation:

So Barnett was working for McCarthy until at least January 1889. Not such a mystery really.

Devastating! Poor Keith Stride. He must have been sorely dismayed when he read that. I just hope that at that point he was unable to find a shilling for the gas meter.

But how strange it is that his Lordship neglects to mention what must have been the most significant events in Barnett’s post-Kelly life: his involvement in the investigation of her murder, his appearance at her inquest and his subsequent marriage and occupation. His Lordship could have beaten Stride with those lathi, but instead he utilises a somewhat questionable (in my opinion) press report to prove his point that Keith Stride, ‘the supposed expert on Barnett’ hasn’t paid attention to ‘anything’. (You know you’re in trouble when his Lordship calls you an ‘expert’. There’s only room for one acknowledged master in this field and he’ll stoop to any level to keep it that way.)

Orsam may argue that the police investigation and the inquest were all part of Barnett’s experience of Kelly’s murder, and therefore not part of his ‘life after Kelly’s Murder’. But wouldn’t that also be true of his giving a journalist a guided tour of the murder scene a few weeks after the event (if it took place, Warren’s visit to Millers Court must have been in December, 1888) while allegedly working for John McCarthy and possibly paying off his and Kelly’s debt to his erstwhile landlord? And perhaps he disagrees with, or is unaware of, the research that has identified a very plausible Joseph Barnett in STGITE/Wapping in the 20th century.

Obviously what Keith Stride had in mind was Barnett’s life in the years after 1888 rather than the few weeks in the immediate aftermath of Kelly’s murder. And almost certainly Orsam knew that, in which case, his focus on the Warren article is in itself a mystery.

It’s a mystery that’s easily solved, though. Because, true to form, his Lordship has chosen to misunderstand someone’s obvious meaning in order to belittle them. That’s right, it’s another of his pathetic little tricks that adds absolutely nothing to our understanding of the case, but speaks volumes about His Lordship’s character.

*Others, no doubt, were overjoyed.