John Martin

Truth  

It is sometimes said that the “truth hurts”.  Certainly, from an emotional point of view, it can be difficult to tell the truth if it doesn’t reflect well on the teller.  But, from an intellectual point of view, telling the truth is quite easy. 

 All that is required is for the person to say what actually happened.  It doesn’t require any imagination.  Nor does it require any feat of memory, since the recollection of the event is reinforced by the person actually experiencing it. 

Telling lies, on the other hand is more challenging.  The person must imagine something that didn’t happen.  He then must remember what he said, which is more difficult because the person hasn’t experienced it.  If more than one person is telling lies about the same event for a specific purpose, each person must remember not only the lies that he himself has told, but also the lies that are told by the other person. 

Also, if the lies have to be told within a short period of time, it may be difficult to hastily construct a coherent version of reality that is credible. 

Finally, if the lies relate to an event or events that occurred many years before, the probability of errors is increased.

If we are to assume that Roger Casement wrote the Black Diaries, it is reasonable to assume that he was telling the truth.  It is obvious they weren’t meant to be shown to any other person.  So, Casement would have no reason to lie.  Also, since they were not written for any other person, he was not working to any deadline.  So, he was writing at his leisure and therefore was less likely to make mistakes.  Finally, since the diaries—by definition—purport to be a contemporaneous account, there is even less likelihood of errors since the events occurred a very short time before they were described. 

So, using the above criteria, can we determine whether the Black Diaries are truth or lies?

Fabrication Problems

In his book, Anatomy of a Lie: Decoding Casement, Paul Hyde reproduces a typescript which purports to be a copy of the 1911 Diary from 19th December to 26th December, 1911.  (As discussed in previous articles in this magazine, Hyde’s view is that the typescript forgery was done first and the handwritten forgery of the diary was produced at a later date.)

The entries purport to describe Casement’s arrival by boat in Pará (a region of Brazil).

On Tuesday 19th December it says:

“… we should arrive in Pará before 6pm tomorrow evening”

But later on on the same day it says:

“…Arr. Pará at 5.40…”

That’s a bit odd. He thought on the Tuesday that the boat would arrive on Wednesday at just before 6pm but it turns out it arrived at 5.40pm on the Tuesday:  more than a day earlier than he predicted. 

This is an example of the diarist using the future tense.  Examining this script from a forger’s point of view:  writing in the future tense from the perspective of someone who is writing in the past is a difficult intellectual exercise.  

Hyde in his book notes that a significant difference between the 1910 ‘Black Diary’ and the authentic undisputed Diary for that year is that the black diary avoids using the future tense. 

So, if it was a forgery, the forger of the 1910 ‘Black Diary avoided the challenging task of imagining how someone in the past would think about the future. 

But let us return to the 1911 Diary. 

The following day’s entry for Wednesday the 20th of December reads as follows:

“Health visit 7.10 and customs 7.20 and got ashore 15 hours after we arrived”.

This seems, at first sight to suggest that the boat arrived on the morning of Wednesday the 20th and not on 5.40pm of the evening before as previously stated.  But, on closer inspection, it appears that the boat did indeed arrive at 5.40pm on the previous day, but the passengers were not allowed step ashore until 15 hours afterwards. So, there is a distinction between “arrived” and “landed” or “went ashore”. A boat can arrive and dock at a port.  But the passengers may not step ashore until many hours later. 

Health officials visited the boat at 7.10 am and Customs officials at 7.40 am.  It was only after that business was finished that the passengers were allowed go ashore. 

So, we have a reasonably coherent narrative.  The boat arrived at Pará on Tuesday at 5.40pm.  But for bureaucratic or other reasons the passengers were not allowed to leave the boat until 15 hours later which is at around 8.40am on Wednesday.

Wednesday was a memorable day for the diarist.  He meets someone—

“in new pants and It down left thigh—huge and enormous—and he lovely beyond words”.  

And this was before breakfast!

After that he wanders around and “…saw many on seats and in trains and lots of huge ones – perfect monsters”.

He finishes the evening by saying:

“…Huge one on seat (biggest ever seen) and after long round to Paz Theatre etc. etc.   At last a Darkie there with very big one. Wanted and I pulled it and gave 5.000 and home at 1 am. “

So having paid for sex the diarist returns to his room in the early hours of Thursday morning. 

In A Maze!

The Diary for Thursday the 21st of December begins:

“See yesterday’s entry in error made under Wednesday. I only arrived today at 8.30am”.

So what the diary said happened on Wednesday didn’t happen on Wednesday at all but instead happened on Thursday!

In Jeffrey Dudgeon’s book Roger Casements, The Black Diaries he comments that Casement must have failed to fill in one day.  

Ah, but if only the challenges of time travel were that simple!

Dudgeon appears to be saying that the boat arrived on Tuesday and that Casement didn’t write anything in his diary for Wednesday and then wrote on events that happened on Thursday as if they had happened on Wednesday.

But there is an obvious problem with this scenario.  As we have seen, the Wednesday entry begins by saying that the passengers stepped on shore 15 hours after the boat arrived, which was at 5.40pm on Tuesday.  If we are now saying that the Wednesday entry related to Thursday, then the boat must have arrived at 5.40pm on Wednesday and not on 5.40pm on Tuesday as previously stated. 

So, the diarist has made two significant errors.  He has said the boat arrived on Tuesday evening, when it in fact arrived on Wednesday evening.  And, secondly, he has described a series of erotic events as taking place on Wednesday when they in fact took place on Thursday.

But that’s not all.  The events which he originally described as taking place on Wednesday—but is now saying occurred on Thursday—finished at 1 am.  So, logically, he must have been writing about them on Friday morning at the earliest when he wrote “I only arrived today at 8.30am”. 

On Friday his sexual adventures continued:

“… then the Darkie who entered fiercely and hugely, pulling down pants and stripping.  Again later on met him again and still more furiously—never anything like it . He asked ‘E bem?’ when putting in with awful thrusts.  Saw several others.”

But, earlier in the day, he had experienced problems with the Customs.  He had to make five visits to the customs warehouse before he could extract his luggage.  He says:

“Got my luggage from customs only at 5pm near 48 hours after landing…”

Oh dear!  He is now going back to saying that the passengers landed on Wednesday!   A poetic expression springs to mind—

“Oh what a tangled web we weave

When first we practice to deceive” ! 

(by Christopher Marlowe, commonly attributed to Shakespeare)

Further Comments

These diary extracts are an incoherent mess.  In my view, it is inconceivable that they are a contemporaneous account.  It is obvious that they were written long after the purported events they describe.

The wheels began to come off once the forger decided to change the date when the passengers landed from Wednesday to Thursday.  

But why did the forger feel it was necessary to do this?  If he had kept it as it was, the narrative structure would have been relatively coherent. 

The answer to this question is that he had to!

Paul Hyde in his book reveals (page 193) that the local newspapers reported that Casement had landed on the Thursday.  After all, Casement was a famous person.  So, the date of arrival on land was an established fact.

It looks like the forger, having fabricated a carefully constructed narrative, which included lurid sexual details, realised with horror that he had got the dates wrong.  Rather than starting all over again, he decided to apply a sticking plaster to the shaky edifice and hoped that no one would notice.  Perhaps he was under time pressure to complete his work?

It is surprising that, apart from Hyde and Angus Mitchell, there seems to be a consensus among scholars that the Diaries are authentic. Or maybe not too surprising!  If you are committed to believing in the integrity of the British State sometimes .  .  .  the truth hurts.

John Martin