The Diary of Jack the Ripper - The Chilling Confessions of James Maybrick

by Harrison, Shirley

  Caroline asked, ‘Does this mean we are descended from him?’ to which Paul said, triumphantly, ‘No you are descended from her,’ meaning Florence.

  * * *

  I was puzzled. Paul’s research seems to indicate that Billy Graham was descended from Florie through the paternal line. Yet the Diary, he claimed, had been passed down the maternal line. Was this a coincidence too far?

  There was another gap in the story. If Florence was, indeed, Billy Graham’s grandmother, then who was his grandfather — Florie’s lover? Anne remembered that, as a child, her Dad used to take her to Croxteth to see a grave he said was ‘family’. She could not recall the name on the tombstone but she returned there much later, by which time she too had become fascinated by the story of the Maybricks. She took a photograph which shows that this is the grave of Henry Flinn — born 1858, died 1927, the year that Florie returned to England. Henry would have been 21 in 1879 — the year that Paul believed Florie may have had a baby.

  Certainly, in 1897 an American journalist visited Florie in prison and reported that Florie told her: ‘I have seen the children’s pictures and Henry has grown so tall…’ Paul wonders whether this could have been Henry Flinn’s illegitimate son? Henry Flinn was the wealthy owner of the Dominion Line and boss of John Maybrick, the senior pilot.

  * * *

  Anne’s guilt that her secret had caused such confusion brought about a change of heart and so on Sunday July 31st, about three weeks before the publishing deadline for my paperback, she recorded a message to Doreen Montgomery, Sally Evemy, Robert Smith and me over the telephone to Paul. He in turn contacted us and invited us to hear it in his office. As I wrote afterwards ‘we sat in stunned silence.’ Anne’s voice was brisk and rather tense. I guess she was nervous.

  I suppose I knew it was inevitable that one day the truth about the Ripper Diary would be revealed. I apologise most sincerely that it has taken so long, but I felt I had justifiable reasons. I realised some time ago that the snowballing effect had intruded deeply into your lives and this has always been a heavy burden for me to carry. The Diary was never meant for publication. Not by me.

  I think it was in 1968-9 that I saw the Diary for the first time. I was living with my father and we were leaving the house as my father was about to remarry, having been widowed some years previously. In my bedroom was a fitted cupboard. I discovered the Diary in a large metal trunk at the back of the cupboard. I read the first page but put it away to read when I was not so busy… later I took it to my father and asked him what he knew about it, if anything. He was doing his pools at the time and was not very interested. I asked him if he had read it but he said he had started but the writing was too small. I left it at that. I never showed it to Michael, why I honestly don’t know. I did not like having the Diary in the house and jammed it behind the cupboard.

  Some time later Michael started drinking. He was desperately trying to write but didn’t seem to be getting anywhere. It was very frustrating and was making things difficult between us. I thought of giving him the Diary so that he could use it as the basis for a book. I was hoping he would be able to write a fictional story about the Diary. I knew if I gave it to him and told him its history he would be badgering my Dad for details and by this time he and my Dad were beginning to irritate each other. I came up with the plan of giving Michael the Diary via someone else. That way he would not connect it with me or my family…

  I found some brown paper, which had been lining a drawer and wrapped the Diary in it and tied it with string. I took the parcel to Tony Devereux and asked him to give it to Michael and to do something with it. Which he faithfully did. Whether he eventually told Michael where he got it from I have no idea. I apologise to the Devereux family for being brought into this but I never realised what would happen. I suppose I was very naive.

  When Michael said he wanted to get the Diary published I panicked. We had a big argument and I tried to destroy it. I don’t mean I tore out any of the pages I just wanted to burn it in its entirety…

  In conclusion can I just say that I have never been interested or cared who Jack the Ripper was. Nor has my father. Anyway this is my story. I hope it makes up in some way for the secrecy I took on to protect my father and his family.

  So now I had two contradictory statements, which were in danger of making nonsense of our two years’ research. Just as the watch had appeared so inconveniently before publication of the hardback, we were now faced with an astonishing story and no means to check its veracity before going to press.

  18

  I AM TIRED OF KEEPING UP THE PRETENCE

  ANNE’S STORY

  To be honest, my first reaction to Anne’s tape was one of disbelief and exasperation. I felt let down. I did not feel that Anne had lied. She had simply evaded the truth. But there were others, notably Martin Fido, who claimed that because she had never revealed what she knew about the Diary, everything she said was automatically suspect. Doreen, Sally, Robert Smith and I were understandably, I think, disappointed that Anne had not confided in us first. We felt that the truth should have been given to us first, as her contractual publishing partners, and could not understand the need for the secrecy.

  We had suffered horrendous anxiety and loss at the hands of New Scotland Yard and the Sunday Times. Doreen, as she always does, had fiercely protected her clients’ concerns and taken a personal interest in their welfare. If the Diary had come through Anne’s family what was the point in pretending otherwise? Knowing the importance of provenance why complicate the issue? Why not end the agony?

  Anne has explained her actions now many times. She wrote to me with obvious distress in July 1997 saying that from the time the contracts were signed our contact had always been with Michael. So far as she was concerned we were just ‘the people in London’. She certainly didn’t think of us as friends or even colleagues at that stage. Her life was in turmoil, as a Catholic the concept of divorce was horrific and she could not share her problems with anyone, certainly not with us.

  I also worried that the research waters had been muddied, but I was extremely relieved to learn later how closely Keith had been involved with the unravelling of the plot because I trust his integrity implicitly. Keith has said to me on many occasions, ‘I was involved from the very first and I was present at most of the meetings of Paul and Billy. If the story had been forced I would have detected it by now. If I had detected it I would have exposed it.’

  ‘Those who believe Anne is lying, or that she has been bought by Paul must include me in the plot as well,’ he claims. In his inimitable, pernickety way he has, at times, tested Anne’s patience with his minute cross-examinations of every second of the journey that led her to make the confession. Keith’s honesty and fervour is very persuasive. Anne’s defection and seeming obliviousness to her professional and personal responsibility to us and indeed to the Devereux family distressed me but on balance I see now how it could have happened.

  All through our dealings with Michael he had always been to the fore; he it was who telephoned (at great length) and wrote. So far as we were concerned Michael and the Diary were synonymous — of her own volition Anne had remained very much on the ‘outside’. I suppose, with hindsight, that the Diary swamped everything — we did not know the full extent of Anne’s sufferings behind the scenes and she was not aware of all that was happening to us. London was remote and unreal to her and besides, like so many people, she thought the police were investigating the authenticity of the Diary not the suspected fraud of the publishers.

  Over the following three years, we have spent more time with Anne. She has made me very welcome in her home. This is a rare privilege, as she says she does not make close friends easily. She has been hospitable and welcoming. I have not enjoyed ‘questioning’ her honesty.

  Anne is a very private person, a characteristic seen by her detractors as a ‘convenient’ fall-back position. She is bright, bustling and humorous and during the time she was the family breadwinn
er, she was a secretary in Liverpool. She is also a ‘scouser’ with a fiery temper when roused, and not given to suffering fools gladly. I knew I had to give Anne a chance to re-establish the confidence I had lost. If her story was true, I could at last prove that the Diary is not a modern forgery. If she was lying, it was equally important that I was not duped and continued to hunt for the provenance of this baffling journal.

  It was also obvious to me that the doubters would jump on Anne’s story as yet another ‘convenient’ ploy and that if I did eventually decide that Anne was honest I would myself be accused of believing what I wanted to believe.

  From these various meetings, sitting on her floor, chatting over lunch, looking at family holiday snapshots, she has told us with considerable reticence about the events that led to her confession that night in Paul Feldman’s garden.

  Since then she has been fascinated by Paul’s growing evidence about her complicated background and possible lineage.

  I understand why she did not spill the beans when the police visited her home. She was frightened then and fear froze her. On the other hand, when Paul Feldman approached her friends, she was very, very angry. Anne is a person who responds to feeling angry with action.

  The story in brief, as pieced together from the Billy Graham tapes, for his daughter’s information as much as for Paul Feldman, is this. Billy’s father William Graham, who was probably born in Hartlepool, married twice. His second wife was Edith Formby and, according to an old family tradition, her mother, Elizabeth, had been a friend of one of the servants at Battlecrease House: ‘the skivvy’ was how Billy Graham described her. The two girls went to Florie’s trial together. Granny Formby, who could neither read nor write and signed her marriage certificate with a X, worked later at the Hillside Laundry. This still exists but in 1889 was just around the corner from Battlecrease House, in Peel Street. Billy remembered her as a lovely old lady — he used to run errands and fetch her pension for her.

  He also recalled, on tape, that as a lad living in Liverpool, he and his pals played a game in which they ran up and down outside Battlecrease House, pretending to be on horseback, slapping their thighs and calling ‘Look out, look out, Jack the Ripper’s about’.

  In 1933 Billy Graham joined the army and did not return until 1943, by which time his ‘ganny’ had died (in 1939). It was then he remembered seeing a black tin box with the three white letters on it. (Remember Florie Maybrick’s trunk?) In 1946, Billy married Anne’s mother, Irene Bromilow.

  It was at Christmas 1950, around the time that Anne was born and William Graham had died, that Billy’s step-mother, Edith, gave him the box along with a lot of papers and certificates and the Diary. ‘Your Ganny left this for you,’ she said. Billy flicked through the pages but the writing was too small and he forgot all about it. At that time Anne herself knew nothing of the Diary or of any family connection with Battlecrease House. She takes up the story:

  My mother’s father, Grandfather Bromilow, was a professional footballer and he had a decent income when other people didn’t so my mother was privately educated. She’d had two babies who died before me and I was so precious that she insisted I was convent educated too, although my Dad was a manual worker. I was just so different from the other girls. I was in a different class; I had no friends. I hardly saw my father because he was working all the time and then my mother got TB and was in and out of sanatoriums. My Granny Bromilow lived with us but she was a hypochondriac and had taken to her bed. It was a very strange set up. When I was about 12 my mother started drinking, then she had an accident and was bed-ridden so I was running up and down looking after them both. My Dad was lovely, sweet as water but I only found out what a rotten time he had at the end of his life. My Mum died in 1964 when I was 14 years old.

  When I was about 18 years old, my father married Maggie Grimes and we moved house. It was then, as I said in the statement, that I first saw the Diary— about 1968 or 9. There was a big walk-in cupboard — I was terrified of it and never went in; there was a dansette and a Virgin in front and lots of stuff from the war — gas-masks and so on. At the back was this trunk full of tropical gear and a first-aid box. The Diary was at the bottom. I looked through it quickly — I thought it looked interesting and we packed it to move to the new house in Dorrington Street.

  ‘Maggie had three sons but they weren’t around much and I was still very lonely. When I did ask Dad about the Diary he was doing his pools and wasn’t interested. People have asked me since why on earth I didn’t do something with it then. But I was just a kid — times were hard in Liverpool — no one was the slightest bit interested in Jack the Ripper. It didn’t mean a thing. It got put away in a wardrobe with lots of bits and pieces.

  Later Billy said, ‘If I’d known what it was worth I’d have cashed it years ago. Blimey, I wouldn’t have been slaving away in Dunlops — 12 hour shifts — on dirty big tyres if I’d known… I could have been lying on a beach now with a couple of strippers…’

  Although she thought Maggie was a wonderful woman, in 1969 Anne decided to emigrate to Australia as a nurse. She loved it there. Australians make no emotional demands and that suited her fine. During the entire five years she was in Australia, Anne had not a word from her Dad. ‘He could hardly write,’ she says. ‘In fact Caroline remembers how she always used to write all his Christmas cards for him in later years — including her own! Anyone who suggests that he wrote the Diary is plain daft.’

  Anne returned to Liverpool in 1976, went to the Irish Centre and there met the youthful, persistent Michael Barrett. She was flattered by his attentions, fell in love and on December 4th, within weeks, they were married by special licence, though her family warned her against it. Michael had been involved in a terrible car accident when he was 14; he’d been given the last rites and wasn’t sure he could have children. But Caroline arrived when Anne was 30.

  ‘Michael was an absolutely brilliant dad. I was at work and he did everything for her, changed her nappies, cleaned the house, had my tea on the table when I came home. He was so proud of her achievements at school.’ I remembered, sadly, how, when I first visited the Barrett’s apparently happy home in 1992, Michael persuaded Caroline to play to us on the piano and showed us the pictures of her playing the Last Post on the trumpet on Remembrance Sunday.

  Caroline knew he had started drinking long before I did. I blame myself for that. I would come home from work and find that he hadn’t done the shopping but there was no money left either.

  In 1989 my step-mother, Maggie, died. I began to get really close to my Dad after that. It was like a fusion of two souls — incredible. Caroline’s birth taught me what parental love was like. I adored him.

  We moved to Goldie Street to be near him. That was an absolute bloody disaster. Michael didn’t want to live there. Dad and he were getting on each other’s nerves and so I would pop in to see Dad for five minutes after work and Michael was jealous. When he was eventually due to move into sheltered accommodation Dad began clearing out and he kept giving me stuff. It was then that he handed over the Diary.

  I hid it behind a cupboard which we had bought from the Salvation Army. This was in the small room which we had meant for Caroline, but she preferred the larger bedroom. So the pink room became a rubbish dump.

  Michael had always had an idea he wanted to write. Dad had lent him some money to buy a word processor in 1985 and he had started sending puzzles and short star interviews to the magazine Look-In. I wanted so much to be proud of him.

  Anne’s friend Audrey Johnson was receptionist at Rensburgh’s and has known her for about 12 years. She was shy about being disloyal and would only see us with Anne’s agreement. Sally, Keith and I went out to see her in the countryside near Southport on February 12th 1997. She was a friendly, easy-going lady who made us lunch while we watched red squirrels in the garden.

  ‘Anne never talked to anyone at work, she was such a private person. But we started chatting about books; I knew she was unhappy but sh
e never said a word.

  One day she was obviously upset and she did say that her husband was writing a book… but she couldn’t talk about it. I remember calling into Goldie Street one day; Anne had had to give up work by this time with a bad back and Caroline was at school. But things were frenetic, Michael was in the front room and you could hear him pacing around, the phone kept going and the beer cans kept going but I had the strong feeling Anne just wanted to keep her head down.

  When the story broke I didn’t like it at all — the idea that people were making money out of the deaths of some poor souls but I was very glad for Anne because she would have some money. When her confession came out I was absolutely astounded. I knew her father. He was a very throw away sort of bloke; if he had something fantastic in a box and he wasn’t interested he wouldn’t have been bothered with it. If people say he wrote it, I say ‘Don’t be daft!’

  Anne takes up the story. ‘I was desperate for money — I knew things were going well for me at work but nothing was happening for Michael — he was on an invalidity pension. I had met Tony Devereux a couple of times — once at the Saddle pub. I popped in there after a garden fête at Caroline’s school one Saturday afternoon because my back was killing me. But I could have walked past the man in the street and would never have recognised him.’

  The landlord of the Saddle, Bob Lee, remembers that visit. ‘She seemed a nice lady. Tony used to come here regularly, long before he ever met Michael… Michael used to come in every day and sometime he’d run errands for Tony when he was ill but I don’t think they got on particularly well. He didn’t have friends. Tony’s daughters used to come in too — nice ladies, they looked after their Dad. We never discussed the Diary in the pub afterwards… Tony was very quiet, he’d have never said a word. Tony’d never have given Michael anything he thought was valuable. I never saw the Diary — I didn’t know anything about the Maybricks… I wasn’t interested. You never ask questions in this job… I haven’t even read your book…’