EXPERTS IN HANDWRITING.

Timaru Herald, Volume XLI, Issue 3277, 28 March 1885, Page 3

EXPERTS IN HANDWRITING.

An article on this subject m the Cornhill Magazine says : -'" To enumerate all the cases of forged writing, m which father or sou, and sometimes both, have played an important part, would be to enumerate most of the causes celebres of the last forty years... Among the most famous maybe mentioned that of Roupel, the member for Lambeth, the son of the notorious smelter and founder of Roupel Park at Brixton, whose name he forged indiscriminately for ten years to deedß of gift, conveyances and wills, and who was duly sentenced to penal servitude for life after squandering more than three hundred thousand pounds ; the Tichborne case m its earliest form, when m 1867 the Hon. Mr Sfcourtbn, one of the infant heir's trustees, brought letters of the Claimant and the real Sir Roger for comparison, and when the expert gave his decided opinion that they could not have come from the same hand ; the will of Jonathan Armstrong, of Carlisle, where the writing was so identical that the forgery was only discovered by the fact of a stamp having been used of a later date than the will itself bore, recalling that ingenious scene m Miss Edgeworth's " Patronage," when the date of a sixpence that had been placed under the Beal is equally useful m proclaiming fraud ; the remarkable trial known as Ring's Codicil, whore a clergyman was suspected of forgery, the result being a compromise ; and, not to weary with a distasteful record of crime, the case of Miss Edmunds, of Brighton. This last is incidentally Btrange as affording one of the

many instances of the aatutest criminals who over-reach themselves by a lapae intn carelessness. Miss Edmunds had bought strychnine of the chemist under the name of Wood, m which name she signed the register of the sale of poisons. At the time of the inquest on the child who died of eating the poisoned chocolate she forged a letter from the coroner requesting the loan of the chemist's book for inspection at the inquiry. The chemist gave up the book to the boy who brought the letter, who carried it to Mias Edmunds, who tore out, as she believed, the entry. It appeared, however, on the trial that the abstracted entry referred to another Miss Wood, and that the true criminals remained. The expert proved to the satisfaction of the Court that the letter and the signature: were m Miss Edmund's hand-writing. But these cases that come before the public do not represent one-third of the expert's practice. We are informed by one of the profession (and there are but two: m London, who almost divide the work) thai within the last four years he has been entrusted with more than 600 cases from different parts of the country, m connection with certainly not 200 of which has. he had to appear publicly. The rest are compromised or hushed up, or m many instances never even. go so far as that, for often the consulting parties only want their own suspicions confirmed for their own satisfaction, without any intention of taking further action. They are for the most part matrimonial disputes ; scandalous communications from disappointed suitors, secretly thrust under the front door ; abusive and threatening letters ; erasures m and suspected signatures to wills ; and — strange that a day of universal love and harmony should be so desecrated !— no Valentine's Day passes that doe 3 not bring with it half-a--dozen letters, poesies, or pictures, as to the authors of which the recipients show an angry and a lively curiosity. Occasionally the expert's opinion will bo asked on a difficulty which arose before the profession attained its present eminence — on the validity of a signature to a will, for instance, signed forty years ago, and, though at the time suspected, never legally impugned. " Only the other day," said the authority m question to us, "I was taken to see. one of these wills. The moment I set eyes on it I knew it aa a rank forgery. Nothing could be done, nor ever can be done, m cases where the parties are all dead and the property has long changed hands. The consequence is that, m my own experience, I have met again and again with instances of estates and incomes held under a title founded on the most indisputable forgeries, but which no one at the time had the courage or the money to take into Court."