the latter.. It would, if this be so, be more correct apparently to say that it is in virtue of the general trend or channel of our ideas which is organized by thought on the occasion of each particular experience arising, that we recognize the particular handwriting shown us. It is the neural matter of the brain that is so affected by previous impressions made by the sight of such handwriting in the past that it responds at once to a similar impression now made by the sight of similar handwriting. But whether we speak of the influence of the trend of ideas or of awakening the generic image, it must be evident that the more examples of the handwriting which have been seen in the past, the deeper the impression which will have been made. . . . Perhaps it would more nearly express the nature of this general standard if we employ the term "general impression." Concerning these, Professor James says that they seem to be the impulsive result of summation of stimuli: they come about through the subject dispersing his attention impartially over the whole, surrendering himself to the general look. He thus gets a total effect in its entirety, which is lost upon the man who is bent on concentration, analysis, and emphasis. If the time is too short for the latter, it is best to abstain from analysis and be guided by the general look. The person who has the general impression does not give any reason for it, but he feels it is so. He is guided by a sum of impressions not one of which is emphatic or distinguished from the rest, not one of which is essential, not one of which is conceived, but all of which together drive him to a conclusion to which nothing but that sum total leads. The man, however, by seeking to make some one impression characteristic and essential, prevents the rest from having their effect. This remarkable passage is capable of many applications in law and is alluded to elsewhere in this work: it is here cited to assist in showing what the nature of the standard is, and to make it plain that it is idle to cross-examine a witness on the nature or composition of his general impression of a man's handwriting. From it we can also understand why the witness is able to give an opinion as to resemblance, for it was found that it was essential for the perception of resemblance, that there should be sameness in the two things, but that the points of the sameness should be partly undistinguished and unspecified (paragraph 4): and this appears to be exactly the basis of this species of identification. . (b) In the other method, which is prescribed in §§ 45 and 73 of the Act (Indian Evidence Act), two or more writings are compared, and sometimes the opinion of an expert on handwriting is taken on them. What is important here is distinctness of the ground of comparison or common factor. . . . A difference in opinion of two persons concerning the identity of the handwriting on two papers may often be accounted for by the fact that one has a special aptitude for noting likenesses and the other for noting differences, and the practiced aptitude of each will further the detection of that relation. It is said, however, that more weight should be given to evidence of similitude than to that of dissimilitude, because it requires great skill to imitate handwriting, especially for several lines, while dissimilitude may be occasioned by a variety of circumstances, such as the health and spirits of the writer, the care used, the pen, ink, etc.1 But there is another reason given which requires examination. "Handwriting, 1 Lawson, Expert Evidence, 278. notwithstanding it may be artificial, is always in some degree the reflex of the nervous organization of the writer. Hence there is in each person's handwriting some distinctive characteristic, which as being the reflex of his nervous organization, is necessarily independent of his own will, and unconsciously forces the writer to stamp the writing as his own. Those skillful in such matters affirm that it is impossible for a person to successfully disguise in a writing of any length this characteristic of his penmanship; that the tendency to angles or curves developed in the analysis of this characteristic may be mechanically measured by placing a fine specimen within a coarser specimen and the strokes will be parallel if written by the same person, the nerves influencing the direction which he will give to the pen." Whatever writing may be in the adult, it certainly was not reflex action in the child, but much that originally required conscious effort with practice becomes automatic and mechanical and, with this qualification, we do not object to the description. Ribot, however, distinguishes writing from reflex movements proper, and the following quotation will show to what extent: "Reflex movements, whether reflex action proper, natural and innate, or reflex actions that are acquired, secondary, and fixed by repetition and habit, are produced without volition, hesitation, or effort, and may continue a long time without fatigue. They call into action in the organism only those elements necessary to their effectuation, while their adaptation to ends is perfect. In the strictly motor order of things, they are the equivalent of spontaneous attention, which similarly is an intellectual reflex action that presupposes neither choice nor hesitation nor effort, and may likewise continue a long time without fatigue. But there are other classes of movements that are more complex and artificial; as, for instance, writing, dancing, fencing, all bodily exercises, and all mechanical handicrafts. In these instances adaptation is no longer natural, but laboriously acquired. It demands the exercise of choice, repeated endeavor, effort, and at the outset is accompanied by great fatigue." It seems necessary to try and determine to what extent writing is reflex and to what extent it can be modified by will, for it is apparent that if the claim of the experts in caligraphy is really correct, considerably more importance should be attached to evidence of handwriting than is usually done. It is a test of automatic actions that they do not involve attention but are fixed and uniform responses to the fixed and uniform recurrence of similar modes of stimulation. Now it appears to us that it would be untrue to say that writing does not involve attention; though the attention given is not a close one, it is to a certain extent controlled by vision, and we soon become aware of this if we try to write in the dark. Practice dispenses with that close attention to the detailed elements of the composite train which was necessary at first, and so the sensory elements become indistinct as compared with the motor ones, and the final result of the repetition is a habitual or quasi-automatic action in which all the psychical elements, presentations, and representations alike become indistinct. We do not believe, however, that the movements become so independent of the will that in forging or deliberately disguising the handwriting, where attention is preeminently displayed, the attention would not be likely to counteract the effects of habit. 1 Rogers, Expert Testimony, 291, 292, quoted on p. 389 of Ameer Ali & Woodroffe's Indian Evidence Act. 2 Ribot, Attention, p. 57. 16. THE CRANBERRY CASK CASE. (W. WILLS. Circumstantial Evidence. Amer. ed. 1905. p. 179.) At the Spring Assizes, at Bury St. Edmunds, 1830, a respectable farmer, occupying twelve hundred acres of land, was tried for a burglary and stealing a variety of articles. Amongst the articles alleged to have been stolen were a pair of sheets and a cask, which were found in the possession of the prisoner, and were positively sworn to by the witnesses for the prosecution to be those which had been stolen. The sheets were identified by a particular stain, and the cask by the mark "P. C. 84." inclosed in a circle at one end of it. On the other hand, a number of witnesses swore to the sheets being the prisoner's, by the same mark by which they had been identified by the witnesses on the other side as being the prosecutor's. With respect to the cask, it was proved by numerous witnesses, whose respectability left no doubt of the truth of their testimony, that the prisoner was in the habit of using cranberries in his establishment, and that they came in casks, of which the cask in question was one. In addition to this, it was proved that the prisoner purchased his cranberries from a tradesman in Norwich, whose casks were all marked "P. C. 84." inclosed in a circle, precisely as the prisoner's were, the letters P. C. being the initials of his name, and that the cask in question was one of them. In summing up, the learned judge remarked that this was one of the most extraordinary cases ever tried, and that it certainly appeared that the witnesses for the prosecution were mistaken. The prisoner was acquitted. 17. DOWNIE AND MILNE'S CASE. Evidence. Amer. ed. 1905. p. 73.) On the trial of two men at Aberdeen autumn circuit, 1824, it appeared that a carpenter's workshop at Aberdeen was broken open on a particular night, and some tools carried off, and that on the same night the counting-houses of Messrs. Davidson and of Messrs. Catto and Co., in different parts of that city, were broken into, and goods and money to a considerable extent stolen. The prisoners were met at seven on the following morning in one of the streets of Aberdeen, at a distance from either of the places of depredation, by two of the police. Upon seeing the officers they began to run; and being pursued and taken, there was found in the possession of each a considerable quantity of the articles taken from Catto and Co., but none of the things taken from the carpenter's shop or Davidson's. But in Catto and Co.'s warehouse were found a brown coat and other articles got from Davidson's, which had not been there the preceding evening when the shop was locked up; and in Davidson's were found the tools which had been abstracted from the carpenter's. Thus, the recent possession of the articles stolen from Catto and Co.'s proved that the prisoners were the depredators in that warehouse; while the fact of the articles taken from Davidson's having been left there, connected them with that prior housebreaking; and again, the chisels belonging to the carpenter's shop, found in Davidson's, identified the persons who broke into that last house with those who committed the original theft at the carpenter's. The prisoners were convicted of all the thefts. 18. THE CHICAGO ANARCHISTS' CASE. [Printed post, as No. 42.] 19. WEBBER'S CASE. (S. M. PHILLIPPS. Famous Cases of Circumstantial Evidence. No. LXX.) On December 29th, 1876, a terrible disaster occurred at Ashtabula, Ohio, on the Lake Shore Railroad. The train fell through a bridge, and as the cars immediately caught fire, and a large number of the passengers were burned, the most of the bodies were so charred as to prevent recognition. Shortly after this accident, Mrs. Webber, who is a poor woman with two children, appeared in the office of a lawyer, in Rochester, N. Y., and stating that she had every reason to believe that her husband had been killed in that disaster, requested him to commence a suit against the railroad company on her behalf. The evidence which she offered to introduce in proof of her husband's sad fate was only of a circumstantial nature, as nothing was ever found of the body, which was supposed to have been consumed in the flames. She had been to Ashtabula, and in the débris of the wrecked train she had found a bunch of keys which she positively recognized as those having been in the possession of her husband. One of these keys, One of these keys, in further proof, she had ascertained exactly fitted the clock in her house, and an Auburn man was ready to swear that he had made such a key for the deceased. Another key fitted a chest which she had in her possession, while still another of the keys fitted the lock on the door. But the strongest proof of all which she had discovered was a piece of cloth, which she had recognized as having been part of her dead husband's coat. The proof by no means stopped here, however. 20. THE TICHBORNE CASE. The Doctrine of Coincidences. [The general story of this case is stated post, in No. 147.] I proceed to state the leading principle, which governs the Tichborne case thus A physician of Rochester, who knew Mr. Webber, testified that he rode to Buffalo on the same train with the deceased on the fatal 29th of December; while another gentleman testified to seeing deceased take the train at Buffalo which went to ruin at Ashtabula. With this all but positive proof that the husband was among the victims of the disaster, the suit was commenced, the funds enabling her to carry it on being supplied by a kindhearted gentleman. When the railroad company's attorneys were confronted with the proofs of the plaintiff's plaintiff's case, they advised a settlement with her for $4000. But she wanted $5000 or nothing, and the company's lawyers concluded to let the matter go before the Courts. The investigations concerning the fate of the husband were continued, and it was ascertained that he had been sent by Gen. Martindale, his former superior officer in the army, to the Pension Home in Wisconsin, several days previous to the Ashtabula disaster, and this fact soon brought to light the very important disclosure that a man of his name, answering his description exactly, and who stated that he had a wife and two children in Rochester, was still alive and safe in that institution, and that he was not near Ashtabula at the time of the disaster. The case is a most remarkable one, however, from the fact that no person doubted the truthfulness of the witnesses whose evidence formed the basis on which the suit was commenced. dences all pointing to one conclusion. Pray take notice that by "proved coincidences" I mean coincidences that are: 1. Not merely seeming, but independent and real. 2. Either undisputed or disputable. 3. Either extracted from a hostile witness; which is the highest kind of evidence, especially where the witness is a deliberate liar; or 4. Directly sworn to by respectable witnesses in open court, and then cross-examined and not shaken which is the next best evidence to the involuntary admissions of a liar interested in concealing the truth. A single indisputable coincidence raises a presumption that often points towards the truth. A priori what is more unlikely than that the moon, a mere satellite, and a very small body, should so attract the giant earth as to cause our tides? Indeed for years science rejected the theory; but certain changes of the tide coinciding regularly with changes of the moon wore out prejudice, and have established the truth. Yet these coincident changes, though repeated ad infinitum, make but one logical coincidence. On the other hand, it must be owned that a single coincidence often deceives. To take a sublunary and appropriate example, the real Martin Guerre had a wart on his cheek; so had the sham Martin Guerre. The coincidence was genuine and remarkable yet the men were distinet. But mark the ascending ratio see the influence on the mind of a double coincidence — when the impostor with the real wart told the sisters of Martin Guerre some particular of their family history, and reminded Martin's wife of something he had said to her on their bridal night, in the solitude of the nuptial chamber, this seeming knowledge, coupled with that real wart, struck her mind with the force of a double coincidence; and no more was needed to make her accept the impostor, and cohabit with him for years. urged in my first letter as to the severe caution necessary in receiving alleged, or seeming, or manipulated coincidences, as if they were proved and real ones? However, I use the above incident at present mainly to show the ascending power on the mind of coincidences when received as genuine. I will now show their ascending value when proved in open court and tested by cross-examination. A was found dead of a gunshot wound, and the singed paper that had been used for wadding lay near him. It was a fragment of the Times. B's house was searched, and they found there a gun recently discharged, and the copy of the Times, from which the singed paper aforesaid had been torn; the pieces fitted exactly. The same thing happened in France with a slight variation; the paper used for wadding was part of an old breviary subsequently found in B's house. The salient facts of each case made a treble coincidence sworn, crossexamined, and unshaken; hanged the Englishman, and guillotined the Frenchman. In neither case was there a scintilla of direct evidence; in neither case was the verdict impugned. I speak within bounds when I say that a genuine double coincidence, proved beyond doubt, is not twice, but two hundred times, as strong, as one such coincidence, and that a genuine treble coincidence is many thousand times as strong as one such coincidence. But, when we get to a fivefold coincidence real and proved, it is a million to one against all these honest circumstances having combined to deceive us. We have only to subject this hodge-podge of real and sham [in the Claimant's case] to the approved test laid down in my first letter, and we shall see daylight; for the Claimant's is a clear case made obscure by verbosity and conjecture in the teeth of proof! Does not this enforce what I A. He proved in court a genuine |