The Detection of Forgery / A Practical Handbook for the Use of Bankers, Solicitors, Magistrates' Clerks, and All Handling Suspected Documents

by Douglas Blackburn; W. Waithman Caddell

CHAPTER XV.

Forged Signatures.

The most difficult phase of the art of the handwriting expert consists in the detection of forgery in signatures. It will be obvious to the student who has followed the instructions and illustrations already given that this difficulty is brought about by two principal causes: first, by the paucity of material for comparison; secondly, because of the very important fact that a forgery must, by its nature, be a good and close copy of an original. This means that the unconscious tricks and irregularities that often abound in a long letter, written in a more or less disguised hand, are almost entirely absent from a forged signature. It follows, therefore, that the student must have some other clues and rules to guide him, for he cannot rely upon the chance of a slip or accidental trick occurring in a signature that contains at most perhaps a dozen letters.

The first step in the examination of a suspected signature is to master thoroughly the various characteristics of the genuine signature. These must be studied in every possible relation, and from as many specimens as can be obtained. The magnifying glass must be in constant use and the eye alert to detect the angle at which the pen is habitually held, the class of pen used, and the degree of pressure and speed employed. These last-named points can only be discovered as the result of practice and observation, and though at first sight it may appear impossible to form a correct estimate of the pace at which a pen has travelled, the student will, if observant, soon learn to detect the difference between a swiftly formed stroke and one written with slowness and deliberation. By making a number of each kind of stroke and carefully examining them through a glass, the student will learn in an hour more than can be taught by means of verbal description. The study of the genuine signatures must be continued until every stroke and its peculiarities are as familiar as the features of a well-known face, for until one is thoroughly impregnated with the original it will be useless to proceed with the examination of the suspects.

At first sight the student will probably perceive very little, if any, difference between the original and the suspect. It would be a very clumsy forgery if he could. Gradually the points of dissimilarity will become clear to him, and with each fresh examination they grow plainer, until he is surprised that they did not sooner strike him; they are so obvious that the eye cannot avoid them; they stand out as plainly as the hidden figure, after it has been detected, in the well-known picture puzzles. There are few faculties capable of such rapid and accurate development as that of observation. Thousands of persons go through life unconscious of the existence of certain common things until the occasion arises for noticing them, or accident forces them upon the attention; then they marvel that the thing should have escaped observation. This is a truism, no doubt, but the force of every platitude does not always present itself to every one. The comparison of handwritings is so essentially a matter of cultivating the powers of observation, that even if turned to no more practical account than that of a hobby its value as a mental exercise is great.

There are two principal methods by which a signature may be forged: first, by carefully copying the original as one would copy a drawing; secondly, by tracing it.

The first process is referred to as copied. The forger will, most probably, have practised the signature before affixing it to the cheque or other document, thereby attaining a certain degree of fluency. But however well executed, close examination with the aid of the magnifying glass will reveal those signs of hesitancy and irregularity that one may reasonably expect to find in a copy.

There is no part of a person's handwriting so fluent and free as his signature. Even the most illiterate persons show more freedom and continuity of outline in their signature than in the body of their writing. This is explicable on the ground of usage. A writer may feel a degree of momentary uncertainty in forming a word that he does not write frequently, but his signature he is more sure about. He strikes it off without hesitancy, and in the majority of cases appends some meaningless flourish, which may be described as a superfluous stroke or strokes added for the purpose of ornamentation, for adding distinctiveness, or, in some cases, and particularly with business men, with the idea that the flourishes help to secure the signature from forgery. Such writers will probably be surprised to learn that there is no form of signature so easy to forge as that involved and complicated by a maze of superfluous lines and meaningless flourishes. The most difficult signature for the forger is the clear, plain, copybook-modelled autograph. A little thought and examination will make the reason for this clear.

Let a signature be enveloped in a web of curves and flourishes, making it look like a complicated script monogram. The lines are so numerous that the eye cannot take them all in at a glance, and, if copied, any slight irregularity or departure from the original is more likely to pass undetected amid the confusing network of interlaced lines. If, on the other hand, the signature be simple and free from the bewildering effects of flourishes, the entire autograph lies revealed, a clear and regular outline, and the slightest variation from the accustomed figure stands out naked and plain. Most of the successful forgeries will be found to be on signatures of the complicated order. Their apparent impregnability has tempted the facile penman to essay the task of harmless imitation; his success has surprised and flattered him, and the easy possibilities of forgery opened up. More than one forger has admitted that his initiatory lessons were prompted by an innocent challenge to imitate a particularly complicated "forgery-proof" signature.

It must be remembered that the eye of the casual observer takes in a word as a whole rather than in detail. This explains why an author can rarely be trusted to correct his own proofs. He knows what the word should be, and in reading his work in print he notices only the general expected effect of a word. It needs the trained eye of the proof-reader to detect the small c that has taken the place of the e, the battered l that is masquerading as an i. So long as the general outline of the word is not distorted the wrong letters are often passed; and it is much the same with a signature with which one is fairly familiar. The trained examiner of handwriting, like the proof-reader, knows what to look for, and discovers irregularities that would escape the notice of the untrained eye.