The two false identifications combined were sufficient to send an innocent man to prison, and it was long before it was established that the witnesses upon whose evidence he had been convicted had been utterly mistaken both with regard to his identity and his handwriting.
CHAPTER VII
FORGED DOCUMENTS
Use of Microscope—Erasures—Photographic Methods—Typewritten Matter—Examinations of Charred Fragments—Forgery of Bank Notes.
The most valuable methods of detecting forgery have been based upon the use of the microscope, which will frequently reveal alterations that are quite invisible to the naked eye.
For instance, a letter may have been so carefully erased as to defy detection by ordinary examination, but a microscopical examination will show the slightly roughened surface of the paper, where the fibres have been disturbed in the process of erasure. A notable example of this was seen in the Whalley will case, an account of which is given on a later page, and numerous instances of the same kind have come under the direct observation of the present writer.
In one of these cases, which was settled before it reached the courts, a letter which was to be put in evidence in a dispute as to some property had originally contained the words “your house,” but the “y” had been skilfully erased, so that the words read “our house.”
When the paper was held to the light it showed an almost imperceptible thinness at that place, but under the microscope the ruffled fibres on the surface of the paper where the sizing had been scratched off, were very noticeable.