More Nonsense on JTR Forums

Why Gary Barnett is allowed to continually post nonsense and attempt to traduce my reputation on JTR forums is a mystery. He's evidently too scared to come here and say stuff that he knows he can freely post on another website without any possible contradiction from me.

Why he is bringing up a subject that was already discussed in great detail by me on two separate occasions in 2020 I have no idea, and I don't have now time to waste responding to his idiocy. So I'm just going to reproduce here the two articles by me that were published on the old website on 27 March 2020 and 6 June 2020 respectively (with references to "the Clanger" removed due to the sensibilities of that delicate flower).

Although today Barnett has wondered aloud if I ever responded to the point about Cowan's sugar refinery, he knows very well I did because he responded to the first of the below two articles on JTR Forums on 29 March 2020 (#184).

Anyway, for anyone interested, here are the articles:

Published 27 March 2020

In the sixth installment of 'Lord Orsam Says...,' I pointed out that I'd never seen Gary Barnett challenge any of the nonsense written by Simon Wood, including his claim that the victims were not prostitutes (which he was very eager to challenge when Rubenhold said it), not expecting that on the very day it was published he would decide to foolishly nitpick a point in my own article in response to Simon Wood's book (Lord Orsam Blog thread on JTR Forums, #175).

The point that Gary [Barnett] focused on was my response, in 'Reconstructing Jack', to Wood's discussion in the first and second editions of his 2015/6 book, 'Deconstructing Jack', about the 'Eye-witness' to a verbal assault on a man accused of being 'Leather Apron' who wrote a letter to the Star in early September 1888 saying that, while he was about to turn into Albert Street, a woman 'rushed across the street by Cohen's Sugar Refinery'.  Wood's inexplicable comment about this in the first (kindle) edition of book was that:

'...it should perhaps be noted that a large London sugar refiner of the time was Cowan & Sons, located at Barnes, West London.'

Evidently realizing that this sentence was somewhat opaque, and impossible for the reader to comprehend, he then amended it in the second (paperback) edition to provide at least some sort of explanation for what he was talking about, which was (addition underlined):

'...it should perhaps be noted that a large London sugar refiner of the time was Cowan & Sons, located at Barnes, West London, which sounds very similar.'

In 'Reconstructing Jack', on 23 March 2016, I asked:

'So did the eye-witness to the verbal assault on the man accused of being 'Leather Apron' confuse a refinery in Spitalfields with one across the other side of London, in Barnes?  Rather unlikely.'

That seemed like a fair question to me, and still does.

Wood must have thought so too because in response to 'Reconstructing Jack' (as I pointed in out in the follow-up, 'Re-Reconstructing Jack') he deleted from the third edition of his book any mention of the Cowan & Sons refinery in Barnes!!!!  Indeed, there is now no mention of the name 'Cowan' at all in his book.

So the point has been entirely abandoned. 

Yet, incredibly, this is the point on which Gary [Barnett], who is presumably unaware that Wood deleted it from his book, wants to attack me, despite the fact that I've been proved so right that Simon Wood himself no longer even stands by it!!  This is the point on which Gary [Barnett] writes on JTR Forums 'Nice one, Simon', not apparently aware that Wood thinks it to have been such a disaster that he has entirely discarded it.

And that does need to sink it.  For Simon Wood to abandon and delete a point in his book, it REALLY, REALLY, does need to have been a bad one.

Now, Gary [Barnett] thinks there could be an explanation.  He says that, in 'a discussion on the subject on Casebook',  to which he doesn't provide a link, Colonel Lewis Cowan had 'recently' taken over Dakin's refinery.   

Well the first thing to say about this is that, entirely unmentioned by [Barnett], this information contradicts what Wood states in the first and second editions of his book.  For in that book we find Wood saying this:

'Up until 1st August 1871 the refinery was run by the partnership of Thomas Burns Dakin and James Bryant Jr.  After the partnership was dissolved the refinery remained under the sole ownership of Thomas Burns Dakin, whose name is recorded in the 1882, 1884 and 1888 Post Office Street Directories.'

It is at this point in his book that Wood mentions the existence of a Cowan & Sons sugar refinery in West London but says nothing about Colonel Cowan having taken over Dakin's sugar refinery.

So, if Gary [Barnett] has achieved anything, it is finding another error based on a poor bit of research in Wood's book.  Nice one, Mr [Barnett]!!!

Now, in writing 'Reconstructing Jack' I was responding to Wood's 'Deconstructing Jack', not to a discussion on Casebook which I'd never seen (and which, it turns out, didn't even exist at the time I was writing it!).  Bearing in mind that Wood stated in his book that Dakin was the owner of the Deal Street sugar refinery in 1888 but, at the same time, pointed out that there was a sugar refinery in West London owned by Messrs Cowan and Sons without any further explanation, I think I had the perfect right to quite properly ask whether Wood was suggesting that the 'Eye-witness' confused a refinery in West London with one in East London, which is exactly what he appeared to be suggesting before abandoning the entire point.

I have now done some Googling and found what I assume is the thread Gary [Barnett] is referring to entitled 'Martin Fido Discovery 2018'.  Buried in that thread, in a post dated 30 October 2018 (#144), we find that it was none other than [Barnett] himself who discovered and posted the information about Colonel Cowan having been the owner of the Deal Street sugar refinery as at December 1888 (not September 1888!).  Well, well, well, why was he being so coy on JTR Forums, referring to it only as 'discussions on the subject on Casebook'? 

Now, let's look at what [Barnett] actually said: 

'His Lordship clumsily attempts to put a spoke in the wheel of Simon’s theory by pointing out that Cowan’s refinery was across London in Barnes. But If he had been following the discussions on the subject on Casebook (and he does seem to follow the boards avidly) he would have been aware that Col. Cowan had recently taken over Dakin’s refinery.'

But that's ridiculous. Firstly, I didn't point out that Cowan's refinery was across London in Barnes.  This is what Wood said himself in his book!  My point was that Simon's theory didn't make any sense (which it didn't, no doubt being the reason why he has excised it from his book).  Secondly, and more importantly, my article 'Reconstructing Jack' is clearly dated 23 March 2016.  What possible relevance could there be in a post dated 30 October 2018 - had I actually read the [Barnett’s] post written more than two years after my article -to what I wrote in March 2016, in response to what Wood said in his book published prior to that date?  While I do, of course, have great powers, the ability to read posts written in the future is not one of them. 

Simon Wood claimed to have done the research into Dakin's refinery.  He said that Dakin was the owner of the refinery in 1888.  Now, of course, it's absolutely the case that one should NEVER rely on Simon Wood's research.  And [Barnett] seems to be saying that Wood got it wrong, although he hasn't actually proved that Cowan was the owner of the refinery in September 1888. 

So what's [Barnett’s] theory about why the eye-witness referred to the refinery as 'Cohen's sugar refinery', not Cowan's sugar refinery?  Here it is, from his 2018 Casebook post:

'Perhaps there was a large sign stating 'Cowans' on the side of the building, but then the obviously educated author would surely have spelt it that way. Or perhaps Cowan had so recently taken over the business that the signage hadn't been changed and had misheard the new owner's name as Cohen.' 

Hmmmmnnn, perhaps this or perhaps that.  He doesn't seem certain.  On the evidence supplied, we don't even actually know that the refinery in Deal Street was EVER known as Cowan's sugar refinery, at any time in the history of the world, let alone whether it was known as such in September 1888.  It's just a guess.  Certainly it would have been odd for someone to have written 'Cohen' instead of 'Cowan' as a mistake if they knew the correct name.  Yes, it's quite possible that someone could hear the name 'Cowan' and think it's 'Cohen' - Colonel Cowan was, in fact, Jewish and his surname was a variant of 'Cohen' - and, had [Barnett] done his research properly, he would have discovered that Cowan's soap works at Hammersmith were sometimes mistakenly referred to in the press as 'Cohen's soap works'.  But is that what happened in respect of the Deal Street refinery?

It should be borne in mind is that 'Eye-witness' didn't actually place the sugar refinery in Deal Street.  He placed it in a road which turned into Albert Street. Deal Street didn't actually "turn" into Albert Street because it was a continuation of it, whereas Pelham Street, where the Schwartz sugar refinery was, did.

Now, it's very important to note that I didn't dismiss Wood's theory about the refinery being the one in Deal Street out of hand.  Not a bit of it.  On the contrary, I  said it was 'entirely possible'.  [Barnett[ quotes me saying that but, as is his usual practice, in his commentary he ignores it, pretending I never said it.  By way of reminder, here is what I said in full in 2016:

'Close to the corner of Deal Street and Hanbury Street was Dakin's Sugar Refinery which might have been what the eye-witness wrongly referred to as 'Cohen's sugar refinery' for no apparent reason. This theory has the advantage of allowing for the possibility that Pizer's 'Church Street' was actually Hanbury Street and he thought of it by its old name, albeit that the name had changed 12 years earlier.  It's certainly possible but seems to have nothing more going for it (and arguably less) than my theory that the sugar refinery identified by the eye-witness was the one formerly owned by John Schwartz.'

If it is the case that, in September 1888, the refinery in Deal Street was owned by Colonel Cowan then it would certainly add some considerable weight to the theory that 'Eye-witness' was referring to that refinery but, in 2016, when I wrote my article, there was 'no apparent reason' given by Wood as to why 'Eye-witness' might have referred to it as 'Cohen's Sugar Refinery'.  That being so, my own suggestion that it might have been Schwartz's Sugar Refinery, due to them both being Jewish sounding names, seemed to be a better suggestion, or at least as good.

Not only that, but in the third and current edition of his book, presumably entirely unknown to [Barnett], Wood now actually mentions the existence of John Schwartz's sugar refinery in Pelham Street!!!  This was in direct response to my drawing it to his attention in Reconstructing Jack.  Wood mentions it without comment (only noting that it ceased operations in 1887, as I had already noted in 'Reconstructing Jack' while adding that it still existed as a physical presence in September 1888) but he can really only have included it his book to indicate that he accepted that it was a possibility that this was the sugar refinery being referred to.  So not only did he abandon his point about the Barnes refinery but he moved towards the Schwartz theory, if only tentatively.

Interestingly, I see that in response to Barnet’s post on 30 October 2018 about Colonel Cowan, Simon Wood posted (#147):

Hi MrBarnett,

Nice find.

A couple of years ago I posted about the Cowan/Cohen homophone and got unmercifully savaged by Lord Snooty.

Bryan Mawer of the Sugar Refiners and Sugarbakers database, citing the ‘Eye Witness’ report from the “Dundee Evening Telegraph,” 6th September 1888, told me, “I have to assume, therefore, that Mr. Cohen was probably the manager of the [Dakin’s] refinery, which at that time was on its last legs. Dakin put it up for sale in 1889.” 

Cowan was an unlucky chap. Prior to his 1888 fire, there was an explosion at his Barnes premises which killed a couple of workers.

Regards,

Simon

A couple of important things to note there. 

Firstly, it's completely untrue that Wood 'posted about the Cowan/Cohen homophone' and got unmercifully savaged by me (assuming that I am the 'Lord Snooty' in question).  I mean, good grief, what planet does that guy live on?  I never responded to any post of his about the subject.  He can only be thinking of what I wrote in my article 'Reconstructing Jack' in response to what he said in his book.

And I didn't savage him about the 'Cowan/Cohen homophone'.  What I savaged him for was the bald suggestion that the existence of a refinery in Barnes, in West London, called Cowan & Sons, explained, on its own, why the 'Eye-witness' in Spitalfields referred to a refinery near Albert Street as 'Cohen's sugar refinery'.  Wood didn't give any kind of reason as to why the 'Eye-witness' was calling it 'Cohen's sugar refinery', and everyone agrees that there was no such refinery in the whole of the East End.  The reader was left to assume it was because the two names sounded similar despite being in totally different parts of London. And because Wood doesn't appear to have had any knowledge of Lewis Cowan's apparent takeover of Dakin's refinery, that must, indeed, have been what he was saying.

So I wasn't savaging the notion of the homophone, as such, I was savaging the way that Wood drafted his book.  And Wood MUST have agreed with me, hence the removal of the relevant passage from his next edition!

This leads on to the second important thing which is that Wood, in his usual utter confusion, omitted to mention in his post that he amended his book in response to my article and removed any mention of Cowan & Sons from the third edition of his book published in June 2017 which was the current edition of his book as at the time he wrote his post in October 2018 and which remains the current edition as at time of writing. 

The third important thing - totally unmentioned by [Barnett] in his JTR Forums post - is that Wood was saying (as he does in the third edition of his book) that he had contacted the person running the Sugar Refiners and Sugarbakers database who told him not only that it was likely that a Mr Cohen was the manager of Dakin's refinery (which Mr [Barnett] must regard as a 'clanger' by the expert on sugar refineries) but that Dakin had put the refinery up for sale in 1889.  If Mawer's information that the sale of the refinery didn't occur until 1889 had some basis in documentary fact, it would suggest that, when Mr Alexander of the SW Bethnal Green Conservative Club stated in December 1888 that Cowan had only 'recently' purchased Dakin's sugar refinery, some form of contract had only been signed within the past few days or weeks, with the transaction actually being recorded as having taken place in 1889, thus making it questionable as to whether anyone would have referred to Dakin's refinery as 'Cowan's refinery' in early September 1888, if Cowan didn't actually own it at that time.

But the factual position is even more complicated than this.  Had the transaction even completed as at December 1888?  There seems to be some reason to doubt it. For how does Gary [Barnett] explain this advertisement that appeared in newspapers in April and May 1889?

As can be clearly seen, Dakin's sugar refinery, described here as 'a Valuable Freehold Sugar Refinery in full working order, Hanbury Street, Whitechapel, capable of turning out 600 tons of sugar weekly' was being offered for sale on the instructions of the trustees of the estate of T.B. Dakin.  How could Cowan have acquired it in either September or December 1888 if it was being offered for sale by the trustees of Dakin's estate in April 1889?  There is no indication in the advertisement that there is an existing tenant in the freehold property who will be providing the new owner with an income for doing nothing and, on the contrary, it states that possession will be given on completion of purchase, suggesting that it was an empty building at the time.

When we look in the 1891 Kelly's Post Office Directory we find no support for Cowan's ownership of the Deal Street refinery:

What we see in the entry for Lewis Cowan & Sons Limited (that limited company having been formed in 1890) is that their works were in Barnes (the sugar refinery having been rebuilt after the April 1888 fire), with salesrooms in the city, including Mincing Lane.

This 1899 biog of Lewis Cowan's son from The Freemason refers to 'the firm of Messrs L. Cowan and Sons, soap maker and sugar refiners, of Hammersmith and Mincing Lane' showing no obvious connection of the company to Deal Street or Spitalfields.

If Dakin still owned the refinery in September 1888 then the Cowan/Cohen homophone is nothing more than an odd coincidence which, I would suggest, puts my tentative suggestion about the confusion of two Jewish sounding names right back on the table.  But that's not even the important point here.  Who really cares which of the two refineries it was?   The point of my article was that Wood had messed up the explanation in his book of why he mentioned the existence of Cowan & Sons in Barnes which made absolutely no sense to the reader.  The point was a valid one.  It still stands.  And Wood obviously agreed with me, hence his removal of any mention of Cowan & Sons from his next edition.  The fact that Gary [Barnett] doesn't understand that is his problem.

Lord Orsam

27 March 2020 

Appendix 1

In the Fido thread on Casebook to which Gary [Barnett] has drawn my attention, I see that Simon Wood posted in #88 of that thread:

'The 'Eye Witness' letter and the Pizer incident near the sugar refinery in Church Street are discussed in my book, Deconstructing Jack.'

In response, Gary [Barnett] wrote:

'Do you point out that there was no sugar refinery and no Church Street? Nor was there an Albert Street.'

Oopsie!  How then, I wonder, does he explain this, from the Hackney and Kingsland Gazette of 2 November 1888?

Oh dear Gary, it's not going well for you is it?  For this press report refers to the opening of the King Edward Institute 'situated in Albert Street, Spitalfields'.  The very street which Gary Barnett tells us in #90 had been 'renamed Deal Street by at least 1873'.  Boy those Victorians were cunning. Building a brand new institute in a street which didn't exist!!! 

According to the more sensible Joshua Rogan, who subsequently posted in the Casebook thread (at #91):'Only the lower section of Albert Street had been renamed Deal St at this time, between Hanbury and Pelham St, which ran parallel'.

How much humiliation can one person take?  You almost feel sorry for the pampered twat …don't you?  Almost, but not quite.

[Barnett] tried to recover his ground by saying,

'The Schwartz refinery had closed by Aug, 1887, and is shown as a tenement on the 1888 electoral register, compiled later that year. So all Eyewitness's geographical references are anachronistic.'

The thing is, I was aware that the Schwartz refinery closed in 1887 but as I said in Reconstructing Jack in 2016:

'While Albert Street did not turn into Church Street, it did turn into Pelham Street (which was in Spitalfields) where one could find Schwartz's sugar refinery (which had closed in June 1887 but the building still existed, see e.g. the advert in the Times of 18 July 1891 referring to an 'Important Sale of the Plant and Machinery of Messrs Schwartz's Sugar Refinery, Pelham-street, Brick-lane, Spitalfields.').

For that reason, one can well imagine the building sitting there closed and empty but with the sign saying 'Schwartz's Sugar Refinery' on the outside for years so that people still referred to it as such.  It's wouldn't have been anachronistic to do so!!  

Important to remember that the Simon Wood theory (and by association, now the ]Barnett] theory) is that 'Eye-witness' did confuse to things.  Hence, Wood says of 'Eye-witness' (#93) that, 'he muddled up his streets. He was about to turn from Hanbury Street into Deal Street—not Albert Street—by “Cohen’s" sugar refinery'.

It's also important to remember, though, that 'Eye-witness' says nothing about Hanbury Street (or Church Street as it was formerly called).  He just said in his letter that he 'was just about to turn into Albert Street, by Cohen's sugar refinery'.  So he could easily have been in Pelham Street which had a turn into Albert Street.  Wood thinks he must have been turning from Hanbury Street because there is a separate mention of the verbal assault on Pizer having taken place in Church Street.  That's fine, and a perfectly reasonable point which, as I said in my 2016 article,'has the advantage of allowing for the possibility that Pizer's 'Church Street' was actually Hanbury Street and he thought of it by its old name, albeit that the name had changed 12 years earlier'.  But if Pizer's 'Church Street' was a street that he had wrongly named, that puts us back into the possibility that 'Eye-witness' was correct about Albert Street and only muddled up his Jewish names.  

[Barnett] can pooh pooh the notion as much as he wants to but, in the absence of any proof that Cowan owned Dakin's refinery in September 1888, or that anyone called or thought of that refinery as Cowan's refinery at that point in time, the Schwartz theory cannot be entirely dismissed however much [Barnett] would like to do so simply because I put it forward.  

Appendix 2

Amused to see that, in #98 of the Fido thread, after having posted in #90 that 'Eye-witness' had written about Church Street, Gary [Barnett] posted in #98:

'I have to hold my hand up to not checking my records before posting here. It was Pizer himself who referred to the lower part of Hanbury Street as Church Street.'

It's funny that, 'coz I distinctly remember that, when I corrected a minor mistake in one of my posts on the Casebook forum (about the number of forensic document examiners who had examined the Maybrick Diary), the very same Gary [Barnett] jumped down my throat to say that the fact that I had made this small mistake, which I then noticed and corrected myself, undermined everything else I had ever written on the subject of the Maybrick Diary!!!  And here we have him correcting a small mistake he had made. But when he does it, it's perfectly fine.  Funny that.  Pampered twat.

FOOTNOTE

The only positive thing I will say about Gary [Barnett’s] post is that, while written under cover of a personal attack, at least he was essentially responding to the facts and arguments in my article 'Reconstructing Jack' even though he was attempting to cherry pick one single small point in the whole article while ignoring all the many bigger and more important points relating to Simon Wood's book, even in the context of the Pizer incident.  But I suppose I should be grateful for small mercies.

Also, I saw that in the Fido thread there was, lo and behold, some limited attempt by [Barnett] to question Simon Wood which was somewhat of a miracle but, once again, with nothing like the venom and energy with which he has attacked, and continues to attack, Hallie Rubenhold.  Why is that?

ENDS

Article published on 6 June 2020 as part of "Lord Orsam Says...Part 8"

So let's move on to Barnett's latest obsession which is the sugar refinery question.

Let's first congratulate Simon Wood for finally locating evidence that Alderman Cowan had set up in Dakin's sugar refinery prior to September 1888 in a newspaper article that [Barnett] completely missed even though he was supposed to have done the research on the point. 

You might have noticed, incidentally, that Barnett tried to blame ME for his own failings.  It was Barnett who missed the newspaper report showing that Cowan had arranged to move into Dakin's refinery shortly after the April fire. It wasn't my job to do his research for him.  

Had I not raised in my article, 'Reconstructing Jack', the whole question, which wasn't dealt with properly in Wood's book in the first place, we wouldn't have reached the point where we have a lot more knowledge of events than the reader of Wood's book was able to glean back in 2015.  It perfectly justifies me asking the question of Wood that I did. 

As for the Sugar Cane article, we can see that, amusingly, Barnett congratulated Simon on 'An excellent discovery' while adding, 'I wish I'd made it!'.  Yes, I'll bet he wished that, but he didn't!

Like I already said in my previous response, the fact that Cowan was in Dakin's refinery prior to September 1888 adds considerable weight to the idea that 'Eye-witness' was referring to Dakin's old refinery when he mentioned 'Cohen's Sugar Refinery'.

Barnett, incidentally, perhaps uncertain if someone would confuse Cowan with Cohen seems to want more examples of it so here's another one (from the Derby Mercury of 4 June 1873).

'And we have a report in the East London Advertiser of 15th December, 1888 referring to ‘Colonel and Alderman Cowan, who has recently acquired an interest in the district by the purchase of Dakin’s sugar refinery’. Cowan was a City of London Alderman and the Conservative candidate for Whitechapel. He had a long-standing connection to the East End.' 

Not only was it utterly irrelevant to the issue at hand how well connected Cowan was with  the East End but his long-standing connection to the East-End if anything contradicted [Barnett’s] argument because, if he was so well known in the East End, why would 'Eye-witness' have called him 'Cohen' instead of 'Cowan'?

Anyway we don't have to worry about that any longer.

What's so remarkable about Barnett's posts on this subject is that he has not once acknowledged that Simon Wood deleted the entire point from his book and that it was Simon Wood's book that I was responding to in 'Reconstructing Jack'. 

But let's look at what he posted to Kattrup in #245:

'How would you describe David’s theory that Eyewitness confused the names Cohen and Schwartz because they were both Jewish names? Does that not come under the heading of fanciful imagination?

I think it does. Very much so.'

This is ridiculous.  In the first place it wasn't 'David's theory', it was an alternative suggestion to the notion that 'Eyewitness' was referring to Dakin's Sugar Refinery as 'Cohen's Sugary Refinery' for no obvious reason.  In his 2015 book, to which I was responding in 'Reconstructing Jack', Wood told us that Thomas Burns Dakin was the owner of the refinery in 1888.  That being so, why did 'Eye-witness' call it 'Cohen's Sugar Refinery'? The only theory Wood ever put forward about this in his book was based on what he was told by the expert on the subject, Bryan Mawer, who runs the database on sugar refineries, which was that the manager of the refinery must have been a man called Cohen.  That was from the flipping expert!!!

But that theory wasn't even included in the first two versions of Wood's book which were the versions I was responding to in 'Reconstructing Jack'.  So there was literally no suggestion offered as to why 'Eye-witness' was referring to Dakin's Sugar Refinery as 'Cohen's Sugar Refinery'.  When we add to this the fact that 'Eye-witness' referred to being about to turn into Albert Street, yet a walk past Dakin's Sugar Refinery at the corner of Hanbury Street and Deal Street didn't involve a turn into Albert Street, whereas a walk past Schwartz's Sugar Refinery in Pelham Street DID involve a turn into Albert Street, it seemed entirely reasonable to suggest that the confusion lay between Cohen and Schwartz. 

If one accepts that 'Eye-witness' was referring to the refinery in Hanbury Street, this means that one is saying that he must have confused the names 'Deal' and 'Albert'.  Out of context, one could say that doesn't seem very likely - there is no obvious similarity between the two names - but it's precisely what Simon Wood posted on the Casebook Forum and precisely what Gary Barnett is saying actually happened!

Despite the absence of any explanation from Wood as to why 'Eye-witness' was referring to Dakin's Sugar Refinery as 'Cohen's', I nevertheless stated quite clearly in my 'Reconstructing Jack' article that it was 'entirely possible' that 'Eye-witness' WAS referring to the Dakin's refinery. 

Furthermore, I argued that this would make sense of Pizer's reference to the verbal assault being in Church Street.  My point was that there was nevertheless just as much chance that there was a confusion of two Jewish names, as confusion over two street names, bearing in mind that there was then literally no explanation being put forward by Wood for the confusion between 'Cohen' and 'Dakin' and bearing in mind the mention by 'Eye-witness' of the turn into Albert Street.

So while you can, as Barnett does, take everything I said out of context and make it sound like it's 'fanciful' to suggest that there could have been a Cohen/Schwartz connection, it was not only not fanciful but, at the time, it was literally the only explanation on the table.

Unless, of course, 'Eye-witness' was confusing a refinery in Spitalfields with one in Barnes.

And so we come back to entire point I was making in 'Reconstructing Jack' which was: why did Wood mention the Barnes refinery?  At the time, he evidently had no idea that Alderman Cowan had moved into the Spitalfields refinery so that his mention of the Barnes refinery made no sense in the book.  And, as I've already said, but [Barnett] has completely ignored and whitewashed it out of his mind, Wood agreed with me because he went on to delete any mention of the Barnes refinery from the next edition of his book (while inserting a mention of the Schwartz refinery!).

Gary Barnett's latest attempted attack on me has thus failed in its entirety. 

Before I leave this subject a few miscellaneous points.

In one of his more ridiculous comments - if it's possible to grade them by levels of ridiculousness - Barnett posted this (#193), with the spelling of my name corrected:

“Apparently one of my clangers was to suggest that Lord Orsam had ‘pointed out’ that Cowan’s refinery was across London in Barnes’.

‘...I didn't point out that Cowan's refinery was across London in Barnes,’ he fumed.

This is what he actually said:

So did the eye-witness to the verbal assault on the man accused of being 'Leather Apron' confuse a refinery in Spitalfields with one across the other side of London in Barnes? Rather unlikely.

Perhaps that doesn’t count as ‘pointing out’ for some reason? 

But did Simon mention that Barnes was ‘across the other side of London?’ I don’t believe he did - David added that to emphasise the unlikelihood of there being any connection between the Cowan firm of Barnes and the Hanbury Street refinery. Surely, there’s an element of ‘pointing out’ in David’s question?”

No, Gary, there was no 'pointing out' of anything by me. 

His argument here is just too absurd for words and is clearly designed to just be stupidly provocative.

What Wood said in his book was:

'perhaps it should be noted that a large London sugar refiner of the time was Cowan & Sons, located at Barnes, West London'

So when I said:

“So did the eye-witness to the verbal assault on the man accused of being 'Leather Apron' confuse a refinery in Spitalfields with one across the other side of London in Barnes? Rather unlikely. “

I was doing no more than essentially repeating what Wood had said.  You can see that Wood said that Cowan & Sons was located at 'Barnes, West London'.  It doesn't need me to 'point out' that Barnes in West London is across the other side of London to Spitalfields in East London!!

If you re-wrote my comment from 'Reconstructing Jack' so that it read the below it would have had exactly the same meaning and been to the same effect:

'So did the eye-witness to the verbal assault on the man accused of being 'Leather Apron' confuse a refinery in Spitalfields with one located at Barnes, West London?  Rather unlikely.'

That demonstrates that I wasn't pointing out anything.  I mean, seriously, how could I have been pointing out that the other refinery was 'across the other side of London in Barnes' when Wood had already stated that this refinery was in 'Barnes, West London'.  Seriously, how ridiculous is that argument by [Barnett]?

The only reason he made it was because he was upset at being caught out and made to look a fool again. He just can't take it.  He hadn't realised in his original post that it was Wood himself who had pointed out that the Cowan refinery was across the other side of London, in Barnes, so he tried to do one of his ridiculous attempts at mangling the English language in order to cover up his massive clanger. 

Now that we've sorted out the basic facts, let's take a few moments to remind ourselves of what Barnett actually said in the first place: 

'His Lordship clumsily attempts to put a spoke in the wheel of Simon’s theory by pointing out that Cowan’s refinery was across London in Barnes. But If he had been following the discussions on the subject on Casebook (and he does seem to follow the boards avidly) he would have been aware that Col. Cowan had recently taken over Dakin’s refinery.'

My response was as follows:

'But that's ridiculous. Firstly, I didn't point out that Cowan's refinery was across London in Barnes.  This is what Wood said himself in his book!  My point was that Simon's theory didn't make any sense (which it didn't, no doubt being the reason why he has excised it from his book).  Secondly, and more importantly, my article 'Reconstructing Jack' is clearly dated 23 March 2016.  What possible relevance could there be in a post dated 30 October 2018 - had I actually read [Barnett’s] post written more than two years after my article - to what I wrote in March 2016, in response to what Wood said in his book published prior to that date?  While I do, of course, have great powers, the ability to read posts written in the future is not one of them.'  

So was I right to say that 'I didn't point out that Cowan's refinery was across London Barnes' because 'This is what Wood said himself in his book!' ? Of course I was.  Wood said Cowan's refinery was in Barnes, West London.

The truth of the matter, to repeat the point, and it's worth repeating, is that this was nothing more than a diversion by [Barnett], to cover up the fact that he had once again misunderstood my article.  You can see from his expression 'spoke in the wheel of Simon's theory' that he thought that Simon Wood was putting some kind of theory forward in his book.  But he wasn't.  He did no more than POINT OUT that there was a refinery in Barnes, West London, with the name Cowan which sounds like Cohen.  That was it.  That's why I asked if Wood was saying that 'Eye-witness' had confused the two refineries.

A perfectly reasonable question.  And that's not just me saying that!  Wood himself agreed with me and removed any mention of the Barnes refinery from the next edition of his book.  Not that you will find Barnett ever admitting that this is the case.  He will probably say 'Oh I didn't bother to read that far down the article, I had no idea'

ENDS

As can be seen, the subject of Cowan's sugar refinery was dealt with thoroughly by me at the time. The second article brought no response from Barnett. But four years later he resurrects the topic for no sensible reason other than to be inflammatory and aggravating. Is this what JTR Forums is all about these days?

LORD ORSAM

13 December 2024