All attempts to discover the missing man proved fruitless, until in March, 1910, a man was arrested for theft at Nîmes. He gave the name of Charles Garnier, but the police suspecting that the description he gave of himself was false, took impressions of his finger-prints, and forwarded these, together with the man’s description and photograph, to the Anthropometrical Department of the Prefecture of Police in Paris. The finger-prints were immediately recognised by M. Bertillon, and Charles Garnier was identified as Lemarque, the man who had so long been “wanted.”
CHAPTER V
IDENTIFICATION AND HANDWRITING
Heredity—Emotional Influences—Effects of Disease on Handwriting.
The identification of an individual solely by means of his handwriting is always liable to lead to a miscarriage of justice, for even in the cases of the closest resemblance between two writings there can be no certainty on this point. In the following pages I have attempted to point out under what varying conditions handwriting may show alterations and thus lead to wrong conclusions.
In the making of handwriting heredity plays a very important part, just as it does in the characteristic gait and the little mannerisms which are peculiar to each individual. In addition to this, the writing may be modified by the results of training and other external influences.
It is obviously not possible to determine from which ancestors all the features in one’s handwriting are inherited, just as it is impossible to trace the origin of certain obviously inherited traits of character. At the same time, instances in which close resemblances may be noticed between the handwriting of a man and that of his father and grandfather will occur to everyone. Thus a particular slope in the direction of the writing or a mode of looping the letters or of forming certain words may be passed on from generation to generation.