Disputed Handwriting

n-A Forger's Tracks Cannot Be Successfully Covered-With Modern Devices Fraudulent, Forged and Simulated Writing Can Be Determined beyond the Possibility of a Mistake-Bank Officials and Disputed Handwr

ed Handwriting-Examples of Signatures Forgers Desire to Imitate-Examining and Determining a Forgery-Comparisons of Disp

s, drafts, deeds, wills, etc. To a less extent the disputed portions involve alterations of books of account and other writings, by erasure, addition, interlineation, etc., while sometimes the trouble comes in the form of disguised or simulated writings. A disproportionately large number of these cases arise from forged and fictitious claims

ection is ofttimes difficult, and expert demonstrations less certain or convincing. Yet instances are rare in which the forger of even a signature does not leave some unconscious traces that will betray him to the ordinary expert, while in most instances forgery will be at once so apparent to an expert as to admit o

rged handwriting in Appe

r simulated writing can be determined beyond the possibility of a mistake. Every year sees an increas

uted signature and a knowledge of how to test and determine genuine and forge

upon thousands of forged checks, notes, drafts, wills, deeds, receipts and all kinds of commercial pap

eguard one's signature against forgery is something that will be welcom

ly imitated. Experience has demonstrated that the easiest signatures to successfully forge are those that are illegible, either from design or accident. The banker or business man who sends his pen through a series of gyrations, whirls, flour

the capitals. Select a style of capital letters and always use them; study out a plain combination of them; practice writing until it can be written easily and rapidly and stick to it. Don't confuse your banker by changing the form of a letter or adding flourishes. Countless repetitions will give a facility in writing it that will lend a gr

must know all the characteristics of his own hand; second, he must be able to kill all the characteristics of his own hand; third, he must know all of the characteristics in the hand he is imitat

on as he leaves off following the copy book, however, his writing begins to take on individual characteristics. These are for the most part unconscious. He thinks of what he is writing, not how. In time these peculiarities, which creep gradually into a man's writing, become fixed habits. By the time he is, say, twen

arm, one with a broken nose. To find a person with two of these would require, probably, 100,000 people; three of them, 1,000,000; four of them, 100,000,000. One possessing all of them might not be found in the entire 14,000,000,000

y the same manner. A person casting dice might throw double aces a hundred times consecutively. But who would not act on the practical certainty that the dice were loaded long before the hundredth throw was reached in

say, a hundred times, writing them on various occasions and under different circumstances, and then to compare the result. It is safe to say that they will hardly find two of these

procedure. The forger secures examples of the signature or writing which he desires to imitate. Then he practices on it, trying to reproduce all its striking peculiarities. In this way he sometimes arrives at a resemblance so close as to deceive even his victim. Sti

's writing and at the same time to conceal all his own. At some point there is certain to come a slip when the habit of y

nd the dotting of i's become matters of large moment in making comparisons of disputed handwritings. There is probably no matter in conjunction with a man's ordinary writing to which he gives less thought than the way he makes these crosses and dots. For that reason they are in the highes

y fashion. The imitations show frequent pauses, irregularities in pen pressure and in the distribution of ink, and contain other evidences of hesitation. Not infrequently the forger t

n identification of the person which so often forms the chief difficulty in criminal trials. As illness, strange dress, unusual attitude, and the like, ca

ally the best witness in a handwriting case is one who often sees the party write, through whose hands his writing has been c