A remarkable fact was brought out in his evidence. Up to the year 1903 Miss Kerferd had invariably formed the letter with a particular loop, and this was seen upon all the cheques, which had been retained by the bank. After that date, however, she made her “k’s” in a totally different manner, and the looping of former years never occurred in any of her writing. Now in the will alleged to have been written in 1898 it was significant that the “k’s” were formed in the manner of later years, and not as Miss Kerferd made them in 1898.
Certain mistakes of spelling in the will were also characteristic of the prisoner, whereas Miss Kerferd never made such slips. The names of the witnesses upon the will, which by the way were also wrongly spelled, were those of men who had been dead several years, but their relatives gave evidence that these signatures were not genuine.
Evidence was also given by the present writer as to the age of the ink upon the alleged will. The body of the will and the signatures of both witnesses were all written in the same kind of ink—a fact of importance in connection with the half-confession subsequently made by the prisoner.
On his appearance at the Old Bailey, Pilcher was defended by Mr. Marshall Hall, and after two days’ trial, he acted upon the advice of his counsel and agreed to plead guilty to uttering the will, though he persisted in his denial of having forged it.
When the prisoner’s counsel rose to make this statement there was dead silence, for everyone in court was aware that something unusual had happened, and there passed over the room one of those feelings of tension that make each individual in a crowd lose sight of everything except the unfolding of the drama before them.
After calling several witnesses to the good character of the prisoner, Mr. Marshall Hall made a strong appeal for mercy. Colonel Pilcher, he said, had been a very intimate friend of this lady, who had frequently expressed the intention of leaving him her money. Unfortunately, having put off signing her will from day to day, she had died without carrying out that intention, and unluckily for him the prisoner had found a will among her papers, but without the signatures of the testatrix or witnesses. He now owned that the signatures were not genuine, but did not know how they had been put upon the will. In uttering the will he had only been attempting to carry out the wish of the dead woman.
In mitigation of his offence it was pointed out that he had not spent all the money he might have done, that he was over sixty years of age, and that his wife who had known nothing of this unfortunate liaison of her husband freely forgave him for any pain he might have caused her.
Before sentence was passed Mr. Muir, who conducted the case for the prosecution, protested against the explanation of the finding of the will that had been given in this confession, and said that in face of the evidence that the ink upon the will was not more than six years old he could not accept the view that the prisoner was not the forger of the document.
The judge, in passing sentence, said that even now the prisoner had not made a clean breast of the matter, for they were still in the dark as to who had signed the names upon the will. However, taking into account the good character that had been given to the accused by those who had known him, and the points urged in his favour, he did not think that the extreme measure of penal servitude was deserved, and the sentence would be one of three years’ penal servitude.