The Copy of Jack the Ripper's Diary

In September 2024, Keith Skinner's second best pal, Tom Mitchell, let slip some crucial information which had been kept hidden for the best part of 30 years. On the Casebook forum, he posted an extract of a transcript of a telephone conversation between Tim Martin-Wright (TMW) and Paul Feldman (PHF) which is said to have occurred on 6th June 1994, being the day after Martin-Wright first read Shirley Harrison's book about the so-called Jack the Ripper diary. This is that extract:

TMW: I have just been reading a very interesting book.

PHF: Yes, I heard. I understand you’ve got your story to tell about it.

TMW: Yes, in fact. I’ll go back to the first, the inception of my involvement in the story which is about two years ago, I think. A guy who worked for me said, um, he knows that I collect antiques and am interested in old books etc. He said; “I saw a really interesting book that you would like in the pub the other night”. I said, “Oh yeah”. He said; “It, um, is a copy of Jack the Ripper’s Diary.” I said, “Oh yeah?”

PHF: A copy, a copy of it?

TMW: Well I asked that, and he said it was a copy of Jack the Ripper’s Diary.

This was astonishing. We were learning for the very first time in 2024 that Martin-Wright's original story was that his employee (Alan Dodgson) had been shown a copy of Jack the Ripper's diary (presumably by the Portus & Rhodes electrician Alan Davies). This was very different from the story which was apparently told to Robert Smith in May 1997 - as first publicly recorded in Shirley's 2003 book and later in Smith's 2017 book - whereby Alan Davies simply told Dodgson that a copy of on old leather-bound diary was available for sale (with some uncertainty as to whether Davies actually mentioned that the diary was by Jack the Ripper).

As can be seen, in 1994 Feldman specifically asked Martin-Wright to confirm that his employee had told him that he'd seen a copy of Jack the Ripper's diary and Martin-Wright did confirm that this was the case.

Feldman seems to have had no interest in pursuing the matter further.

How could Tim Martin-Wright's employee have seen a copy of Jack the Ripper's diary?

Was such a copy in existence?

Yes, is the answer! Roger Palmer has noted that in Paul Begg's foreword to Feldman's 1997 book, Begg mentioned that Keith Skinner had supplied him "with photocopies of the "Diary"".

I can now take this further and demonstrate that Feldman himself was circulating copies of this photocopy in the first half of 1993.

In an angry letter from Paul Begg to Nick Warren dated 8 July 1993, published in Ripperana No. 5, July 1993, Begg stated:

"As for all experts who have seen Feldman's photocopy....."

As Begg's letter was dated 8 July 1993, it is clear that during the first half of 1993, Feldman had provided photocopies of the so-called Jack the Ripper diary to the experts involved in the case, including Paul Begg.

From the accounts of those who knew Feldman, he was both obsessive and indiscreet. In this respect, we may note that Martin Fido posted on Casebook on 14th April 2001:

"One of the greatest disasters of the whole investigation was Feldy barrelling in on the Liverpool witnesses and alerting them all to the sorts of conclusions he expected to find (or he would assume they were deliberately concealing them from him) and so completely upsetting the pattern of very careful cultivation and interviewing Shirley and Sally had started."

It would hardly be surprising if Feldman had provided photocopies of the diary to some of the electricians in the hope that they would be sufficiently interested in it to help him find out where it had come from.

One of those copies could easily have been passed around and ended up in the hands of Alan Davies in the spring of 1993.

If Davies then showed a photocopy of the diary to Alan Dodgson in a pub one evening, this would solve one of the big mysteries about this entire incident which is how could Davies possibly have offered a diary, which he didn't own, for sale, especially for a strangely low (and fixed) price of £25. Caroline Morris seems to suggest that Davies was so affected by a car accident in the summer of 1992 that by the end of that year he didn't really know what time period he was living in or what he was doing and thought that Eddie Lyons still had the diary and was trying to flog it to anyone who was interested for a fixed bargain price without any concern for the fact that he'd stolen it from Paul Dodd's house.

If, however, what Davies was trying to sell Dodgson or Martin-Wright for £25 was the photocopy of Jack the Ripper's diary, this would explain it perfectly. Presumably, Martin-Wright, as a supposed collector of old books, wasn't interested in buying a photocopy of anything, so that no transaction occurred. Perhaps when Robert Smith came along three years later, the story had transformed out of recognition in the memories of Davies and Dodgson, although we've never been told what they actually said beyond a couple of partial quotes.

As at the period of February to April 1993, the existence of the diary was not common knowledge. In late April 1993, it was mentioned in a few newspapers but most people in the country (and in Liverpool) were unaware of it. So when Tim Martin-Wright read Shirley Harrison's book in June 1994, he would immediately have registered that he'd been offered a copy of Jack the Ripper's diary at a time when he (at least) had no knowledge that such a thing as Jack the Ripper's diary existed. While, according to James Johnston, he told Feldman, vaguely, that the offer had occurred some eighteen to twenty-four months earlier, this could only have been a guesstimate. It had probably occurred some fourteen to sixteen months earlier, after Feldman had started to contact the Portus & Rhodes electricians in the belief that one of their number had found the diary during electrical work in Paul Dodd's house.

Feldman would have been in breach of confidentiality agreements with Shirley Harrison and/or Robert Smith in circulating a photocopy of the diary among the electricians so it is probably something he would have wanted to have kept quiet.

One thing about the story which has always puzzled me is the supposed sum of £25 that Martin-Wright was said to have needed to pay to acquire the diary or, as now seems more likely, the photocopy. Is it just a coincidence that this is the same sum that Mike Barrett paid to acquire the 1891 diary via Martin Earl?

Well, perhaps not. It's very difficult to come to any firm conclusions in circumstances where we are not allowed to see the rest of the transcript of Martin-Wright's 1994 conversation with Paul Feldman but, at the very least, we can say that no evidence has been presented that Martin-Wright mentioned the sum of £25 to Feldman in his June 1994 conversation with him. The first time we are told that anyone mentioned it is in 1997 by Shirley Harrison (in her 2003 book), apparently citing Dodgson as the source, who is supposed to have told Robert Smith in May 1997: "A purchase price of £25 was mentioned." Similarly, in his 2017 book, recounting his May 1997 investigation, Smith tells us:

"Davies suggested to Dodgson that the diary could be acquired for about £25, aware that Martin-Wright was known to be interested in collecting old book."

By May 1997, however, Feldman knew that Mike had paid £25 for the little red diary. He knew this no later than the meeting of 20th July 1995. According to a post of Caroline Morris dated 4 September 2000:

"Keith first heard about the red diary on 20th July 1995, at Baker Street, during a recorded conversation with Mike, Feldman and Martin Howells. Mike mentions it at one point and nobody seems to know what he's talking about. He accuses Feldman of knowing about it and wants him to admit it. Feldman says Melvin Harris was told that Mike had a receipt proving Anne bought a Victorian diary. Feldman asks Mike why he told Melvin that the diary was bought in 1992 for £25. Feldman says it's a little diary dated 1891. He asks Mike why he implied to Melvin that the receipt for it proved Anne wrote the diary."

In a more recently posted transcript of this same meeting, Feldman is quoted as saying:

"Melvin Harris was informed that this receipt for twenty-five pound proved that they bought the diary. No mention of what the colour was, red or black, and the receipt doesn’t say red or black."

It's unclear how Feldman knew that Mike had told Melvin Harris that he'd bought the red diary in 1992 for £25 but Anne would appear to have been the source of his information because the transcript reveals that he had spoken to her about the red diary and, indeed, received it from her.

Anyway, the point is that Feldman knew about the sum of £25 paid by Mike for a Victorian diary two years before Robert Smith carried out his investigation in Liverpool into Tim Martin-Wright's story. I do wonder about the possibility of contamination if Feldman mentioned this sum to the electricians, theorizing, as diary defenders are apt to do, that the price Mike paid for the 1891 diary was connected with the price he paid Eddie Lyons for the JTR diary, so that it came to the knowledge of Alan Davies who confused himself in his mind that the JTR diary had been for sale for £25 and that he had been seeking this sum from Dodgson.

It might, of course, have been a coincidence that Alan Davies claimed that the diary was being offered for sale in (probably) early 1993 for £25 and that Mike and had paid £25 for the 1891 diary in March 1992 but I can't help feeling that people's memories were contaminated on this issue by Feldman.

There is one further mystery which we may be able to solve about the Martin-Wright story which involves the most extraordinary part of it, namely that when Alan Davies or Alan Dodgson (it changes depending on which story you read) attempted to make enquiries about the diary to locate it, in order sell it to Tim Martin-Wright, it was discovered that it had already been sold in a pub in Anfield.

According to Shirley Harrison in her 2003 book:

"Later the shop assistant [Alan Dodgson] heard that it had been sold 'in a pub in Anfield'."

One only has to think about this a moment to realize how outrageously unlikely it is. How could Alan Dodgson possibly have made enquiries to establish that the (stolen) diary of Jack the Ripper had been sold in a pub in Anfield? Who could he possibly have asked about this? Where would have have started? Did he just ask around if anyone had heard anything? It's preposterous.

According to Robert Smith, however, it was Alan Davies who made the discovery, hence:

"as Davies told me, when he tried to locate the diary, he was informed that "the book had been sold in a pub in Anfield".

This is a bit more plausible because he could have asked one of his electrician colleagues but then surely Davies would have been able to tell Smith who had informed him of this. That he doesn't seem to have been able to tell Smith or James Johnston, who interviewed him later, who his source was, is troubling.

To my mind, his source was obviously Paul Feldman, either directly or indirectly.

It might have been directly because James Johnston revealed in a JTR Forums post of 23 November 2017 that Paul Feldman personally spoke to Alan Davies in 1994 using the alias of "Mr Black". Hence, he said:

"Feldman also chose to omit any mention of Alan Davies, Brian Rawes & Tim Martin-Wright, despite having contacted them (using the alias “Mr Black”) as early as 1994."

One does have to question Johnston's claim that Feldman used the alias "Mr Black" when speaking to Tim Martin-Wright because Martin-Wright called Feldman, not the other way round, but the fact that Feldman spoke to Alan Davies in 1994 should set alarm bells ringing because it means he spoke to the man three years before Robert Smith interviewed him and could easily have contaminated his memory of events.

Alternatively, if Davies had made enquiries with the electricians, he would likely have heard of Feldman's theory that the diary had been sold (by Eddie to Mike) in a pub in Anfield.

As James Johnston told me (in a post dated 25 November 2017):

"The collective word amongst the electricians was that the Diary had been sold in a pub in Anfield."

Although James Johnston seemed to think that the electricians had some secret inside knowledge, it must be obvious that this "collective word" had come from Paul Feldman because we know this was his theory. If an electrician had actually told him that the diary had been sold in a pub in Anfield he would surely have mentioned this fact in his book.

The entire mystery is therefore solved. There is no mystery! There is nothing in the entire story other than someone confusing Feldman's photocopy of the diary with the diary itself.

LORD ORSAM

17 September 2026