* * *
On March 9th of that year, my literary agent Doreen Montgomery, managing director of Rupert Crew Limited, one of the capital’s longest-established and best-respected agencies, took a call from Liverpool. It was from a ‘Mr Williams’. He said that he had found the Diary of Jack the Ripper and would like to bring it to her for publication.
She was naturally cautious. Doreen has been my agent for many years so she suggested I should be present at the meeting; she would welcome a second opinion. In fact ‘Mr Williams’ turned out to be Michael Barrett, a former scrap metal dealer with a taste for drama. He arrived in the Rupert Crew office, wearing a smart new suit and clutching a briefcase. Inside, in brown paper wrapping, was the book which was about to have such a cataclysmic effect on so many of those whose lives it touched and cause uproar in the hitherto peaceful world of Ripper historians. It appeared to be a dark blue, cross grain leather, quarterbound guard book. The binding and paper were of medium to high quality and well preserved. To judge by the evidence of the glue stains and the oblong impressions left on the flyleaf, the book had served the common Victorian practice of holding postcards, photographs, reminiscences, autographs and other mementoes. The first 64 pages had been removed. The last 17 were blank. The writer’s reference to his fear of being caught as early as page three — ‘I am beginning to think it is unwise to continue writing’ clearly indicates that what we are reading is the end of the story — not the beginning. For whatever reason the earlier text has been destroyed. Then followed 63 pages of the most sensational words we had ever read. Their tone veered from maudlin to frenetic; many lines were furiously crossed out, with blots and smudges everywhere. We were sickened by the story that unfolded in an erratic hand, reflecting the violence of the subject.
I will take all next time and eat it. Will leave nothing not even the head. I will boil it and eat it with freshly picked carrots.
The taste of blood was sweet, the pleasure was overwhelming.
Towards the end the mood softened:
Tonight I write of love.
tis love that spurned me so,
tis love that does destroy.
Finally, we read the words:
Soon, I trust I shall be laid beside my dear mother and father. I shall seek their forgiveness when we are reunited. God I pray will allow me at least that privilege, although I know only too well I do not deserve it. My thoughts will remain in tact, for a reminder to all how love does destroy… I pray whoever should read this will find it in their heart to forgive me. Remind all, whoever you may be, that I was once a gentle man. May the good lord have mercy on my soul, and forgive me for all I have done.
I give my name that all know of me, so history
do tell, what love can do to a gentle man born.
Yours truly
Jack the Ripper
Dated this third day of May 1889
I was not a Ripper historian, but even after some 40 years as a professional writer I sensed, in this rather drab looking journal, the thrill of the chase! Was it true? Was it a forgery? I listened, still suspicious, anxiously waiting for clues as Michael Barrett talked.
Those who have read the original, hardback edition of my book and the subsequent paperback editions will be aware that some details of Michael’s recollections have changed. We have been accused of altering the story to meet objections and so compounding a lie with a lie. Quite the reverse. Research is organic, it is not static. Over the five years since my first meeting with Michael I have learned a great deal. New information emerges every week and I have revised some of my interpretation of events accordingly, not to pervert the course of history, but to come nearer to the truth.
MICHAEL BARRETT’S STORY
Michael told us how he had spent all his life in Liverpool, apart from time as a merchant seaman and working on the oil rigs. He was also a barman and then a scrap metal dealer. In 1976 he met Anne Graham in the City’s Irish Centre and fell in love.
They were married within weeks. Michael described how some years ago he was injured in an accident and had been on invalidity benefit, unable to work ever since. So Anne went out to work as a secretary and he stayed at home to care for the couple’s little girl Caroline, born in 1981.
‘I did everything for that girl. I bonded her. Housework, cooking, I did it all and I also looked after the tiny garden in our back yard. That was my pride and joy. From 1989 Caroline went to school in Kirkdale and on the way to collect her I would drop off in the Saddle pub where Tony Devereux and I became good friends. He was about 67 at the time and I was 38. Tony fractured his hip around Christmas 1990 and I did a bit of shopping for him, smuggling in a spot of sherry which he hid under the sink.
‘In March 1991 Tony went into hospital for a hip replacement but during that summer his health deteriorated. One day I dropped in and Tony was sitting there with a brown paper parcel on the table. He wouldn’t tell me what it was. All he said was “Take it. I want you to have it. Do something with it.”
‘I went home and opened the parcel with Caroline. Inside was this book. I tried to read it but the handwriting was difficult and then when I turned to that last entry I just laughed.
‘It was like a knife going into me,’ Michael recalled. ‘I just didn’t believe it. Who’s going to believe that in a million years? I telephoned Tony straight away and said “Who are you trying to kid?”’
The next day, Caroline remembers, her Dad went down to Tony’s house and pestered him about the origins of the Diary. How long had he had it? All Tony would say was “You are getting on my fucking nerves. I have given it to you because I know it is real and I know you will do something with it.”
Eventually, Michael said, Tony lost his temper when asked ‘Who else knows about it?’ The reply: ‘Absolutely no fucking bugger alive today.’
Caroline remembers clearly how her Dad continued to pester Tony for information on the telephone. ‘I trusted him,’ Michael said. ‘He didn’t want any money for it. He would not have let me down. Anne and I sat together that evening and tried to make it out. There were some names of people and places which meant nothing to me. Battlecrease, Bunny, Gladys and Michael. Who were Lowry and Mrs Hammersmith? We didn’t know anything about Jack the Ripper either.’
On that day the Barretts’ world was turned upside down. The Diary, which should have secured their happiness, was to destroy their marriage and prove the final straw for Michael’s already fragile health. Anne told us much later that, like many people in Liverpool, she was aware of the Maybrick case, but not its details. Michael became obsessed and threw himself into fact finding about the Ripper. He had always had dreams of being a writer and had actually published some short interviews with visiting celebrities and made up simple word puzzles for Look-in, a D.C. Thomson children’s magazine. He liked to call himself a journalist. ‘In fact,’ Anne admits now, ‘I usually tidied them up for him.’
In 1985, Michael had bought himself an Amstrad word processor with money lent by Anne’s father, Billy Graham, and now, at last, it came into its own. He told us that he made copious notes in the Liverpool library, which Anne latterly transcribed onto the Amstrad. But at this stage Michael had not connected the Diary with James Maybrick. One day, he told me, when he was in a Liverpool bookshop, he found a copy of Murder, Mayhem and Mystery in Liverpool by Richard Whittington Egan, a much-respected crime historian whose family hailed from the city and had even driven with the Maybricks to the races. In the book there was a piece entitled ‘Motif in Fly Papers’ which began: ‘When first I beheld it in the fast fading light of a late May evening, Battlecrease House looked very much like any other of the solid respectable relics of the mid-Victorian period…’
This was the connection Michael needed. The name ‘Battlecrease’ also appeared on page two of the Diary. In fact, Battlecrease House, in the agreeable suburb of Aigburth, is a name still known to many Liverpudlians acquainted with the tragedy of the ill-fated couple. James and Florence Maybrick had moved
there in 1888, their last turbulent year together. Could it be that the Diary in Michael’s possession linked the stories of the outwardly respectable, loving father, a middle-aged merchant broken by a lifetime of secret drug-taking, with the best-known murder mystery of all time?
‘I suddenly realised that I could become the man who had finally caught Jack the Ripper,’ he said.
In August 1991 Tony Devereux died in Walton Hospital and with him, we assumed, had died the key to the mystery of the Whitechapel killings. By February 1992 Michael knew he was out of his depth. He had no idea how to verify the Diary, much less how to get it published. So he rang Pan Books because he had some of their paperbacks at home and asked if they would like to publish his story. London publishers are not so easily enthused and advised Michael to get himself a literary agent, recommending Doreen Montgomery.
* * *
We listened to Michael with suppressed disbelief. On the face of it the Diary’s pedigree was extremely doubtful. A former scrap-metal worker from Liverpool? A friend in a pub who was now dead? I suggested, on the spur of the moment, that we should take the Diary immediately to the British Museum round the corner from the Rupert Crew offices and see if we could elicit an opinion from their experts. An instant appointment was made with Robert Smith, then a curator of 19th century manuscripts. It all seemed so easy at the beginning!
The front entrance to the British Museum is monumental. Inside, the scale is no less massive; the silence of 3 million learned tomes carpeting the walls, envelops the visitor. Michael clutched my arm nervously as we walked, carrying the Diary, through the maze of corridors that form the administrative arteries of the building. Elderly manuscript historians peered at the pages through magnifying glasses, poring over the dramatic words again and again.
‘Fascinating,’ said Robert Smith. ‘Quite extraordinary. It looks authentic. But of course you will have to take it to a document examiner. We just don’t have the facilities here.’ I was astonished by this admission.
On a whim, I popped into Jarndyce, the antiquarian bookshop opposite the museum, where Brian Lake looked up from his first edition Dickens and was also reassuringly enthusiastic. Brian, the shop’s owner, is a specialist in 19th century literature and recognised the potential value of the Diary. But he agreed with Robert Smith that we should have to find a forensic scientist to establish the book’s precise date.
On April 30th 1992 a collaboration agreement was drawn up to be signed by Michael Barrett, his wife Anne and myself. It bound us to share the responsibilities, expenses and royalties from any future book. In the meantime we had all also signed confidentiality agreements, binding anyone with access to the Diary to secrecy. Because of its potentially sensational nature, we were all afraid the story would leak before we were ready and so lessen its impact.
Michael Barrett went home to Liverpool. He returned with Caroline, his daughter, on June 3rd to be present at the two-day auction which Doreen Montgomery had decided to hold for the publishing rights to a book about the Diary, which I would write. My colleague, researcher Sally Evemy, took Caroline off for a day’s sightseeing and then Caroline and her father spent the night at my home. Anne was still working and unable to join us. Among the contenders the next day, June 4th, was another Robert Smith, managing director of Smith Gryphon publishers. He had some years earlier published The Ripper Legacy by Martin Howells and Keith Skinner and had invited Keith to accompany him to Doreen’s office.
Robert pored over the Diary for what seemed like hours, saying very little, while Michael told him that all he hoped for was enough money to buy a greenhouse. The bid which Robert eventually made for the Diary was not large — and understandably reflected caution. From a publisher’s point of view it was a dangerous prospect — no one had forgotten the fiasco of the Hitler diaries, which had been published by the Sunday Times in 1982 and then proved to be a forgery within weeks. But Robert Smith, a shrewd businessman and a keen historian himself, had a hunch that the Diary could be genuine, and he decided to back that hunch.
Philip Sugden, the academic historian and author of the mammoth, much-praised Complete History of Jack the Ripper (published 1996) has since expressed the view that it would have been better had the Diary been directed along the academic path. He has said that its entry into the commercial world of publishing has meant that research has been directed by commercial motivation and that serious academic historians should have investigated the Diary. I question this view. Academics are not always right. After all, Hugh Trevor Roper, now Lord Dacre of Glanton, who confirmed the Hitler diaries as ‘genuine’ was a greatly respected academic. Besides, in time the Diary attracted its share of academics, too. The fact is that this project was handed to me and I doubt that any professional writer in my position would have acted differently. The only way I knew to meet the cost of researching this Diary was to find a publisher prepared to offer an advance which would be enough to facilitate some basic investigation. Few people realise that it is always the writer’s responsibility to finance research and at that stage I had little idea of the likely expense involved, still less of the likely financial outcome.
It is not usually customary for an author to discuss the terms of a publishing contract, but since these are exceptional circumstances and such unbelievably exaggerated figures have been bandied about I shall, where necessary, bend the rules now. I was offered an advance against royalties of £15,000 — to be divided equally between Michael and me and to be returned should the Diary prove to be a forgery. From this I knew I would be expected to pay for any scientific testing and additional researchers’ fees that would be needed to enable me to meet the terrifyingly short deadline. I needed a team of helpers, including academics. Initially I turned to Keith Skinner, Paul Begg and Martin Fido (who is a former university don), the co-authors of the Jack the Ripper A-Z, widely respected for their integrity and profound knowledge of the subject.
Of course I hoped the Diary was genuine — indeed, I was sure that it was — but had there been, at any stage, proof positive that it was a forgery I would have stopped work. So would any one of the team that was involved. Thirteen years on Keith Skinner and Paul Begg are still baffled and always available for help and advice. They have devoted an inordinate amount of time and interest to the enigma of the Diary for very little return.
On the other hand, like most of those who have decided the Diary is a forgery, Martin Fido is convinced it was written within the two or three years prior to Michael Barrett’s arrival in London.
For five years our team has been immersed in the story of the Barretts, the Maybricks and the Whitechapel murders. We have met and worked with the friends and families of all those in Liverpool who have any connections with the central players in the drama. We have stayed with them, attended family gatherings, funerals and festivities. We have listened to their troubles, borne the brunt of their anger. A few have been amused, many have been helpful and eager to unravel the truth. Most have been distraught by the unwelcome intrusion into their private lives and the publicity the Diary has brought.
* * *
Michael Barrett and Caroline returned to Liverpool that evening. Michael was elated with the excitement of the new life he thought he had begun, peopled with agents, publishers and academics. On the train he got talking to the then owner of a free newspaper in Liverpool, Phil Maddox.
Phil recalls: ‘I saw this chap clutching a brown paper parcel — he was sitting on the opposite side of the carriage, slipping up and down to the bar to get these small bottles of whisky. Then he came over — just started talking. “Bet you don’t know what this is — Jack the Ripper’s Diary.” I thought he was a nutter. He was fluttering his hands all over it to prevent me looking. I tried to see it — I collect old books, mostly of the printed variety. Then I got interested but he wouldn’t show me the bloody thing. Kept messing about. He mentioned the auction but “I am sworn to secrecy”. Then he mentioned scrap metal; and about his child being in a band or winning som
e British Legion award, so I thought “That’s how I’ll trace him when I need to.” I didn’t need to push him or anything.’
* * *
I began preliminary efforts to investigate the Diary’s origins scientifically before a publisher was involved. I was naively optimistic, having no idea at this stage of the bitter controversies that would be involved in such a task or of the fallibility of experts!
Not only was a leading expert in the history and composition of ink to be consulted but I also enlisted the help of a document examiner, a graphologist, a psychiatrist and medical consultants. The first step was, I felt, to establish as nearly as possible that the Diary was indeed Victorian and that the ink had been put on the paper over 100 years ago.
First I took it to Dr David Baxendale of Document Evidence Limited, a former Home Office forensic examiner whose team in Birmingham had an excellent reputation. Dr Baxendale was asked, in particular, to tell us the age of the ink and, if possible, when it was applied to the paper. His first brief report on July 1st 1992, in summary, said that he viewed the Diary with suspicion. We asked for a fuller account of his reasoning. This, on July 9th, had it been factually correct, would have been a bombshell. The paragraph dealing with the ink said:
The Diary of Jack the Ripper - The Chilling Confessions of James Maybrick Page 4