NEW TEST OF SOBRIETY.

Auckland Star, Volume LII, Issue 258, 29 October 1921, Page 19

NEW TEST OF SOBRIETY.

WRITING A LETTER, Can handwriting lie regarded as a tost of sobriety ? In a case at Westminster iPolioe Court where a man was charged with heing drunk in charge of a motor car, the magistrate (IMr. .Francis) inclined to the 'belief that it could. A letter written by the defendant in the police cell asking a friend to stand as bail was shown to the magistrate anil emphasised by counsel as not like the writing of a drunken man. The charge was dismissed.

"In ease of a man's signature, even if he is very drunk," iMr. Gurrin, the handwriting expert, 'tokl a reporter, "lie may he able to get that right. But when it comes to writing several lines of matter, then any considerable degree of drunkenness is hound to affect the writing.

"The muscular control exercised by a person writing his signature far exceeds the muscular control which the sasre person exerts in his ordinary writing. Consequently there will he distinct signs of absence of control in a letter of any length in the handwriting of a drunken man."

Most of the tests of sobriety are directed to discovering the amount of control which the subject retains over his muscular and nervous system.

He rn:iJ lie required to repeat such •phrases as "Truly rural," British Constitution, " "The Leith police dismisseth us." Jle may he required to walk along a line chalked on the tloor or (and this te one ot the crucial tests) to walk along gazing meanwhile at the ceiling above his head.