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46 April-May 2025
April-May 2025 47
Window closed on
Dudgeon’s Casement
Jeffrey Dudgeon’s attempt in the last edition
of Village to rebut Paul Hyde was easily
disproved chicanery
By Paul Hyde
T
here are signs in Je rey Dudgeon’s
article (Village, Oct-Nov. 2024)
that he has lost control of his
defence and is unsure about
strategy. Readers will note the
most obvious sign - he does not engage
with my article published in last July’s
Village. His insecurity appears in his fi rst
paragraph where he cites a phrase allegedly
from my article but which is not there. He
then refers to “a minor change” made
between his “2nd and 3rd editions”. This
suggests that the fatal sentence first
appeared in the second edition of 2016
which minimises the gravity of his blunder,
by reducing the time it went uncorrected
from seventeen years to two years. In fact
the sentence was fi rst published in 2002.
From his second paragraph onwards,
Dudgeon steadily avoids a direct challenge
to the logical proof in my article as he
grasps at anything to help him survive. Thus
he falls back on tried and tested chicanery
with calculated confusion and false
attribution. For example: “Hyde argues the
motor bike gift is key …”. But I argue no such
thing because there is no evidence of a gift:
“…altering registration records … to prove
an actual sale …” but such records register
only legal ownership and not a motor sale:
“assertions on…diary forging are all based
on a small number of mistakes, errors or
confusions…” but rather than being errors
the many dozens are in fact signifi cant,
demonstrable deceits always and
consistently used to support authenticity.
They include alteration of documents,
false attributions, omissions, logical
fallacies, lies and innuendo.
When Dudgeon attempts to grapple with
the fact that there is no independent
Csement window: closed?
OPINION
46 April-May 2025
April-May 2025 47
they decided to burn the lot. In another
version, the nephew heard the story later
from his uncle. In fact, this story was
invented in 1954 by René MacColl who
claimed he heard it from an anonymous
source in Cork who allegedly was told by the
nephew just before his death in 1951. Pity
– papers all destroyed and all witnesses
dead.
Since Morten and Duy lived in London,
how did the documents get to Belfast?
Answer - they didn’t. Dudgeon writes “If it
[the inspection] took place in Belfast…”.
Dudgeon prefers Belfast because it matches
the invented MacColl story which is too
good to lose. But contradiction yet again
since, in his book, Dudgeon has Duy
destroying the compromising documents in
London in 1915, thus exonerating the
Belfast Biggers in 1916 and contradicting
René MacColl.
Or perhaps he means the documents were
destroyed twice?
Dudgeon claims that Senator Michael
McDowell proposed an irrefutable argument
to demonstrate that the typescripts are
copies of the diaries. McDowell’s reasoning
relies on observations by Ó Síocháin.
However, both are compromised because
they assume what must not be assumed -
that the bound diaries were in police
custody in 1916. From this assumed premise
they make a second assumption — that the
typescripts were “transcribed” from the
handwritten diaries and errors in some Irish
words were made by the typists.
Dudgeon also claims there is no evidence
of research by “government agents…for the
colossal faking project…”. But this is wrong
too since he certainly knows about the 1974
report by the Reverend Gerard Smith of
exactly such research in Iquitos and
Putumayo in early January 1916 by two
British ocers whose enquiries focused
heavily on homosexuality. Enrique Gonzales
Cristobal, son of Casement’s guide in 1910-
11, recounted their investigation into
Casement’s contacts and activities in the
Pucallpa area.
Later Dudgeon seems to resort to
calculated confusion by feigning to
speculate about “large gaps in Casement
documentation”, that is, correspondence he
believes existed but which no longer exists.
Without evidence, he alleges there were
“incoming boyfriend letters” which he
suspects were destroyed by Gavan Duy.
Carefully priming the reader with innuendo
about “…Gavan Duy’s state of knowledge
about Casement’s sexuality…”, he gives an
example of missing documents. Alice Green
in 1929 donated her last Casement letters
to the NLI commenting that Duy’s wife had
evidence for the material existence of the
diaries in 1916, he stumbles into fatal
confusion and contradiction. He agrees if
the police typescripts were indeed ‘fakes’
that this “negates all statements by those
who report seeing manuscript items before
then”. This, Dudgeon says, “hinges largely
on the fact that there was next to nobody
outside government who specified exactly
what they saw in 1916 …”.
The locution “next to nobody” means very
few persons. He then names two of these
very few persons, US ambassador Page and
Congo missionary John Harris as people
who Dudgeon falsely claims saw manuscript
(i.e. handwritten) diaries.
Home Oce file 144/23481 states that
“After the dismissal of the appeal a
TYPESCRIPT copy was shown, on the Home
Secretary’s instructions, to Mr. (later Sir
John) Harris …”. It does not state that Page
saw manuscript diaries but rather confirms
he only received photographs of typescripts.
On 17 March 1959, Home Secretary Rab
Butler presented a draft Memorandum on
the proposed release of the diaries which
confirms the Ambassador “was given
photographs of two passages from the
typescripts”. The file also includes
Blackwell’s description of the diary as
‘closely typed matter’ and Thomson’s 26
July letter confirming that Ambassador Page
saw typescripts.
After 30 years of research, Dudgeon
certainly knows those documents better
than anyone. When decoded, it is clear the
purpose of his double falsehood was to
conceal that in all those decades he found
no independent evidence for the diaries’
existence. Obviously, it is foolhardy to give
demonstrably false evidence to prove
something is genuine. But in desperation
and knowing his readers are uninformed,
Dudgeon took a calculated risk hoping to
avoid detection. But now, unmasked, his
last gamble fails and reveals a de facto
confession - a coup de grâce for his
opponents.
Dudgeon then compounds his confusion:
“Evidence that Casement diary manuscripts
– either the journals themselves or
photographed pages – were displayed
before the trial ended in late July does exist
in ocial government papers; as do several
precise descriptions …”. Leaving aside that
the trial ended in June, not in late July, here
we have uncertainty about what was
allegedly displayed — either photos or
bound diaries but not both. A photograph is
not a manuscript diary. But there is no
evidence of this showing in ocial papers
and Dudgeon has not identified such
papers. Nor has he cited details of the
“several precise descriptions” of their
contents — because such descriptions do
not exist.
Finally Dudgeon reveals his secret, the
technique which brought him recognition as
a historical scholar and leading Casement
investigator; “The technique I use is
deduction from the evidence or… the
absence of evidence – perfectly reasonable
for historians”.
Dudgeon boasts that he can perform
deductions without premises, ex nihilo, and
if so, this might be a kind of divination or
clairvoyance. He also appears to be capable
of mind-reading since his previous Village
defence stated that when Casement
recorded the payments in the 1911 Irish
National Library (NLI) note, he did not intend
the written Millar payment to refer to a
payment made to Millar although the other
listed payments were to be understood
literally. Miracle or magic, his gifts of
clairvoyance and mind-reading are those of
a magus or seer and these extraordinary
powers explain his remarkable
achievements.
These talents enable Dudgeon to
insinuate that Gavan Duy covered up the
alleged homosexuality and as evidence he
stresses that Duy never said a word on this
topic; I repeat - he said nothing so it follows
he knew everything. This is Dudgeon’s last
gasp speculation, a final gamble which he
hopes will save his uncanny powers as
magus.
Duy checked the Casement papers Dick
Morten sent him in 1915 and said nothing
about the contents or what became of them
afterwards. Dudgeon speculates that after
Duy’s inspection the papers were left with
Casement’s friend, Frank Bigger, in Belfast.
In 1916 after Casement’s execution, a
nervous Bigger opened the case/s and read
with horror “several diaries and also a
number of compromising letters from
homosexual correspondents”. In one
version Bigger’s nephew was present and
From his second paragraph onwards
Dudgeon steadily avoids a direct challenge
to the logical proof in my article as he
grasps at anything to help him survive
48 April-May 2025
April-May 2025 PB
been shocked by them and had wanted
them burned. The letters have since
disappeared so Dudgeon has never seen
them but he cannot miss an opportunity for
innuendo: “Obviously Duy knew things his
wife did not”. This invites naïve readers to
assume sexually explicit contents. But
Casement’s last letters to Green from Berlin
were all ocially intercepted. What shocked
Duy’s wife was familiar to Alice Green who
was not shocked by Casement’s anti-
British, pro-German sentiments. Mrs Duy
was Sergeant Sullivan’s sister and like her
brother strongly anti-Sinn Féin and pro-
British. An un-shocked Green wanted the
letters preserved in NLI.
Dudgeon’s evasive speculation about
imaginary documents depends on his
ability as magus to make deductions ex
nihilo so that absence of desired evidence
becomes evidence of guilt. This enables him
to avoid what is obvious to any impartial
observer.
In over a quarter century, Dudgeon has
signally refused to recognise that the
motivation behind forging the diaries was
extremely homophobic depicting the diarist
negatively as an emotionally unstable,
highly promiscuous pederast addicted to
prostitutes and obsessed with the male
organ, in accordance with the worst
prejudices of the time.
This caricature of the homosexual as an
immoral predator incapable of normal
human affections, a pathologically
disturbed outsider to the human family, is
deeply oensive to homosexuals today.
The caricature is intrinsically homophobic
and this is confirmed by how it was used in
1916; the vile portrait was false then and it
remains false today. While attitudes to
homosexuality have altered since 1916, the
grotesque caricature in the diaries lives on.
Those who are duped by Dudgeon into
believing the diaries are authentic are thus
blinded to the homophobia. The result is
that by endorsing Dudgeon’s claim of
authenticity they unwittingly sanction the
homophobia in the diaries.
The uninformed have been easily duped
by Dudgeon’s strategy of innuendo and
confusion which has allowed him to exploit
their chief concern - to be seen as tolerant
liberals. What else can explain the pitiful
catalogue of fabrications, contradictions,
evasions, manipulations and omissions set
out above? One might ask, is this really the
work of a magus or of an imposter.
Given his prominence as the leading
forgery denier, his lethal miscalculation will
have a devastating impact on the
controversy and on those who trusted him.
By knowingly citing false evidence he has
unintentionally confirmed he has no
evidence for the existence of the diaries in
1916. Nor has anyone else.
Authenticity claims logically presuppose
existence which Dudgeon cannot
demonstrate; therefore, his failure is
deemed a de facto proof of forgery. That this
follows the logical proof of forgery
published in Village (July 2024) is a
conclusive demonstration that the
Casement window for Dudgeon is now
closed.
Paul R Hyde is the author of ‘Anatomy of a
Lie’, Wordwell Books, and of decoding-
casement.com.
This caricature of
the homosexual as
an immoral predator
incapable of normal
human affections, a
pathologically disturbed
outsider to the human
family, is deeply offensive
to homosexuals today.
