TELL-TALE INKS

Dominion, Volume 23, Issue 169, 12 April 1930, Page 25

TELL-TALE INKS

TESTS USED IN CRIME AND FORGERY In a lecture on "Tell-tale Inks,” Dr. C. Ainsworth Mitchell, the British handwriting expert, gave his audience an insight into the methods of detecting criminals and settling legal disputes from a knowledge of the composition and age of inks, and their reaction to certain chemical tests. The modern blue-black inks can be distinguished, said the lecturer, by the fact that they contain blue dyes, which differ in quantity and in their nature. When these temporary colours differ in their character it is possible to distinguish between them by chemical tests and optical examination. It was often possible to determine the age of an ink. The older inks had a woolly effect, as compared with the crystalline and clear-cut appearance of modern inks. In claims for old peerages, documents had been produced to show that certain pedigrees were genuine, and there had been cases where it was shown that the alleged old writings were not really of the age they pretended to be. "This is important from the point of view of the claims to old age pensions,” said Dr. Mitchell. “People have produced family Bibles as a proof of age, and in several cases the ink has contained aniline blue dyes, which were not discovered until about the early ’sixties. An aniline dye, therefore, of a date, say, in the ’fifties, is incompatible with the entry being genuine, and several claims have been disproved on this ground.” Another way by which an ink could be distinguished was by its behaviour on a chemical reagent being applied. An ink ten years old would resist action; whereas a fresh ink reacts at once and smudges. The lecturer recalled the case of Colonel Pilcher, shortly before the war, who produced a will in which he was left the whole estate of his cousin, an elderly woman. The relatives entered a caveat and he was charged with forgery. When chemical reagents were applied to the signatures of the witnesses and the body of the will there was immediate reaction, the inks smudged, and ran all over the paper, showing that the will was not thirty years old as alleged. Passing to copying-ink pencils, composed of a mixture of aniline dyes, blacklead and clay, Dr. Mitchell referred to the Camden Town murder in 1907, when Robert Wood was charged with the murder of a woman, and a postcard and writing found in a drawer played a prominent part at the trial, The writing was found to agree with a copying-ink pencil in his possession. He was acquitted of the murder, but admitted having written the postcard and fragments of writing that were found. How Anton Kupferle, the German spy, was detected during the war, and his secret writing interpreted, was also described. Disguised as a woollen merchant from New York, he went to Ireland, and took particulars of ships in theh Irish Channel, which he wrote in secret ink between the lines of an innocent-looking letter. He intended to get away to Rotterdam, but was held up in London. A porter at the hotel where he stopped found on the roof some paper fragments bearing foreign characters. The German was arrested, and . among the things found in bls possession were a pen and a lemon, which had been cut. The letter was subjected to heat, and the details of the ships then appeared between the lines. The pen was found to contain fruit juice and formaline, which was used probably to make the writing develop not too readily.