Lord Orsam's Blog

[Caroline Brown]

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

No, Kattrup, I don't 'accept' that either Mike or Anne had that capability. I know I could not create such a thing, so why should I accept that they most definitely could have done?

The point is that no-one has shown that the writing is not theirs. So AB certainly could have held the pen.

But 'certainly could have', in the context of the handwriting alone, means nothing at all, because you may as well say that James Maybrick 'certainly could have' penned it, because nobody has shown that the writing is not his.

The most you could say about any named individual is that the writing in the diary doesn't match their known handwriting. If we had a match for Anne's it would be game over. So how many forensic handwriting examiners have seen Orsam's 'evidence' and rushed in to confirm that in their considered opinion Anne held the pen?

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.

Thanks for the confidence in my abilities in that department, but I don't claim to be any kind of expert. I would doubt, however, that a reputable examiner would give a verdict based on a single word. A signature, by its nature, might be a different matter, but one word - 'things'? If there were enough similarities to make an expert sit up and take notice, I'd have to admit I might have misjudged Anne's capacity for taking such an insane risk.

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?

But editors and proofreaders would soon down tools if they had to scrap a potential author's work completely and rewrite the whole thing themselves, for no extra reward or credit. That's why Anne had to tidy up Mike's work, before it even reached the next stage. Do you seriously imagine that magazines and newspapers are in the business of accepting work submitted by every illiterate Tom, Dick or Mike who wants to be published, however heavily it has to be edited?

Also, there are mistakes in the diary and funnily enough they are similar to mistakes made by AB in her correspondence.

Is this correspondence from before or after 1992? We know Mike was in the habit of quoting words and phrases from the diary at any and every opportunity, but that was at a time when it had clearly taken over his life. Is it impossible that Anne may have unconsciously picked up a word here and there from the diary, almost by osmosis? I often use words and phrases from Macbeth, almost without thinking, but nobody has ever flattered me by suggesting I did so before the Bard, even though I am getting on a bit.

The lady we discuss is still alive, so I'm assuming you are merely voicing personal opinions and suspicions about her involvement, rather than making any outright accusations - in which case nobody is obliged to accept what you say or agree with you.

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?

I'm sorry I confused you. I should have said 'zero independent evidence'. I was assuming that you would not accept Anne's claim as evidence of anything, since she is an unreliable witness and a forgery suspect! Her father's evidence could not be considered entirely independent either, given their relationship and Mike's claim that he was also involved.

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

I'll be the judge of what I 'need' to stop claiming. My personal opinion is that they were not capable, while your personal opinion is that they were. That's where we are at, and we are both entitled to express our views. How are you setting me an example by claiming 'They absolutely were', when you can know nothing of the sort and are only guessing?

I don't know what to make of the rest of your post, but you are beginning to sound like a school master waving some kind of rule book at me. Please don't. It'll only make your arms tired.

Love,

Caz
X

[Gary Barnett]

deer editter,

i got a rite scoup abowt ant an Deck its a propper scandle

if yu send me hundered qidd in ussed reddies its yores


singed

a non


SP im not a perfessinal riter yu mite wont ta taart me articcle up a bitt

[Paul Butler]

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.

He's good at that. Regularly getting hold of the wrong end of the stick, deliberately or otherwise. I'm surprised anyone swallows it.

[Gary Barnett]

He's good at that. Regularly getting hold of the wrong end of the stick, deliberately or otherwise. I'm surprised anyone swallows it.

My greatest fear is that his hostility may be contagious. Someone recently referred to Paul Begg as the ‘venerable Begg’ and I wasn’t entirely sure that it was just a lighthearted play on the Venerable Bede. Paul’s on the Orsam list, so perhaps he’s seen as fair game by the Serfs. As is Caz, who is now being told what opinions she can and can’t hold.

[Gary Barnett]

As a slight aside, does anyone have a view on Arthur Warren’s claim that when he visited 13 Millers Court in December, 1888 it was freshly wallpapered but Kelly’s bloody bedclothes were still in place?

Or that Kelley’s [sic] bed was ‘scarcely’ 3 feet from the window through which Barnett’s friend (?) John [sic] Bowyer saw her body.

It might be fun to check the out the holy writ of the Warren article.

[Kattrup]

Someone recently referred to Paul Begg as the ‘venerable Begg’ and I wasn’t entirely sure that it was just a lighthearted play on the Venerable Bede.

that’s exactly what it was. As for hostility being contagious, perhaps one ought to maintain a safe social distance from terms such as “serfs”, “fawning acolytes” or “earwigs” when referring to others?

Anyway, no point in my continuing in this thread until Orsam’s blog is updated.

Stay safe!

[Gary Barnett]

that’s exactly what it was. As for hostility being contagious, perhaps one ought to maintain a safe social distance from terms such as “serfs”, “fawning acolytes” or “earwigs” when referring to others?

Anyway, no point in my continuing in this thread until Orsam’s blog is updated.

Stay safe!

Before you rush off - point me in the direction of where I used the term earwig.

[Kattrup]

Before you rush off - point me in the direction of where I used the term earwig.

I am not aware that you did, that was Caroline Brown “earwigs with learning ‘differences’”

[Gary Barnett]

that’s exactly what it was. As for hostility being contagious, perhaps one ought to maintain a safe social distance from terms such as “serfs”, “fawning acolytes” or “earwigs” when referring to others?

Anyway, no point in my continuing in this thread until Orsam’s blog is updated.

Stay safe!

I’ve no doubt the Spandex Bully is tapping furiously away at his keyboard, steam issuing from his ever alert ears, even as we speak.

I may not have time to read his blog, though, I’m expecting his Islington Murder Mystery to arrive on my door mat at any moment.

You may be in the firing line yourself this time, Kattrup, for being less than overjoyed by O’s gratuitous attack on Caz. I think that deserves a minimum 1,000-word tongue lashing. But if you are, don’t be too dismayed, old friend - I promise to curb my cartwheels of joy.

[Caroline Brown]

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

Hi Mr. P,

For those who swallowed Mike's forgery claims, it must be like riding a merry-go-round which never stops to let them off. They are destined to assess Mike's research and literary abilities by what they see in the diary, or judge the 'quality' of the diary by what they are told about Mike's limitations.

The diary can then be whatever they want it to be - in the latter case, a total crapfest that any semi-literate teen could have dreamed up over a wet weekend, or in the former case, something a previously published author and freelance journalist had managed to produce, which was enough to impress a London literary agent followed by a London publisher. In case it bears repeating, none of Mike's various unaided attempts to write anything impressed Robert Smith, even in Mike's later sober years, and he had no need whatsoever to pretend to Robert, of all people, that he couldn't write to save his life. Robert never expressed any doubts on that score.

The one condition is that Mike cannot be removed from the creation process. I have yet to fathom why on earth not. It's like a religion. If this was a literary experiment, prank, hoax, whatever, by a faker who was not in it for money and wanted to remain anonymous and unidentifiable, why is it not possible for someone like Mike merely to have ended up with it, whether it be years, months or just days after it was written? Knowing his writing ambitions exceeded his abilities [I'm being generous here], he'd have found the diary an intriguing but frustrating puzzle, then later, when the cries of hoax went up, he'd have wished he could have pulled off something like it himself. Why is it not possible that he first saw the "old book" in the pub and simply became the means of its emergence, grinning, into the world at large?

Love,

Caz
X

[Caroline Brown]

deer editter,

i got a rite scoup abowt ant an Deck its a propper scandle

if yu send me hundered qidd in ussed reddies its yores


singed

a non


SP im not a perfessinal riter yu mite wont ta taart me articcle up a bitt

Bloody hell, Gary! You should fake Mike's memoirs. Nobody would know the difference.

[R. J. Palmer]

My personal opinion is that they were not capable, while your personal opinion is that they were. That's where we are at, and we are both entitled to express our views.

In a sense, your statement goes to the heart of the matter. The same people who argue that Barrett/Graham were ‘incapable’ of creating the Diary tend to be the same people who argue that the diary’s text shows great sensitivity, an insight into the mind of a killer, mountains of obscure research, a knowledge of Gilbert and Sullivan, an early and inexplicable access to Metropolitan Police files, etc., whereas those who believe Barrett/Graham were capable of creating the Diary, tend to see the text as a ‘great farrago of nonsense,’ filled with repetition, all the usual and predictable clichés about the case, the odd malaprop or two, and was very probably cobbled together using only three or four secondary sources, particularly the books by Donald Rumbelow and Bernard Ryan.

If an abstract painting by an unknown hand showed up on the market, one’s guess as to the artist would depend on whether the viewer saw the work as a potential rival to Jackson Pollock, or as something thrown together by a chimpanzee in a few minutes.

[Caroline Brown]

You may be in the firing line yourself this time, Kattrup, for being less than overjoyed by O’s gratuitous attack on Caz. I think that deserves a minimum 1,000-word tongue lashing. But if you are, don’t be too dismayed, old friend - I promise to curb my cartwheels of joy.

Is a gratuitous attack on me still an attack if I don't see it and am immune to it in any case?

It sounds like being threatened remotely by a marshmallow wielded by someone with no concept of their own ineffectuality.

[Gary Barnett]

Is a gratuitous attack on me still an attack if I don't see it and am immune to it in any case?

It sounds like being threatened remotely by a marshmallow wielded by someone with no concept of their own ineffectuality.

You could at least pretend to be terrified, Caz. This is David’s thread don’t forget.

[Gary Barnett]

Orsam started another attack... sorry, article thus:

Let's talk about the watch!
One of the world's leading self-appointed experts of antique timepieces wrote an article in the 2017 book, 'Jack The Ripper: 25 Years of Mystery: Research and Conclusion', entitled 'The Maybrick Watch: Archaeology in Gold'.

O, joy of joys - yet another attack on a researcher where he deploys his trademark sneering ‘expert’ accusation (yawn.) Unfortunately I didn’t get any further into the detail because I was sidetracked by his Lordship’s misuse of a preposition - yet again.

Surely it’s an expert on or in not of. A couple of posts back we had him saying, ‘This is the state of knowledge by a person...’ By? Shouldn’t it be of?

This is the master of English prose, the man who brags of spotting mistakes in the OED.

With any luck The Islington Murder Mystery was proof read by someone with a less cavalier attitude to prepositions. It’s a pity Michael Barratt isn’t still available. He’d have done the job for a few pints.