(Followed by Brian Inglis’s Three Diaries Trick! )

The report of Audrey Giles on the Black Diaries was completed with much fanfare in 2002. It was claimed that the question of the authenticity of the Diaries was now closed. 

Giles is a Doctor of Philosophy. At the time of the Report she had twenty-five years experience in the scientific examination of documents and handwriting. For thirteen of those years she was an employee of the Metropolitan Police. In the subsequent twelve years she set up as an independent expert in this field. 

Given her professional association with the Metropolitan Police it is difficult to see how she can be considered entirely objective. 

The report was commissioned by Professor McCormack who at the time of the report was a Professor of Literary History at the University of London. McCormack received “approval” from a “Steering Group”. 

Under a section entitled “Instructions” the Report says: 

“The Steering Group have set the initial proposition to be that the documents at Kew known collectively as Roger Casement’s Black Diaries are genuinely written in his hand throughout”. 

The above statement clearly indicates the desired conclusion from the outset. 

In the Summary of Findings she outlines the five documents that were examined.  They are commonly known as the “Black Diaries”, but Giles describes them as documents “associated with Roger Casement”. 

These documents are: 

1) Army Field Notebook
2) 1903 Lett’s Pocket Diary

3)1910 Dollard’s Office Diary 

4) 1911 Lett’s Office Diary
5) 1911 Cash Ledger/Diary 

She found: 

“In the case of all five of the questioned documents I have found that the writings throughout the document show many similarities to the writings of Roger Casement, and no significant differences.” 

That in my opinion is less than conclusive and extremely vague. Finding “many similarities” and “no significant differences” seems to fall short of proof that the Diaries are authentic. 

There are five other findings. Three of these relate to the question of whether the Black Diaries were produced by a single hand. She divides the diaries into “contentious” and “innocuous” entries. It is only later in the report that she explains that “contentious” relates to the sexual material in the diaries. I found the use of the word “contentious” to describe the sexual material rather presumptive since it implies that the “innocuous” parts of the Black Diaries are not “contentious”. 

She finds that there is no evidence:
“…that entries have been added by someone else into genuine Diaries and documents written by Roger Casement”. 

“In contrast, in at least two of the documents, the 1911 Lett’s Office Diary and the 1911 Cash ledger there is conclusive evidence that contentious entries were written by Roger Casement. In other cases, not because of the presence of any significant differences but limited quantities of comparable material, the evidence that these are the writings of Roger Casement is less conclusive, although still strong”. 

The final two findings relate to the 1910 Putumayo Journal. Curiously she found it necessary to test the authenticity of this Diary which is widely thought to be authentic.  For the period from 9th October to 14th October 1910 she found it to be authentic.  (She didn’t test other periods). 

Finally, she compared the 1910 “Black Diary” to the Putumayo Diary for the same period and found no evidence that the 1910 Black Diary was a simulation. 

But are these findings warranted by the evidence? 

There are three steps in such an examination. Firstly, undisputed, authentic documents are identified to compare with the questioned documents; secondly, the authentic documents are examined to identify distinguishing characteristics; and finally, the distinguishing characteristics are compared to the questioned documents identifying any significant differences or similarities. 

Regarding the first step Giles relied exclusively on material supplied to her from the London School of Economics for her sample of documents that were written by Roger Casement. Also, it appears that she assumed that the “innocuous” parts of the Black Diaries were authentic and used these to authenticate the “contentious” parts. 

James J. Horan, who was a commander of the New York Police Department’s Crime lab, has questioned this reliance. In his review he said that if any of the documents were forgeries it would throw the whole examination off. 

In this respect he refers to the case of the Hitler Diaries in which forged documents were used to authenticate (incorrectly) those Diaries. 

In my opinion it also seemed bizarre to test the authenticity of the 1910 Putumayo Diary by using the documents from the London School of Economics as the undisputed authentic comparison. The 1910 Putumayo is a more reliable example of Casement’s writing. If anything the testing should have been in the opposite direction (the Putumayo Diary should have been used to test the documents from the London School of Economics). 

As indicated, the next step is to identify distinctive features of Casement’s writing. She identifies seven: 

1) The use of the single stroke cursive ’E’ within words or at the beginning of words, where a block capital would normally not be expected.
2) The characters ’G’ and ‘g’ written as single looped structures.
3) The character ’d’ ending with an upward stroke or with a broad upper loop bending far to the left over the bowl of the character form. 

4) The character ’t’ with a high crossbar or with a long crossbar situated low in the curve of the character.
5) The character ’s’ written in a single small pen movement and horizontally elongated.
6) The character ’y’ in which the bowl is not fully formed so that the right hand side of the bowl curves down to form the descending stroke. 

7) The joining of words by long fluent pen strokes. 

Giles describes the features but does not show examples. It appears that the “distinctive” features she identified were not that distinctive at all!  Horan says that he found the same features in a letter written by the British Counsel in Norway. He is not suggesting that the latter wrote the Black Diaries, only that the features identified were not that unique. 

Another expert, Marcel B. Matley was even more withering in his criticism: 

“…these are things beginners or ill trained observers or dilettantes would feel proud of having observed; they are useless for the task at hand, since some are incorrect, others incomplete, some unclear as to what is meant, and the rest not unique to Casement either singly or in combination.” 

The final stage is to compare the “distinctive” features of Casement’s writing with the questioned documents. But it’s not enough merely to express an opinion on the comparison. The results of the tests must be documented so that they can be evaluated by an independent expert. 

Horan makes the point that it is usual for the forensic document examiner to prepare charts showing the questioned and known writing in juxtaposition but this report does not do this. 

Horan concludes:

“Dr Giles’s report as it stands would not be accepted in the courts in the US. 

“As editor of the Journal of Forensic Sciences and the Journal of the American Society of Questioned Document Examiners, I would NOT recommend publication of the Giles Report because the report does not show HOW its conclusion was reached. To the question, ‘Is the writing Roger Casement’s?’, on the basis of the Giles Report as it stands I cannot tell”. (cited by Paul Hyde, Anatomy of a Lie: Decoding Casement, p67). 

So, Giles’s Report certainly is not a “forensic report”. 

We can see at each of the three stages of the investigation there are serious flaws. Nevertheless, the Report is not without interest as it makes some startling observations. 

In four of the five Black Diaries there are frequent changes of writing implements. In some cases the changes occur in the same sentence. The only ‘diary’ that this does not apply is the Army Notebook, which is also the only diary that does not have incriminating sexual material. 

In the 1903 Diary she says: 

“Examination of the inks within the Diary showed a variation in colour and intensity of ink. This is particularly well-demonstrated by entries on 9th and10th July. The entries on 9th July are written in heavy black ink and are considerably smudged. The entry for Friday (i.e.10th July-JM) begins in a similar heavy black ink but continues for a number of lines in pencil, changing back to ink in mid-sentence. The ink at this point appears lighter and has clearly been blotted at the fourth line, therefore leaving an even lighter deposit”. 

Regarding the 1910 Diary she says: 

“There are other areas where the contentious entry is not consistent with innocuous entries for the same date. These include the contentious entry of 1st December where there is a considerable amount of narrative, with the ink varying from dark to light near the bottom of the space allocated for 1st December.” 

Bizarrely she concludes: 

“Rather the contentious entries show a wide range of variation and on a number of occasions show close consistency with other innocuous entries made in the same section of the Diary. The combination of these factors amounts to strong positive evidence that in each case the contentious entry was made by Roger Casement.” 

So, don’t worry about the wide variation. “On a number of occasions” there is “close consistency” so Roger Casement must have written the Black Diaries!? 

On the 1911 Diary she says: 

“The Diary entries again present a huge variation in colour of ink, thickness of pen line and shading, with entries varying from time to time as result of blotting. There are a number of entries made in pencil. In the period 31st August to 11th September pencil entries have in places been re-touched with ink.” 

The comment about pencil entries being “re-touched with ink” does not set off any alarm bells?!  Why would an authentic diarist have such frequent changes of writing materials and why would he feel the need to retouch pencil entries with ink? 

While reading this part of the Report it occurred to me that it would be interesting to compare the authentic 1910 Putumayo Diary with the 1910 Black Diary.  Is there the same amount of changes in writing materials? 

As it happens Giles does indeed make a comparison between the authentic and questioned 1910 Diaries for the period 9th October 1910 to 14th October 1910. There is no variation in the writing materials in the authentic Diary. All of this section is written in pencil! 

She then remarks that she examined a microfilm copy of the entire journal and found that other sections have been made in ink. 

But it is clear that Giles is not interested in following up this issue. Her purpose for comparing the two 1910 Diaries is to rebut a point made by Angus Mitchell in his definitive book on the authentic 1910 Diary: The Amazon Journal of Roger Casement. 

In October 1910 Roger Casement had severe eye problems which resulted in one of his eyes being heavily bandaged making it very difficult for him to write. Mitchell makes the point that: 

“the pencil scrawl of 12th October of the Putumayo Journal is not mirrored in the corresponding diary entry (of the Black Diary – JM) where the hand is deliberate and in pen.” 

But Giles disagrees. She says: 

“This writing is not scrawled – the character forms are identifiable and the writing is perfectly readable. If indeed the entry of 12th October in the Putumayo Journal was written on that date, then Roger Casement’s writing does not appear to have been unduly affected by his eye problems.” 

Well, she is entitled to her opinion and there is always a subjective element in all handwriting analysis. But there are other points that Mitchell made that she doesn’t deal with. For example, in the authentic Putumayo Journal, Casement says he was having difficulty writing and found it easier to do so with a pencil. So, why would he keep a second diary in which he was writing much the same thing (except for the incriminating sexual material)!  And why would he write the second diary in pen which he already said he found very difficult. 

The narrative of those who believe in the Black Diaries’ authenticity makes absolutely no sense. 

And why does Giles question whether the entry of 12th October in the Putumayo Journal was written on that date? This journal was written before the 1910 Black Diary. We know that because the 1910 Black Diary refers to items in the Putumayo journal. There are much more grounds for believing that the 1910 Black Diary is not an authentic contemporaneous account. 

There is no doubt that Dr Audrey Giles is a highly competent expert in her field. She has produced reports that are genuinely forensic or in other words have been accepted in a court of law. But, for whatever reason, her report on the Black Diaries falls far short of her usual standards. 

It appears that it is de rigueur for forensic reports to have a résumé of the author’s past experience. A separate forensic report which she completed in 2012 has such a résumé but there is no mention of her work on the Black Diaries even though it received extensive publicity in the national media in Britain and Ireland. 

Could it be that she doesn’t regard that work as among her finest?  If that is the reason for its omission from her 2012 Report, I can only agree with her. 

The claim that the Giles Report proves that the Black Diaries are not forgeries and therefore brings closure to the subject is clearly false. The conclusions are not warranted by the evidence she adduces. Any objective reading of the report will reinforce doubts about the Diaries’ authenticity. 

Report of Dr Audrey Giles

The report of Audrey Giles on the Black Diaries was completed with much fanfare in 2002.  It was claimed that the question of the authenticity of the Diaries was now closed.

Ms Giles is a Doctor of Philosophy. At the time of the Report she had twenty-five years experience in the scientific examination of documents and handwriting. For thirteen of those years she was an employee of the Metropolitan Police. In the subsequent twelve years she set up as an independent expert in this field.

Given her professional association with the Metropolitan Police it is difficult to see how she can be considered entirely objective.

The report was commissioned by Professor McCormack who at the time of the report was a Professor of Literary History at the University of London.  McCormack received “approval” from a “Steering Group”.

Under a section entitled “Instructions”, the Report says:

“The Steering Group have set the initial proposition to be that the documents at Kew known collectively as Roger Casement’s Black Diaries are genuinely written in his hand throughout”.

The above statement clearly indicates the desired conclusion from the outset.

In the Summary of Findings Audrey Giles outlines the five documents that were examined.  They are commonly known as the “Black Diaries”, but Giles describes them as documents “associated with Roger Casement”.

These documents are:

1) Army Field Notebook

2) 1903 Lett’s Pocket Diary

3) 1910 Dollard’s Office Diary

4) 1911 Lett’s Office Diary

5) 1911 Cash Ledger/Diary

She found:

“In the case of all five of the questioned documents I have found that the writings throughout the document show many similarities to the writings of Roger Casement, and no significant differences.”

That in my opinion is less than conclusive and extremely vague.  Finding “many similarities” and “no significant differences” seems to fall short of proof that the Diaries are authentic.

There are five other findings.  Three of these relate to the question of whether the Black Diaries were produced by a single hand.  She divides the Diaries into “contentious” and “innocuous” entries.  It is only later in the report that she explains that “contentious” relates to the sexual material in the Diaries.  I found the use of the word “contentious” to describe the sexual material rather presumptive since it implies that the “innocuous parts” of the Black Diaries are not “contentious” !

Ms Giles finds that there is no evidence that—

“…that entries have been added by someone else into genuine Diaries and documents written by Roger Casement”.

“In contrast, in at least two of the documents, the 1911 Lett’s Office Diary and the 1911 Cash ledger, there is conclusive evidence that contentious entries were written by Roger Casement.  In other cases, not because of the presence of any significant differences but limited quantities of comparable material, the evidence that these are the writings of Roger Casement is less conclusive, although still strong”.

The final two findings relate to the 1910 ‘Putumayo Journal’.  Curiously she found it necessary to test the authenticity of this Diary—which is widely thought to be authentic.  For the period from 9th October to 14th October 1910 she found it to be authentic.  (She didn’t test other periods.)

Finally, she compared the 1910 “Black Diary” to the Putumayo Diary for the same period and found no evidence that the 1910 Black Diary was a simulation.

But are these findings warranted by the evidence?

Procedure

There are three steps in conducting such an examination. Firstly, undisputed, authentic, documents are identified to compare with the questioned documents;  secondly, the authentic documents are examined to identify distinguishing characteristics;  and finally, the distinguishing characteristics are compared to the questioned documents, identifying any significant differences or similarities.

Regarding the first step, for her sample of documents that were written by Roger Casement Ms Giles relied exclusively on material supplied to her from the London School Of Economics.  Also, it appears that she assumed that the “innocuous” parts of the Black Diaries were authentic and used these to authenticate the “contentious” parts.

James J. Horan—who was a commander of the New York Police Department’s Crime lab—has questioned this reliance.  In his review he said that, if any of the documents were forgeries, it would throw the whole examination off.

In this respect he refers to the case of the Hitler Diaries, in which forged documents were used to authenticate (incorrectly, as it transpired!) those Diaries.

In my opinion, it similarly seems bizarre to test the authenticity of the 1910 Putumayo Diary by using the documents from the London School of Economics as the undisputed authentic comparison.  The 1910 Putumayo document is a more reliable example of Casement’s writing. If anything, the testing should have been in the opposite direction (the Putumayo Diary should have been used to test the documents from the London School of Economics) !

As indicated, the next step is to identify distinctive features of Casement’s writing.  Ms Giles identifies seven:

1) The use of the single stroke cursive ‘E’ within words or at the beginning of words, where a block capital would normally not be expected.

2) The characters ‘G’ and ‘g’ written as single looped structures.

3) The character ‘d’ ending with an upward stroke or with a broad upper loop bending far to the left over the bowl of the character form.

4) The character ‘t’ with a high crossbar or with a long crossbar situated low in the curve of the character.

5) The character ‘s’ written in a single small pen movement and horizontally elongated.

6) The character ‘y’ in which the bowl is not fully formed so that the right hand side of the bowl curves down to form the descending stroke.

7) The joining of words by long fluent pen strokes.

Giles describes the features but does not show examples.  It appears that the “distinctive” features she identified were not that distinctive at all!  Horan says that he found the same features in a letter written by the British Consul in Norway.  He is not suggesting that the latter wrote the Black Diaries, only that the features identified were not that unique.

Another expert, Marcel B. Matley, an American forensic expert, was even more withering in his criticism:

“…these are things beginners or ill trained observers or dilettantes would feel proud of having observed;  they are useless for the task at hand, since some are incorrect, others incomplete, some unclear as to what is meant, and the rest not unique to Casement either singly or in combination.”

The final stage is to compare the “distinctive” features of Casement’s writing with the questioned documents. But it’s not enough merely to express an opinion on the comparison. The results of the tests must be documented so that they can be evaluated by an independent expert.

Horan makes the point that it is usual for the forensic document examiner to prepare charts showing the questioned and known writing in juxtaposition but this report does not do this.

He concludes:

“Dr Giles’s report as it stands would not be accepted in the courts in the US.

“As editor of the Journal of Forensic Sciences and the Journal of the American Society of Questioned Document Examiners, I would NOT recommend publication of the Giles Report because the report does not show HOW its conclusion was reached.  To the question, ‘Is the writing Roger Casement’s?’, on the basis of the Giles Report as it stands I cannot tell”. (cited by Paul Hyde, Anatomy Of A Lie: Decoding Casement, p67).

So, Giles’s Report certainly is not a “forensic report”!

We can see at each of the three stages of the investigation there are serious flaws.  Nevertheless, the Report is not without interest as it makes some startling observations.

In four of the five Black Diaries there are frequent changes of writing implements.  In some cases, the changes occur in the same sentence.  The only ‘diary’ to which this does not apply is the Army Notebook—which is also the only diary that does not have incriminating sexual material.

In the 1903 Diary Ms Giles says:

“Examination of the inks within the Diary showed a variation in colour and intensity of ink.  This is particularly well-demonstrated by entries on 9th and10th July.  The entries on 9th July are written in heavy black ink and are considerably smudged.  The entry for Friday [i.e.10th July, JM] begins in a similar heavy black ink but continues for a number of lines in pencil, changing back to ink in mid-sentence. The ink at this point appears lighter and has clearly been blotted at the fourth line, therefore leaving an even lighter deposit”.

Regarding the 1910 Diary she says:

“There are other areas where the contentious entry is not consistent with innocuous entries for the same date.  These include the contentious entry of 1st December where there is a considerable amount of narrative, with the ink varying from dark to light near the bottom of the space allocated for 1st December.”

Bizarrely she concludes:

    “Rather the contentious entries show a wide range of variation and on a number of occasions show close consistency with other innocuous entries made in the same section of the Diary.  The combination of these factors amounts to strong positive evidence that in each case the contentious entry was made by Roger Casement.”

      So, don’t worry about the wide variation.  “On a number of occasions” there is “close consistency”, so Roger Casement must have written the Black Diaries!?

On the 1911 Diary she says:

     “The Diary entries again present a huge variation in colour of ink, thickness of pen line and shading, with entries varying from time to time as result of blotting.  There are a number of entries made in pencil.  In the period 31st August to 11th September pencil entries have in places been re-touched with ink…”

The comment about pencil entries being “re-touched with ink” does not set off any alarm bells?!

Why would an authentic diarist have such frequent changes of writing materials?  and why would he feel the need to retouch pencil entries with ink?

While reading this part of the Report it occurred to me that it would be interesting to compare the authentic1910 Putumayo Diary with the 1910 ‘Black ‘Diary.  Is there the same amount of changes in writing materials?

As it happens, Giles does indeed make a comparison between the authentic and questioned 1910 Diaries for the period 9th October 1910 to 14th October 1910.  

There is no variation in the writing materials in the authentic Diary. All of this section is written in pencil!

She then remarks that she examined a microfilm copy of the entire journal and found that other sections have been written in ink.

But it is clear that Giles is not interested in following up this issue.  Her purpose in comparing the two 1910 Diaries is to rebut a point made by Angus Mitchell in his definitive book on the authentic 1910 Diary: The Amazon Journal of Roger Casement.

In October 1910 Roger Casement had severe eye problems, which resulted in one of his eyes being heavily bandaged—making it very difficult for him to write.  Mitchell makes the point that:

“the pencil scrawl of 12th October of the Putumayo Journal is not mirrored in the corresponding diary entry [of the Black Diary—JM] where the hand is deliberate and in pen.”

But Giles disagrees.  She says:

     “This writing is not scrawled—the character forms are identifiable and the writing is perfectly readable.  If indeed the entry of 12th October in the Putumayo Journal was written on that date, then Roger Casement’s writing does not appear to have been unduly affected by his eye problems…”

Well, she is entitled to her opinion, and there is always a subjective element in all handwriting analysis.  

But there are other points that Mitchell made that she doesn’t deal with.  For example, in the authentic Putumayo Journal, Casement says he was having difficulty writing and found it easier to do so with a pencil.  So, why would he keep a second diary in which he was writing much the same thing (except for the incriminating sexual material)?  

And why would he write the second diary in pen—which he already said he found very difficult to manage?  

The narrative of those who believe in the  authenticity of the ‘Black Diaries’ makes absolutely no sense!

And why does Giles question whether the entry of 12th October in the Putumayo Journal was written on that date?  This journal was written before the 1910 Black Diary.  We know that because the 1910 Black Diary refers to items in the Putumayo Journal.  There are far more grounds for believing that the 1910 Black Diary is not an authentic contemporaneous account!

There is no doubt that Dr. Audrey Giles is a highly competent expert in her field.  She has produced reports that are genuinely forensic, or in other words, have been accepted in a court of law.  But, for whatever reason, her Report on the Black Diaries falls far short of her usual standards.

It appears that it is de rigueur for forensic reports to have a résumé of the author’s past experience.  A separate Forensic Report which she completed in 2012 has such a résumé: but that Report does not mention of her work on the Black Diaries even though it received extensive publicity in the national media in Britain and Ireland!

Could it be that she doesn’t regard that work as among her finest?  If that is the reason for its omission from her 2012 Report, I can only agree with her.

The claim that the Giles Report proves that the Black Diaries are not forgeries, and therefore brings closure to the subject, is clearly false.  The conclusions are not warranted by the evidence she adduces.  Any objective reading of the Report will reinforce doubts about the authenticity of those Diaries.

John Martin

Brian Inglis’s Three Diary Trick!

“The quickness of the hand deceives the eye” is a famous phrase concerning the art of illusion.  But magic tricks rely more on misdirection, psychology, and controlling attention, making the audience look where the magician wants them to look, not where the secret move occurs.

Probably the weakest part of the Black Diaries trick relates to the 1910 period.

When a trick is performed it is important that the audience does not know how it was executed.  But, in the case of the 1910 Black Diary, we know how it was done.  The information that gave the Black Diary credibility was culled from the authentic White Diary for that period.  There is no doubt that the forgers would have liked to make the authentic diary disappear, but that was beyond their powers because Casement had already submitted it to a Parliamentary Committee, set up to investigate the rubber industry in the Putumayo region.  So, by 1913, the White Diary (as the genuine diary is often called) was already in the public domain.

The obvious question for those who believe in the illusion is why would Casement have kept two diaries for the same period?  That is a problem that is not easy to magic away.

If the 1910 White Diary cannot be made to disappear, it must at least be explained away.  In an Appendix to the 1993 edition of his biography of Casement, Brian Inglis attempts to do just that.

Inglis says that the 1910 White Diary was a copy of another diary.  So, he is, in effect, saying that Casement had three diaries for the 1910 period:  the Black Diary;  the White Diary;  and the ‘original’ of the White Diary which has disappeared into thin air!

Inglis then claims that Casement told the Chairman of the Parliamentary Committee that he was sending the “copy” because:

“naturally there is in it [the original diary] something I should not wish anyone else to see”.

But Paul Hyde, the author of Anatomy Of A Lie: Decoding Casement, has exposed this glib explanation as a lie.  What Casement actually wrote to the Chairman was:

“Naturally there is in it something I should not wish anyone to see—but then it is as it stands.”

It is clear that Casement was saying that his diary was not intended to be published but nevertheless he was giving it to the Committee as it stood.  In other words, the polar opposite of what Inglis was claiming!

And, of course, the lie or the cover-up, is evidence of the existence of the crime.

Interestingly, the lie that Inglis wrote in the 1993 edition of his book was not included in subsequent editions.  But no explanation was given as to why it was dropped!

So, Inglis’s three diary trick remains in the 1993 edition of his book:  unrepudiated and waiting to entice the unsuspecting reader into a world of fantasy and illusion.

John Martin