Tim O’Sullivan

The article by John Martin titled The Black Diary Forgeries which appearedin Irish Political Review for November 2025 contains quite a number of questionable statements and non sequiturs which need to be addressed.

In the October issue of Irish Political Review a bold prediction was made that this article would “show the error that was made which exposes the Black Diaries as forgeries”. It does nothing of the kind.

I wrote a full length academic paper in 2014 on the matter of the alleged purchase of a motor cycle from Cyril Corbally by Roger Casement for a collection of papers which was to be published by The University of Notre Dame, Indiana, USA. The academics administering the process, on receiving my completed study, pleaded that they did not have the time to put in doing all the editing which they said my labours had necessitated. They said they were looking to a publication date just a few months from the submission date and so time for modifying scripts was short.

In the event, when the collection of papers did appear, a year and a half had elapsed and my paper had been overlooked.

Obviously there was an agenda at play and my efforts did not figure as part of it.

A treatment of some points from my paper appeared as a letter to Irish Political Review for July 2018.         

The list of questionable statements and non sequiturs is numbered for easy reference below:

(1) The first sentence in the article implies that the 1902 Army notebook was not written by Casement.  This diary contains no incriminating material of any kind.  If it were a forgery, it would require an original diary had been copied by a forger such that a duplicate was produced.

What would the point be in that?

What John Martin alleges here is absurd. 

(2) A few paragraphs further on, John refers to “an undisputed document” in the National Library of Ireland  (NLI).

I referred to it in the 2018 letter as—

“A pencil written account of personal expenses, held in Casement’s papers in the National Library of Ireland, records the £25 purported cost of the motorbike.  There are suspicious aspects.  It deals with large sums, yet tots up incorrectly.  What appear to be evidence of erasure and the misalignment of one item promote doubt.”

(3) Later John writes:  “So it is indisputable that Joseph Millar Gordon acquired a motor cycle.”

In fact it is disputable and for a number of reasons.  The information which the archived state papers contain on the possession of the said motor cycle by Joseph Millar Gordon is very limited and what is there is most dubious.  We must therefore assume in all likelihood that he never acquired the vehicle.

For a start there is no record of a police check to establish the relevant Road Tax and licence had being paid for and were in order.  These should have been paid to the local authority in Belfast.  The non- existence of a motor cycle in the possession of Millar would be an obvious explanation for this.

Also there is no record of Millar or his mother being interviewed by the police.

The motor cycle transaction being a hoax would be an obvious explanation here also.

Furthermore the record in the Motor Register of Essex County Council, which was allegedly entered in 1911, regarding the acquisition of the vehicle by Joseph Millar Gordon is most odd.  The first attempt at registering it is crossed out.  It is as if the clerk entering the data was nervous and ill at ease as he entered the details.  This is suggestive of an atmosphere of bullying and coercion. 

Also, there is an additional address given for Corbally dated Sept 1st, 1911 at “Baileys Hotel, SW” (Kensington, London).  The writing is faint yet legible.  It was written in pigmented pencil in the same hand as the rest of the register page.  The faintness evidences an attempt at erasure.

Why would a change of address be registered in relation to Corbally for September 1911 if he had, going by the Cash Ledger, given up possession of the bike the previous June?  Why, indeed?

The most obvious explanation is that he still possessed the bike at that date and the entry concerning Millar was added years later.

(4) John goes on to claim:  “And there is no evidence that Casement and Gordon ever knew Corbally”.  This is false.

Lord ffrench was known to be a friend of Casement.  His wife was Mary Corbally, a sister of Cyril Corbally.  They were married in 1892.  (See Roger Casement—Imperialist Rebel Revolutionary (2008) Séamas Ó Síocháin, p518, note 73).

If Casement was friendly with Corbally’s brother-in-law, than it is perfectly plausible Corbally and Casement were acquainted.

(5) Later John makes great play of what he sees as a contradiction between the text of the Cash Ledger and the NLI document referencing the payment for the motor cycle of £25.

In the Cash Ledger the text goes:

3/6/1911 “Cyril Corbally and his motor bike for Millar 25.0.0”

In the NLI pencil written list of expenditures correspondingly there is merely:

“Millar 25.0.0”

The idea here is that there are different payees.  In one, Corbally is the apparent payee;  and in the other Millar is interpreted as the payee.

But, let us step back and reflect.  The NLI document is not a formal accounting document.  It is not like it is a Balance Sheet or a Profit and Loss account or an account book of a trading company.  It is just an informal list of personal expenditures as you might make if you were totting up what you spent on your weekly shopping.    

Imagine I have a dog named Fido.  Among my list of payments for a week, I could label payment for food for my dog as dog food, or Fido or dog or the name of a pet food brand or whatever.  A precisely descriptive label is not required.  This is just an informal personal list done up for my own convenience.  No Accountancy conventions need be adhered to.

Here the labels for the various outgoings are mere mnemonics:  words to remind me what each figure refers to.  They do not need to be precisely descriptive.  So there is great freedom as to what I may write down.

 Similarly if, say, I bought a turkey at Super Value for Margaret as a present, I could record that on an informal list of outgoings as turkey or Margaret or Super Value.  Such informal lists/sums of outgoings do not follow a set of rules and guidelines such as entries in a Profit and Loss account or a Creditors Ledger.

So, “Millar” being named beside the £25 amount does not mean that Millar is being meant as the payee anymore than the writing of Fido would mean Fido was being ascribed the position of payee in my first example. 

Certainly the way the transaction is presented in the Cash Book and the NLI document is suggestive of an attempt to nudge the reader towards a desired perception of the nature of the relationship between Millar and Casement.  Why, for example, should the name “Millar” appear at all in the two recordings of the £25 transaction?

However, while the above is suggestive of manipulative malfeasance it is not strong enough as evidence, in itself, to be of great discursive value.

To conclude:

I spent the best part of half a year during 2013 and 2024 exploring full-time the questions surrounding the alleged Corbally/Millar transactions.  I believe I came across another of those major anomaly clusters attached to the Diaries controversy.

It is similar in its way to the anomaly cluster around all the mutually contradictory accounts attached to the supposed initial discovery of the documents, or the mysterious application of chemicals in 1972 to apparently random pages of the 1910 and 1911 diaries, or around the contradictions between the character of the known Casement and the obsessive cartoon-like creature of the 1911 diary, or any one of the several other most peculiar aspects of the case.  

The Corbally-Millar alleged transactions, when considered overall, present such a picture of dubiousness as to come close to removing all credibility from the Black Diaries.  But, human error and oversight, tending close to farce, can legitimately be presented in explanation for the patently anomalous.

So, it goes for all the other anomalous aspects, as partially listed above;  none are so complete as to kill all credibility absolutely.

Since no suspicion triggering dimension in and of itself completely derails the Black Diaries, we are left with a matter of opposing probabilities.  When we consolidate all the anomalies together we are left with a picture where probability is overwhelmingly in favour of forgery while full authenticity remains just a minute possibility.

 I hope this helps.

Tim O’Sullivan