We had several meetings with chartered surveyor Gerard Brierley, great-great nephew of the now notorious Alfred Brierley. He admitted his family, too, had closed ranks in silence.
Quite by chance, we were introduced to David Fletcher Rogers whose great grandfather had been foreman of the Coroner’s Court jury preceding Florie’s trial. Fletcher Rogers took out a lease on Battlecrease House after the Maybricks but died in 1891. New people moved in, found the Fletcher Rogers family Bible and gave it to neighbours for safe keeping. In 1978, David Fletcher Rogers returned to take photographs of Battlecrease House, called next door and was to his astonishment handed the Bible. Like our Diary it had emerged after several generations.
A Maybrick family Bible, which belonged to James’ Uncle Charles, is now the treasured possession of Edith Stonehouse who was living in one of Liverpool’s most depressed areas. We thumbed its pages hopefully looking for clues. There were none.
Back in Liverpool, we called on Helen Blanchard, descended from Abrahams the chemist. She lent us an exciting box of family letters which contained a prescription for James Maybrick and a letter from Alexander MacDougall. But nothing relating to our quest.
From America, I had a call from Mrs Gay Steinbach, who told me proudly that her grandmother had grown up in the Maybrick household in Ryde. Her name was then Laura Quinn — and she had always claimed to be the daughter of an Irish Customs clerk, Patrick Quinn (‘although,’ says Mrs Steinbach, ‘the family wondered if she was Michael’s daughter.’) She went to live with the Maybricks at the age of ten — and hated it there. When Laura Maybrick died, she left Michael’s royalties to Laura Trussle — as she had by then become.
We listened to a delightful tape recording of Edwin Maybrick’s daughter Amy Main, chuckling through her reminiscences of life at Lynthorpe on the Isle of Wight, where she spent many miserable summer holidays as a little girl.
We ferreted among the archives of Ryde, eager to find a late-in-life confession from Michael that there were dark secrets he had never revealed. All we found was the very Victorian epitaph on his monumental gravestone, which, in the circumstances, seemed laden with significance. ‘THERE SHALL BE NO MORE DEATH’.
Meanwhile, Paul Feldman was ploughing his own furrow. Keith Skinner had, by now, joined his team as an independent consultant and was being as fastidious as ever. Birth, death and marriage certificates on almost every member of the ‘cast’ were hoovered up, contacts were made with record offices and solicitors around the world; trips were made to America, to Cornwall, to Scotland and even the Isle of Man in a gallant attempt to trace the movements and families of anyone who might be harbouring the secret of the Diary.
Behind the scenes, a personal tragedy was unfolding. On January 2nd 1994 Anne Barrett could no longer cope with her husband’s drinking, which had become increasingly out of control. She left him, taking his beloved Caroline with her. Michael responded by telephoning all of us, at any time of the day or night, sometimes using up an entire tape on the answerphone. Those calls were heartbreaking. He repeatedly said he was dying and wouldn’t last the night. He was lonely, hurt and desperate to see his daughter. We all felt anguish for him. But it was clear that when he drank he lost his grasp on reality.
But Michael Barrett is no fool. Like Winnie the Pooh, his spelling is ‘wobbly’ in the extreme, but he has a taste for quoting Latin phrases culled from a classical dictionary and a knack of collecting unexpected snippets of knowledge from the library. I was therefore shocked but not altogether surprised when on September 30th, Michael apparently discovered the answer to a problem that had been facing us all.
There is a phrase in the Diary which I was sure must be a quotation.
Oh costly intercourse of death.
We had hunted high and low in anthologies to find it without success. I asked Michael to look in the Liverpool library. He badgered the staff there for help and sure enough he rang me within a few days and told me, ‘You will find it in the Sphere History of English Literature. Volume 2. It is by Richard Crashaw.’
He was right. A quick foray into the life of Crashaw revealed that he was an obscure, baroque poet (1613-1649) whose religious fervour fired his verse and inspired many other poets such as Milton and Shelley. The line in question occurs in a poem from a collection of religious verse entitled Steps to the Temple: Delights of the Muses. The poem is called ‘Sancta Maria Dolorum or The Mother of Sorrows.’ The correct wording is:
O costly intercourse
Of deaths & worse,
Divided loves. While son & mother
Discourse alternate wounds to one another;
Quick Deaths that grow
And gather, as they come & goe:
His Nailes write swords in her, which soon her heart
Payes back, with more than their own smart;
Her SWORDS, still growin(g) with his pain,
Turn SPEARES, & straight come home again.
This is obscure stuff and difficult to understand. If the Diary is a modern forgery, its author must have possessed extraordinary luck to find the poem and uncanny sensitivity to use it, as he has, to such poignant effect.
I wrote to the British Library to ask if a Victorian merchant would have known of Crashaw. R.J. Goulden replied on 25 March 1998: ‘Several editions of Crashaw’s poetry were in fact published between 1857 and 1887: a library edition of the poets in 1857, the works of Crashaw by John Russell Smith in 1858, a privately printed edition in 1872–3, the general Cassell’s library edition of British poets in 1881 and another private edition in 1887. James Maybrick could have picked up secondhand copies of any of these works or else he could have subscribed to a circulating library and come across Crashaw’s works in it.
There is yet another possibility that Stephen Adams (your ‘singer of ballads’) knew Crashaw’s poems and Maybrick heard of Crashaw through Adams.’
Crashaw’s works were much better known in 1888/9 than they are today and might possibly have found their way into the private home, especially if there was some religious influence. Just around the corner from his childhood home, there was a nationally famous secondhand book shop from which Gladstone used to order by post. It was known as The Temple of the Muses. So it is feasible that Maybrick could have, for instance, inherited such books from his parish clerk father. But the sophisticated use of the quotation puzzled me.
Then, to my dismay, Michael Barrett announced that he had a copy of the book at home. He had forgotten it was in his attic! His explanation was typically plausible and utterly baffling. ‘After the Hillsborough disaster in 1987,’ he said, ‘I had worked hard to raise money for the fund. I wrote to a lot of publishers and asked them to contribute out-of-print books for a sale I was organising. Amongst the many volumes that arrived from Sphere were twelve volumes of their History of English Literature.’ Michael says that he couldn’t sell them and put it in the attic with others and forgot them, until finding the quotation in the library reminded him of their existence.
I was extremely suspicious. The Diary’s critics were jubilant. This was proof positive of Michael Barrett’s guilt. Despite this damning discovery, I was still confident that Michael Barrett could never have used these lines to such sensitive effect in the Diary. There had to be a missing link. Yet I could find absolutely no sound explanation for his unexpected discovery. I still can’t.
* * *
In early June 1994, Paul Feldman had discovered a nest of hitherto unknown Maybricks in Peterborough. He was sure that these were the illegitimate descendants of James Maybrick. He began a ferocious crusade, relentlessly pursuing anyone in Liverpool who might unravel what he began to see as a gigantic cover-up. Men in parked cars watched and waited, there were mysterious phone calls. No one, thought Paul, was who they said they were. He even suspected a national security matter.
It was not surprising that Michael Barrett became even more confused and bewildered. His emotional and financial world was collapsing. He too now employed Alan Gray, the local
detective who worked in turn for Stanley Dangar, Melvin Harris and the Sunday Times! (However, when we made an appointment to visit Mr Gray in Liverpool in January 1995, we arrived to find a note pinned to the door saying that he had been ‘advised’ there was a conflict of interests and he would not now see us!)
On June 21st 1994, Sally and I went to see Michael in a new home, where he was living with a lady who had taken him under her wing. He led me into the garden and with much emotion poured out the story of how he had forged the Diary. He was bitter and angry that he had not seen his daughter and threatened to tell everything to the national press. His reasons for such actions were also confused. He kept repeating that all he wanted was to see Caroline, but he then pursued a course of action that made this less and less likely.
On June 24th 1994, he succumbed and gave an exclusive interview to Harold Brough of the Liverpool Daily Post. This appeared on June 27th under the heading: ‘How I faked Ripper Diary’ and quoted him saying ‘Yes I am a forger, the greatest in history.’ The photograph of a dishevelled Michael standing by Maybrick’s grave, bore an uncanny resemblance to one of James Maybrick beneath it!
Harold Brough was sensibly doubtful about the reliability of Michael’s admissions. This was no case of in vino veritas. He traced Anne and called to see her only to have the door firmly shut with a forthright, ‘This is bullshit. He is trying to get back at me because I have left him.’ I did not understand why forging the Diary would get back at Anne — unless of course Michael was implying that she was involved.
Michael’s solicitor, Richard Bark Jones, immediately issued a rebuttal: ‘With regard to the statement (confession) recently made by Michael Barrett that he had, himself, written the Diary of Jack the Ripper, I am in a position to say that my client was not in full control of his faculties when he made that statement which was totally incorrect and without foundation. Mr Barrett is now in the Windsor Clinic, where he is receiving treatment.’ The drinking had led to a condition known as ‘confabulation’ where the individual fills in memory gaps with fictitious stories that appear completely real to them.
Mr Bark Jones no longer acts for Michael, and has also told me that he would never have agreed to work for him if for one moment he thought that he had forged the Diary. The Sunday Times published the story but did not print the solicitor’s denial.
Anne (now using her maiden name of Graham) had gone to ground. Meanwhile, from January 1994, Paul Feldman had been hoovering up contacts and information. Wherever I went, Paul seemed to have been there before. At the time I was aware of some of the fantastic flights of fancy he pursued and not a little puzzled by the number of the times he had ‘cracked it’. But his boundless optimism did serve to keep the rest of us on our toes. Keith Skinner noted at the time, somewhat ruefully, that ‘Paul bases a theory upon a hypothesis, sinks it deep in speculation and confounds it with mystery.’
I have now seen some of Keith’s records — every verbatim conversation, every phone call minuted and literally hundreds of pages of debate with Paul Begg and Martin Fido. It would be very difficult for anyone who has not read these records to make sense of what happened at that time — by explaining the context and the nuances of what was said they make some sense of what happened next.
Anne has also written her own memories of the ‘nightmare’ of that time. The details of all she remembers are so precise and accurate because Keith Skinner had already taken her painstakingly through every emotion and every event leading to her confession.
After a few months I received a note from Paul Feldman. I showed it to my father and he told me to contact him. But I refused — I was sick of the Diary. In August I moved from the flat into a house.
Paul Feldman eventually found out where I was living. He was ringing everyone: my best friend Audrey, all the Barretts — everyone. Then one night Michael’s sister rang me — she was furious and dreadfully upset that Robert Smith, Shirley and Paul had all been phoning her. She was terribly distressed about Michael and I was really embarrassed and worried. I felt a strong sense of guilt because I knew the true story about the Diary.
So at about 11 p.m. on July 19th 1994, in a blind fury, I picked up the phone and called Paul’s home in Middlesex.[sic] We were both screeching and shouting at each other. I told him to back off. The Diary had nothing to do with the Barretts. I was on that phone for four hours. From what I could make out he thought I wasn’t Anne Graham/Barrett, Michael wasn’t Michael — his sisters’ birth certificates were wrong and my background had been destroyed by the Government. I thought he was mad! In fact I was very frightened. Paul appeared to believe that I knew more than I had been telling and was determined to get it out of me by fair means or foul. I thought ‘I’ve got to get this man off their backs.’
In her notes Anne referred to Paul as ‘the enemy’ and on other occasions ‘that bloody lunatic.’ However, at her suggestion, Paul went up to Liverpool on July 30th. In the meantime Keith Skinner had drawn his attention to the page in Nigel Morland’s book The Friendless Lady, which said that when Florie Maybrick left the Convent for France she was using the name Graham! This was checked and confirmed by local newspaper coverage. In Paul’s mind a new theory was growing. It was Anne — not Michael — who was a Maybrick descendant.
She would not let him into her house and he took her to a city hotel where they sat together in an almost empty bar, armed with photographs and other family memorabilia which would prove his theories were wrong.
I felt as though I had come up against a brick wall. I was at the end of my tether. So I told him in no uncertain terms that Michael knew nothing about the origins of the Diary. It had been given to me by my father. It was me who had given it to Tony Devereux to give to Michael and that when my father died the truth would all come out. My main worry at that time was my father. I was trying to get a decent home so that he could live with us… as he was very close to needing 24-hour care. By now I was also being hounded by Michael and I never knew what he would say or do next.
So it was that Paul persuaded Anne and Caroline to go down to his home try and sort things out. They walked in the garden in the pitch dark because Anne was afraid the house was ‘bugged’.
Little by little, a degree of confidence grew and she says she began to tell him what she knew about the origins of the Diary. ‘I wasn’t interested in the bloody Diary and I wanted nothing to do with it. I just wanted my father to be happy for his remaining months of life. Paul said he would protect me from the media and from Ripperologists if I told the true story. He said he could send Caroline and me away for a holiday to be out of reach.’
Keith Skinner recalled the confusion of this period in a letter to Martin Fido on June 2nd 1996.
April to July 1994
Focus is now on Anne and her background. Feldy becomes convinced that the only reason none of the certificates tie up with his theories is because wrong information has been deliberately fed into the system by the government, in order to protect the identitites of all the illegitimate children of James Maybrick aka Jack the Ripper. Thus Anne is not Anne, Michael is not Michael, Billy is not Billy and the Barrett family are not the Barrett family. Michael, now hopelessly lost but reasonably confident he is Michael Barrett, decides to put an end to the nightmare by confessing he forged the journal, which — and this is speculation — he now wonders whether Anne forged and for some perverse reason foisted on him. It is important to understand that Michael’s confession came before anybody knew of Anne’s involvement … Feldy is by now convinced he has uncovered one of the greatest cover-ups of the 19th/20th century… This was the point (July) when Anne contacted Feldy…
* * *
Anne eventually gave Paul permission to meet her father. She moved from the flat in to a house and decided to revert to her maiden name — Graham. At this stage Paul was still convinced that Billy Graham was descended from James’ illegitimate offspring. The first of two, long, animated conversations was recorded on July 30th. On August 12th Kei
th Skinner was also present and noticed a copy of my book on top of the wardrobe, new and unread. These two conversations are partially transcribed in Paul’s book.
Billy Graham, then 80 years old, was a down-to-earth, former soldier in the Cheshire Regiment with a youthful reputation for rebelliousness and several medals for ‘services to his country’ in France, Germany and Africa. He was far more interested in the British Legion than he was in Jack the Ripper and Paul’s visit was a somewhat irritating delay in his regular visit to the ‘Legion’.
During these spontaneous exchanges about his childhood and background, Paul mentioned that when Florie came out of prison she had used the name Graham. Billy responded ‘dirty ol’ cow’. He then became very thoughtful and then very quietly handed Paul a golden nugget. He implied, on tape, that he thought it was possible that his own Dad could have been Florie’s son. Billy seemed to be aware that in his far distant memory he had heard from within the family that Florie may indeed even have had a baby before she married James. Anne was clearly flabbergasted. Later she confirmed, ‘I’m still in a state of shock. I thought the thing had been nicked from the house but I certainly didn’t expect this.’
The Diary of Jack the Ripper - The Chilling Confessions of James Maybrick Page 26