FAMOUS FORGERY CASES.

Otago Witness, Issue 2691, 11 October 1905, Page 71

FAMOUS FORGERY CASES.

" Forgery," said Chabot, the great handwriting expert, "is one of the most unsatisfactory crimes a man can 'commit nowadays. It can be so easily discovered." That was not always the case (says Answers). There was once nothing easier than imitating handwriting so successfully that the fraud could not be discovered, and the skilful forger was one of the least often detected and most successful scoundrels in the criminal world. How common and how successful he was experts who have had ancient documents put before them

well know It is wonderful how many of these, the genuineness of which ha*, never been suspected, the expert is able, by the aid of modern science, unhesitatingly to pronounce forgeries.

"By nature and habit individuals contrart a system of forming letters which gives a character to their writing as distinct as that of the human face," declared Netherclift, the first recognised handwriting expert. It &?ems, perhaps, a startling saying, but it is true, as thousands of criminals have found to their cost.

Neil Cream, the mysterious poisoner of women in the south of London in 1892, found a certain peculiarity in his handwriting of material assistance to the police in dragging him to the fate on the scaffold he so well deserved. It was Cream's practice to poison a woman and then to send a blackmailing letter, generally to a doctor — Neil was himself an American M.D. — demauding money, uncter a threat of the recipiest being charged with the deed. These letters were, of course, in a disguised handwriting, and Neill had devia?d an ingenious method of bafHmg detection. It was not good enough, however, and when the letters were collected and compared with others admittedly written by Neil there wer.s remarkable similarities in each which made it clear that they were all the production of the same man.

Recognised specialists in the examining and comparison of handwriting appear to have been unknown in England till a lithographer, Joseph Netherclift, came before the public as an expert. AMr James Wood, a draper and banker of Gloucester, died, leaving a fortune of £1,000,000. Wood was an eccentric character, with a partiality to making wills and hiding them in the most absurd places in liis house, where he lived a solitary existence.

After his cVcease will after will and codicil after codicil were discovered hidden in ceilings, under floors, in chimneys and in secret drawers. Trie relative who rejoiced to-day under a codicil making him rich was in a faw days' time- thrown into despair by the discovery of some dirty piece of paper, perhaps found projecting from a rathole in an attic, which proved to be a later document executed by James Wood, leaving him nothing. W.ere these wills and codicils true or false? It was a question in which a handwriting expert was decidedly necessary. Netherclift, the lithographer, was called in, and from the assistance he was able to render the puzzled investigators in the case he became famous. From that time he was kept hwsj.

In not one case out of ten in which he is consulted does th> expert in handwriting appear in court. The others are compromised or hushed up. The most common occasions on which he is consulted ore matrimonial matters, libellous letters, abusive and threatening^ epistles, suspected signatures to wills, erasures in documents, valentines. The valentine crop has, however, been enormously reduced of late years. Not many years ago the offensive and anonymous valentine that found its way to the handwriting expert's table was very common. Hie forger of signatures works either by copying the real signature by simply writing an imitation of it as it lies " before him, by tracing it, placing tLv? original signature m ith the document to which th.9 forgery is to be attached on, say. a window pane, going over the signature in pencil, and then covering the mark with ink, 'or by tiacing it straight off with ink. All these methods ar.i easily distinguishable by the expert..

One of the most sensational pieces of expert work performed by a handwriting specialist was in connection Mith th.c trial of Christiana Edmunds, of Brighton, for poisoning a child. Having bought some sweets, Edmunds impregnated them with strychnine, and then, walking out, distributed them to various children she met. One child died and others had narrow .escapes. At the inquest on the victim it came out in evidence that a. certain lady, who had not been identified, had bought strychnine at a local chemist's, and had signed the name " Wood" in Kis register of sales of po:sons. Christiana Edmunds, learning that importance was attached to this signature, actually wrote a letter to the chemist, which she signed with the coroner's name, and despatched it to the shop by a boy, requesting him to hand the bearer the register book for examination.

The book was unsuspectingly handed to the boy, who carried it to Edmunds, who tore out what sb.e believed was the entry, and "then returned the volume by her messenger.

At the trial it appeared that Edmunds had, in her terror and confusion, abstracted an entry signed by another customer named Wood. The signature, . the letter forged in the coroner's name and letters avowedly .vritten by Edmunds w-ere all undoubtedly written by the same person, and the trick was discovered. Edmunds was sentenced to death, but the capital punishment was afterwai'ds commuted to penal servitude for life, upon the suspicion that the wretched woman was insane.

In the famous Great Matlock will case the crossing of the "t" in the word "to" settled the question whether the codicils of a will were genuine or false. In the will, which was in the dead man's handwriting, the "f was uncrossed 51 times, wholly crossed 5 times, but half crossed never. In 50 of the dead man's letters the "t" in. "to" was uncrossed 131 times, wholly crossed 14 times, but never half crossed. In the disputed codicils the "t" was always half crossed.

The jury decided that the codicils were not genuine. The number of anonymous letters submitted To the expert in a year is very large. Sometimes these letters are written by the recipients themselves for certain purposes. An American expert tells an amusing story of such a case. The minister of a certain church one day produced a letter he had* he alleged, received from

another congregation, offering him a larger salary if he would transfer his ministrations to them. To retain him the congregation raised his stipend, and he refused the call.

When other '"calls" arrived the deacons became suspicious. The letters and sermons in the pastor's handwriting were submitted to an expert, and were emphatically declared by him to have been written by* the same man. The minister went — but not to the congregation he represented as being so desirous to secure him. Some exoellent handwriting comparison was done in what is known as the Whalley will case. A man named James Whalley, a retired ironmaster, died in the cottage of a railway porter at Leominster, where he i-ented rooms at nine shillings a week. When he was dead it was discovered that he had left property worth £70,000.

Whalley ha.d a son who lived in Derby, and who, being his sole relative, naturally expected to inherit his wealth. Upon his arrival at the cottage, and searching for a will, he found a closed envelope among the dead man's papers containing the precious document. When the envelope was opened and the will read the son was astounded to find that his father had willed more than half his fortune away from him — to his landlord and a third person. The step was extraordinary, as the old man had frequently told his son that he would inherit all that he possessed, and the young fellow immediately denounced the document as a fraud. But how to prove it? Underneath the writing of the will the expert discovered the traces of pencilwritten words. These words, under the microscope, became sentences — the words of a dying man to his son — a letter to young Whalley from Ins father on his deathbed ! But this writing was not that c-f the dead man, but of the landlord of his lodging. Only the signature — James Whalley — was in ink, and in the dying man's hand !

The fraud was out. Upon his deathbed Whalley had dictated a letter to his son, which the landlord had written in pencil, Whalley signing it in ink. When the old man was dead the landlord had rubbed out the pencil-writing with crumbs of bread, had written the will above Whalley's signature, had opened the envelope in which the real will lay by steaming it, and, having destroyed the real document, and inserted his forgery in its place, had closed the envelope again, and put it among the dead man's papers. The landlord and one of his accomplices went to penal servitude ; another accomplice saved himself by making a full confession and turning Queen's evidence. '