It is a well-known fact, in connection with palimpsests, that time will often recall a writing long believed to have been obliterated. Erase the writing as carefully as is possible, till all trace of pencil or pen has vanished, yet with most kinds of paper one will really only have erased the immediate marks of the plumbago or ink. The indentations on the paper will remain, merely filled up with the dust and surface of the material rubbed over them. This is what occurred here. The testator, it was proved at the subsequent trial, believing himself to be in extremis, desired the presence of his son. At his request the principal legatee had written for him the letter, taking the precaution of writing it in pencil—being equally careful, at the same time, that the signature should be in ink. The rest of the proceeding was simple: the pencil was rubbed out, and over the signature the will was written. It was proved that the will in which he left almost the whole of his property to his son was done away with, and Thomas and Nash were convicted.
The next document we present was produced by the public prosecutor in court at the trial of William Palmer, the poisoner, in 1856. It is a page from a diary discovered by the police among the guilty man's effects at Rugeley. In this diary each of Palmer's numerous murders was chronicled, together with most of the details of his personal association with his victims, of whom John Parsons Cook was the last. Having denied that he had been with Cook on the Sunday and Monday in question, this diary, in the murderer's own handwriting, were other evidences not forthcoming, convicted him of falsehood—and (on a post-mortem examination, first of one victim and then another) of murder. He expiated his crime at length on the scaffold.
LETTER FROM NEILL CREAM THE POISONER.
But a more celebrated case than either of those we have yet mentioned was that surrounding the claimant to the Tichborne estates. It is almost needless to recapitulate the circumstances of this great action, in which Arthur Orton, a butcher's apprentice, sought to pass himself off as the long missing Roger Charles Tichborne. But throughout all the sophistries by which Orton sought to strengthen his case there were three documents which, in the jury's eyes, annulled all the efforts of his counsel. These three documents consist of, first, the handwriting of the real Sir Roger Charles Tichborne; second, of the man who claimed to be he; and third, of Arthur Orton. A moment's glance, even by those unpractised in the art of analysing and comparing handwriting, sufficed to show that the hand which had written the "Arthur Orton" letter was the same hand that had sent from the Metropolitan Hotel, Sydney, the affectionate letter to Lady Tichborne. But as to any real affinity between these letters and the admittedly genuine one signed by "Roger Charles Tichborne" in 1852, there is none whatever.
There are two cases of recent celebrity which relate to wilful murder, and in which documents played an important part. Few can have forgotten the trial and conviction of Thomas Neill Cream. We publish photographs of papers in the guilty man's handwriting which figured in that case. This wretched man seems to have murdered his victims in order to blackmail others for the crime. The first example is a letter to the deputy-coroner, which reads like the epistle of a madman, but which sheds considerable light on the methods Cream might adopt; the second is a specimen of Cream's "backhand," in which he identifies himself with the family of one of his victims.
The second of the two cases mentioned is that of James Canham Read. It will be recalled that in this murder trial a telegram was produced which clinched the evidence against the prisoner by destroying his contention of alibi. This telegram, which speaks for itself, is now in the possession of the Scotland Yard authorities.
THE TELEGRAM THAT HANGED JAMES CANHAM READ.