The Detection of Forgery Part 7

To the Chief of Police.

SIR,

REX _versus_ JONES.

In accordance with your instructions dated ---- I beg leave to inform you that I have made a careful examination of the doc.u.ment marked _A_, and attached hereto, and compared it with the doc.u.ments marked _B_, _C_, _D_, _E_ and _F_, also attached.

I have arrived at the conclusion that the doc.u.ment _A_ was written by the same hand as produced _B_, _C_, _D_, _E_ and _F_.

The main reasons which have led me to form this opinion are these:--

First, although the writing in _A_ bears at first sight no resemblance to that of the other doc.u.ments, the difference is only such as experience leads me to expect in a writing which has been purposely disguised, as I believe this has been.

The writing on the five doc.u.ments _B_ to _F_ I take to be the normal hand of the author, and that on _A_ to be the same writer's hand altered so as to present a different appearance. I will call the specimens _B_ to _F_ the genuine examples, and _A_ the disguised.

Experience shows that the person who writes an anonymous letter generally seeks to disguise his hand by departing as much as he deems possible from his normal writing. The usual hand of the writer of the genuine doc.u.ment is a free rounded hand sloping upwards towards the right. The writing of _A_ presents exactly the features I would expect to find when, as appears to be the case here, the writer has adopted the familiar trick of sloping his writing in a direction opposite to his normal hand. While the result of this change is to alter the apparent style and general appearance of the writing, the alteration does not extend to certain tricks and characteristics which are plainly obvious in the genuine letters and are repeated in the anonymous letter _A_.

The writing in the genuine letters contains fourteen very distinctive peculiarities, or tricks of hand, which I find repeated in the anonymous letter _A_.

(Here describe them, as for example.)

1. The figure 4 in the dates is always made like the print form of that figure.

2. The small _e_ is always of the Greek form.

3. The small _t_ is always crossed by a bar thick at the beginning, tapering to a point, with its longest part behind the shank of the _t_ [and so on].

The various points of resemblance are set out in detail, a separate paragraph for each, and each paragraph numbered.

It is extremely important that a report should be fully descriptive and written in plain, non-technical language, easily understood by the jury, who will have to decide whether the resemblance has been made out.

Too many handwriting experts spoil the effect of their evidence by employing technical language and presuming on the part of the jury an acquaintance with the methods of comparing handwritings.

Do not be satisfied by saying that certain letters resemble each other.

Show by an enlarged diagram how and where, indicating the parts to which attention is called by arrows. Place the single letters to be compared in parallel columns, headed with the alphabetical letter distinguishing the doc.u.ment in which the particular letter occurs. Use foolscap paper, and write on one side of the paper only.

The usual method of dealing with the handwriting expert in the witness-box is shown in the following extract from a report of an actual case.

Mr. D. B---- was called by counsel for the prosecution and duly sworn.

Q.--You have had considerable experience in examining handwriting.

A.--Over twenty years.

Q.--Look at these doc.u.ments. (Hands doc.u.ments to witness.) Have you seen and examined these?

A.--I have.

Q.--Have you formed any opinion upon them?

A.--I have, and have prepared a report.

In some cases the expert is allowed to read his report in full. In others he is requested to give a verbal report, but if the point be insisted upon, the judge generally permits the report to be read, either by the expert or by counsel. A copy of the report, together with the doc.u.ments in dispute are then usually handed to the jury for examination. The expert may proceed to ill.u.s.trate his point with the aid of a blackboard and chalk, but much depends upon the att.i.tude taken by the judge and counsel. Some judges insist that the expert shall confine himself to expressing his opinion, leaving counsel to deal with the explanation and comparison; others give the expert every opportunity of showing how he has arrived at his opinions.

The examination in chief is usually a very simple matter. The trouble for the expert begins when counsel for the other side gets up to cross-examine.

In nearly every case the object of the cross-examining counsel is to ridicule the art and get the expert to admit the possibility of other writers possessing the same peculiarities which are said to distinguish the letters before the Court.

Counsel's favourite trick is to select some letter and ask the expert if he is prepared to swear that he has never seen something just like it in some other person's writing. The expert who knows his business will insist on keeping well to the front the bedrock basis of handwriting comparison, which is the application of the law of probability to c.u.mulative evidence. It is not a question whether some other person may be in the habit of making a _t_ or a _k_ similar to those cited as evidences of common origin, but whether it is probable that two persons should make a dozen or more letters in precisely the same way under similar conditions and exhibit precisely the same peculiarities of style. He should reply with the unanswerable postulate that millions of persons possess red hair, snub noses, a scar on the face, blue eyes, bent fingers and a stammer; but it is millions to one against any two persons possessing all six of those peculiarities.

In the course of his replies the expert may justifiably help his own case by repeating, when opportunity occurs, such irrefutable axioms as, No writer can say off-hand what peculiarities he may exhibit; that there are scores of ways of dotting an _i_, or crossing a _t_, and that few persons know which form they mostly affect. Fifty such points may be gathered from this little volume alone, while acquaintance with the works of other writers on caligraphy will supply ample ammunition for meeting and repelling the customary form of attack on the handwriting expert.

Another method of discrediting a witness is to remind him that experts have differed, the Dreyfus case being usually cited. The answer is obvious. First it is essential to be a.s.sured that those experts were all competent, for there are degrees of competency in judging handwriting as in every other subject on which opinion may be called. It is a notorious fact that in the Dreyfus case the most competent experts testified that the Henry letters were forgeries, the authorities called on the other side being in most cases unknown men or amateurs of no standing. A number of these self-styled experts possessed no other qualification than presumed familiarity with the handwriting of Dreyfus. It is also worthy of note that several of the experts on both sides proved most inefficient witnesses, obscuring their explanations by the employment of technical phraseology which conveyed little meaning to the lay mind.

Exact.i.tude and regularity in the choice of the words used in describing the parts of letters should be strictly observed by the student. The rules given in the chapter on "Terminology" should be mastered and adhered to. In most cases the terms there applied to letter-a.n.a.lysis will be found to be self-explanatory.

CHAPTER XVII.

HANDWRITING AND EXPRESSION.

No work dealing with the study of handwriting would be complete unless it recognised that phase of it which touches on the delineation of character by an examination of the caligraphy.

That many valuable clues can be picked up by the expert who applies the principles on which the graphologist works is indisputable, nor is it necessary to accept all the theories claimed as reliable by those who practice this interesting branch of the art of writing-a.n.a.lysis.

There is no doubt that many persons have attained a remarkable degree of proficiency in deducing from the hand-gestures of an unknown person a very accurate estimate of his or her character, and this fact should prove that the principles of the art of graphology are based on scientific grounds, or at least that the rules on which the student works are regular and not, as some suggest, mere guess-work or coincidence.

The elder d'Israeli, in his fascinating work, the "Curiosities of Literature," devotes considerable s.p.a.ce to the subject. Among other things, he says:--

"a.s.suredly nature would prompt every individual to have a distinct sort of writing, as she has given a peculiar countenance, a voice, and a manner. The flexibility of the muscles differs with every individual, and the hand will follow the direction of the thoughts, and the emotions and the habits of the writers.

"The phlegmatic will portray his words with signs of labour and deliberation, while the playful haste of the volatile will scarcely sketch them; the slovenly will blot and efface and scrawl, while the neat and orderly-minded will view themselves in the paper before their eyes. The merchant's clerk will not write like the lawyer or the poet.

Even nations are distinguished by their writing; the vivacity and variableness of the Frenchman, and the delicacy and suppleness of the Italian, are perceptibly distinct from the slowness and strength of pen discoverable in the phlegmatic German, Dane, and Swede.

"When we are in grief we do not write as we should in joy. The elegant and correct mind, which has acquired the fortunate habit of a fixity of attention, will write with scarcely an erasure on the page, as Fenelon and Gibbon; while we find in Pope's ma.n.u.scripts the perpetual struggle of correction, and the eager and rapid interlineations struck off in heat. Lavater's notion of handwriting is by no means chimerical; nor was General Paoli fanciful when he told Mr. Northcote he had decided on the character and disposition of a man from his letters and the handwriting.

"Long before the days of Lavater, Shenstone in one of his letters said, 'I want to see Mrs. Jago's writing that I may judge of her temper.'

"One great truth must, however, be conceded to the opponents of the physiognomy of handwriting. General rules only can be laid down. Yet the vital principle must be true that the handwriting bears an a.n.a.logy to the character of the writer, as all voluntary actions are characteristic of the individual."

Professor Foli, in his very useful work, "Handwriting as an Index to Character" (London: C. A. Pearson, Ltd.), says:

"The changes which handwriting undergoes as maturity is reached prove how directly it is influenced by the nervous condition of the writer.