DISTINGUISHING INKS IN HANDRWRITING
Elizabethan Ink—Milton’s Bible—Age of Inks—Carbon Inks—Herculaneum MSS.—Forgery of Ancient Documents.
Elizabethan Ink—Milton’s Bible—Age of Inks—Carbon Inks—Herculaneum MSS.—Forgery of Ancient Documents.
In order to make clear the principles upon which are based the methods of distinguishing between different kinds of ink in handwriting it is necessary to give some account of the nature of ink.
Ordinary writing ink is essentially a mixture of a decoction of galls (or other substances containing tannin) with a solution of copperas, or as it is now termed, ferrous sulphate. These substances combine with one another to form a tannate of iron, which gradually changes on exposure to the air into another iron tannate, which is insoluble and constitutes the black pigment of writing.
Characters written with a pure freshly-prepared iron gall ink are very faint in colour when first applied to the paper, and it is only after the air has acted upon them that they gradually become dark blue and finally black.
In the old type of iron-gall ink, that which was universally employed down to the early part of last century, inks were exposed to the air or were boiled in order that the insoluble black pigment might form within the liquid, and thus give some colour to the ink when it was first put upon paper. The objection to this is that ink thus prepared is liable to clog thepen and not to penetrate properly into the fibres of the paper.
In the modern type of inks, therefore, which are commonly known as “blue-black” inks, this method of partial oxidation is not employed, but a colouring matter is added instead, so that the writing has some colour immediately, pending the formation of the black pigment within the fibres of the paper.
The nature of this provisional colouring matter varies in different inks, and no two manufacturers appear to use the same substance for this purpose. In some inks indigo is employed, in others logwood, while the introduction of aniline dyestuffs placed an abundant choice of colouring matters at the disposal of the manufacturer.
In the case of old inks it would only have been possible to distinguish between writings done with different kinds where some mistake had been made in the preparation of the ink, and a large excess of iron or of galls had been used.
The possibility of such mistakes occurring, however, will be readily understood when it is remembered that ink-making was formerly as much a part of the duties of the housewife as the baking of bread or the making of cordials.
As writing was a polite accomplishment restricted to the educated people of leisure the ink-manufacturer could not have existed, for there would have been no customers, and recipes for the making of ink were therefore handed down for generations.
A particularly interesting example of an early domestic recipe for making ink is shown in the accompanyingfigure which Mr. G. Weddell has kindly allowed to be reproduced. This was taken from a collection of old family recipes dating back to the early part of the sixteenth century, and including among its odd assortment of items directions for making everything needed for the household, from apple pasties to cures for the king’s evil. This particular recipe, which was one of several for making ink, was probably written towards the close of the sixteenth century. It gives directions for soaking the galls in rain water (or claret, or red vinegar) and boiling the liquid, after standing for a few days, with copperas and gum. The whole collection of these recipes, which suggest many a picture of the life in an English household in the sixteenth century, has been published in facsimile (Arcana Fairfaxiana Manuscripta, 1890).
Elizabethan domestic recipe for ink
Ink made by the rule of thumb methods of thehousewife must have often been very poor stuff, and it is to this cause that we must attribute the want of permanency of the ink in some of the relatively modern writing as compared with that upon manuscripts centuries earlier.
No more interesting illustration of the effect of the composition of old inks upon the permanency of writing can be found than in the various names written in Milton’s family Bible, to be seen in the British Museum. It will be noticed that all the entries of the births of himself and the members of his family are in the handwriting of Milton, and that with one exception all the inks are of a good dark tone. The exception is seen in the entry relating to the birth of his daughter Deborah “on the 2nd of May, being Sunday, somewhat before three of the clock in the morning, 1652.” Here the ink has faded to a faint brown tint.
Considerable variations are possible in the proportions of galls and iron that may be used without interfering with the blackness of the pigment, but a deficiency of tannin outside those limits will cause the writing to turn brown. A lack of tannin to combine with the excess of iron present is probably the explanation of this faded entry in Milton’s Bible.
It is very probable, too, that tests applied to the freshly-written entries would have shown that the ink in this entry was of different composition from that of the inks in the other entries.
Lovibond’s tintometer, an instrument which enables slight differences of colour to be distinguished more accurately than is possible with the naked eye, hasbeen used in matching the colour obtained in chemical reactions with those given by the colour scales prepared from known or suspected inks.
For recording colour, strips of glass graduated so as to form a series of colour scales are employed in this instrument, and in this way a note can be taken of any given tint.
The Tintometer
The first occasion upon which this instrument was employed in criminal work was in the Brinkley poisoning case, in which the colours of the different inks upon the will and other documents were examined by its means.
The problem of determining the age of an ink in writing is much more difficult than that of deciding whether two writings are in the same or in a different kind of ink.
It is, as a rule, possible to distinguish, with the aidof the microscope and tintometer, between freshly-written and old writing up to about the sixth day, after which the black pigment has attained sufficient intensity to prevent further differentiation until after the lapse of two or three years or more, when the provisional pigment will have faded or have become fixed by the iron tannate.
In most cases the provisional pigments used offer greater resistance to the action of chemicals, but are infinitely less stable than the iron tannate when exposed to the action of light and air, and eloquent testimony to this difference is given by the comparison of certain manuscripts of the seventh and eighth centuries with typewritten matter in aniline ink, which has been put aside for a few years.
Thus it happens that when characters written in blue-black ink are kept, the blue pigment will gradually fade out, leaving the black pigment; and when this stage is reached the ink in old writing is readily distinguished from ink that has been freshly put upon paper.
Prior to this, however, the blue provisional colouring matter appears to become enveloped in the particles of iron tannate so that it no longer reacts rapidly with chemical reagents.
Thus, if writing done within the last year or two be treated with acetic acid there is an immediate diffusion of the blue pigment, whereas in the older writing, diffusion, if it occurs at all, is very slow and limited in extent.
A still more useful reagent for this purpose is a saturated solution of oxalic acid, which causes thepigment of relatively fresh writing to give an immediate smudge, but has very little, if any, effect on writing six or eight years old. The differences in the behaviour of old and relatively recent writing are seen in the tests here illustrated, in which the old writing of 1898 was hardly affected by the reagents, whereas the writing done in 1908 gave the results shown.
Both writings were in the same kind of ink and the tests were applied simultaneously.
Speaking generally, a writing done with blue-black ink ceases to show such diffusion after five to six years. When slight diffusion occurs in an older ink it is seen under the microscope to differ in character and only to affect the surface of the letters, whereas the diffusion in an ink written within the last two or three years affects the whole of the pigment in the letters.
The first occasion on which chemical evidence as to the age of blue-black ink has been given in the law courts was in the recent forgery case, in which Colonel Pilcher was accused of forging his cousin’s will. This will was alleged to have been written in 1898; and assuming this to have been the case, the ink should only have reacted very slowly with the different reagents; there should have been little or no diffusion with oxalic acid: and if any slight diffusion occurred it should only have been upon the surface of the letters.
The ink upon the will, however, gave an immediate reaction with the different reagents, the blue pigment diffused at once with oxalic acid, and the diffusion extended throughout the whole of the letters. There was thus no doubt but that the ink upon the will hadbeen written within the last year or two—certainly within the last six years.
Cheques written by the deceased lady during the last thirteen years were also subjected simultaneously to the same tests, and while those written quite recently gave an immediate diffusion, the ink upon those written in 1903 showed only the slightest diffusion in the heaviest writing, and no diffusion at all was obtained upon the cheques written in 1901.
The general adoption of blue-black ink for the old iron-gall ink has made it a simple matter to distinguish between old and new writing, for it is easy to differentiate the two kinds of ink by tests which show the presence of the blue pigment.
The test has been found useful of late in checking the statements of certain claimants of old-age pensions, who, as a proof of their age, have pointed to the entries of date of their birth in old family Bibles.
In more than one instance the results of a scientific examination of the inks have failed to support the claim, for they have proved conclusively that the ink was of recent origin.
It is a simple matter to distinguish between the ancient types of ink that were in use during the early centuries of the Christian era until they were gradually replaced by iron-gall inks and modern writing inks. For the basis of all these ancient inks is lampblack, or some other form of carbon, which is very resistant to the action of reagents. It is for this reason that printing ink, the pigment of which is carbon, is so much more stable than any ordinary writing ink can be. In fact, in order to increase the permanence ofwriting inks it has frequently been recommended to add a small amount of some carbon ink.
The most easily obtained preparation of the kind is the commercial Indian or Chinese ink, which consists essentially of a mixture of glue with lampblack in the finest possible state of division.
In order to distinguish between a carbon ink of this nature and an ordinary writing ink all that is necessary is to apply a dilute bleaching agent. The blue-black pigment of the writing ink will then gradually disappear, whereas the fine particles of carbon in the other ink will show little, if any alteration, and may still be discerned under the microscope as minute black granules resting upon the fibres of the paper.
It was by a method similar to this that Sir Humphrey Davy proved that the writing upon papyri found in the ruins of Herculaneum, which was destroyed inA.D.79, had been done with a carbon ink, of the same nature as that used by the ancient Egyptians and by the Chinese and Japanese at the present day. On none of the Herculaneum MSS. could any trace of iron ink be detected.
The same tests may be applied to determine whether the writing upon a document has been lithographed or has been written with ordinary ink.
An amusing instance of the kind came within the present writer’s experience. A sheet of paper upon which was some writing that was believed to have been written by Nelson had been handed down in a family for several generations as an heirloom, and had always been looked upon as a genuine document. The ink had the faded yellow tone of old iron ink, and therewas nothing to show that the writing was not what it professed to be.
Its present owner, however, happened to notice in a museum what appeared to be a duplicate of the manuscript in his possession, and when a chemical test was applied to the ink upon the latter the pigment was quite unaffected. Hence there could be no doubt as to its being a copy of the original reproduced by lithography.
Cases in which it is necessary to distinguish between iron-gall writing inks and printing or other carbon inks occur from time to time in criminal investigations. As a recent example a case that was tried a few months ago may be mentioned. The chief clerk of a firm of merchants had for a considerable time been defrauding his employers, and when suspicion at length fell upon him, endeavoured to conceal his doings by falsifying the entries of previous years in the ledger.
In order to do this it was necessary to abstract certain pages in a particular part of the ledger and to substitute the necessary alterations. Then, finding that the ink of the writing would appear too new, and thus invite inquiry, he added a small amount of Indian ink to an ordinary writing ink, and thus obtained a mixture, which gave an immediate effect of age to the writing. To the naked eye there was nothing to show that these pages had not been written on the dates mentioned on them, three or four years previously, but on applying a weak bleaching agent the fraud was at once made obvious. The iron-gall part of the pigment faded away, but the particles of carbon that had formed the basis of the Indian inkwere left, and their nature could easily be recognised under the microscope. The entries on the other pages in the ledger, which had been written in ordinary writing were completely bleached in the test.
A very curious illustration of the difficulties that beset the forger of ancient documents was afforded by the trial of Humphreys in 1839 in Edinburgh.
The prisoner was the claimant to the earldom of Stirling, and in support of his claim had produced a number of documents supposed to date back to the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. One of these purported to be a portion of a charter granted by King Charles I to the first Earl of Stirling in 1639, permitting the succession to the earldom to descend through the daughters of the house.
As witness to this there was appended the signature of Archbishop Spottiswood described as “our Chancellor,” whereas as a matter of history the seal had been handed to the Marquis of Hamilton a year prior to the date of the pretended charter. There were also various other anachronisms in the document, such as margins in red ink, which were not used before 1780.
Scientific evidence was also given that the ink upon the pretended charter was not old ink, but ink that had been treated in such a manner as to appear old.
Similar inconsistencies were shown in the other pieces of documentary evidence, and scientific proof was given that the date upon an engraved map, upon the back of which were memoranda supporting the claimant’s case, had been added at a later period.
The jury unanimously found the prisoner guilty of forgery.
TWO NOTABLE TRIALS
Trial of Brinkley—Trial of Robert Wood
Trial of Brinkley—Trial of Robert Wood
The first occasion upon which scientific evidence as to the difference of blue-black inks upon a document was given in a court of law in this country was at the trial of Richard Brinkley at the Guildford Assizes in July, 1907, for the murder of Mr. and Mrs. Beck.
Brinkley, at the time of his trial, was about fifty years of age. He was a carpenter by trade, but in the course of his life had turned his hand to many occupations, and for many months had been living upon the proceeds of the property which he claimed to have inherited.
For some time prior to her death he had made himself indispensable to an old lady named Blume, and when, early in 1906, she died, he produced a will in which she had left him her house and money.
On the strength of this will, which he proved in the usual way, Brinkley took possession of Mrs. Blume’s house, much to the disgust of her daughter and granddaughter, who had always resented his influence over the old lady. They had no knowledge that anything was wrong with the will, but they determined to test its validity, and accordingly acaveatwas entered against it.
Brinkley had not anticipated that he would have to prove that it was a genuine document, or that he would have to depend upon the testimony of the menwhose signatures as witnesses were present upon the will. He knew that he could rely upon one of his witnesses, a man named Hird, who had drawn up the will; but the other witness, Parker, refused to perjure himself for Brinkley’s benefit. He owned that he had signed a paper when he had been out with Brinkley, but denied that he had ever seen or signed a will.
As Parker’s refusal to appear in court meant that the will would be declared a forgery, Brinkley decided that he must be cleared from his path.
He therefore obtained some prussic acid from a man who described himself as “a friend of our dumb fellow-creatures,” alleging that he needed it to kill a dog, and this poison he introduced into a bottle of oatmeal stout, which he took round to Parker’s lodgings in Croydon, and placed in his sitting-room.
Before Parker came home his landlady, Mrs. Beck, went into his room and seeing the bottle of stout called her husband and daughter, and they all drank the poisoned beer that had never been intended for them. Mr. and Mrs. Beck died the same night, and their daughter, who had taken less of the stout, was very ill, though she ultimately recovered.
Parker was immediately arrested, but being able to prove his innocence was soon set free, and suspicion then fell upon Brinkley who, after the coroner’s inquest, was committed for trial on the charge of murdering the Becks, the law being that if you deliberately intend to kill one person and unintentionally kill another you are none the less guilty of murder.
On the way to the police station, after his arrest, Brinkley made the significant statement: “If anyonesays I put poison in stout, he’s got to prove it.” Up to that moment there had been no mention of poisoned stout.
At the police court proceedings it was proved that the Becks had died from the effects of prussic acid, that Brinkley had bought that poison, that he had bought a bottle of stout in West Croydon, and that he had been seen on the platform at Wandsworth waiting for the West Croydon train.
The motive of the crime was an important link in the chain of evidence, but Brinkley held stoutly to his story that the will was signed by both witnesses in the presence of Mrs. Blume.
Parker’s version of his signature, the authenticity of which he did not dispute, was that while he was out with Brinkley one evening the latter asked him to sign his name upon a paper petitioning for an outing, and that they had thereupon turned into a public-house, where he, Parker, had written his name upon a sheet of paper, the upper part of which was folded over.
In order to test the truth of Parker’s statement the bottle of ink was obtained from that public-house, and he was told to write his name upon a sheet of paper in that ink, and this paper and the original will were submitted to the present writer for examination.
By the aid of the methods described in the preceding pages it was found that the ink of Parker’s signature upon the will and that of the writing upon the piece of paper were of the same kind—an ink readily recognisable from its particularly brilliant blue pigment. In addition to this, three distinct kinds of ink werepresent upon the will, the body of the document and the signature of one witness being in one kind of ink, the signature of the testatrix in another, and the signature of the other witness in a third.
When the case came on at the Assizes at Guildford Mr. R. D. Muir appeared for the prosecution, while the prisoner was very ably defended by Mr. Frampton. Every day the judge, counsel on both sides, the prisoner, and many of the witnesses went down to Guildford by a train in the morning and returned to London again in the evening.
Each morning the prisoner when he entered the court appeared quite unconcerned, and chatted with the warders. As is so often the case, he did not seem to realise the gravity of his position.
It was shown in the evidence that he had some knowledge of poisons, and that he had selected one that would disappear more or less rapidly from the body after death. The chemical evidence as to the presence of prussic acid in the bodies was given by Dr. Stevenson and Mr. Bodmer, and was not called in question by the defence.
Evidence was also given by the writer with regard to the inks upon the will, and this, too, was not disputed. In fact, Brinkley, who went into the witness-box, when asked how he explained the fact of three kinds of ink being on the will replied that Mrs. Blume had three different sorts in the house.
He was then asked what had become of two of them, since only one bottle of ink was discovered when the house was searched, and to this his answer was that he had given these to a little girl.
Throughout the trial Brinkley’s explanations of damning facts were never supported by any evidence, while for every statement of Parker there was abundant corroboration.
The scene in court on the opening day of the trial will probably never be forgotten by anyone present. A heavy thunderstorm passed over Guildford, and for some minutes such blackness filled the interior of the hall where the Assizes were held that it was barely possible to distinguish the faces of those who were trying a man for his life, excepting when they were lit up by the vivid flashes of lightning. Throughout the storm Mr. Muir continued, in clear incisive tones, which could be plainly heard across the noise of the thunder, to marshal the array of deadly facts, from which there could be no escape for the prisoner sitting motionless in the dock.
To the journalist nothing that means “copy” is sacred, and the representative of one leading London paper whispered to another sitting just behind the writer, “What a pity this couldn’t happen while the sentence of death was being passed!”
Mr. Frampton in his speech for the defence dwelt principally upon other possible explanations of evidence, which, as he urged, was entirely circumstantial in character, but he was unable to produce any witnesses to support the assertions of Brinkley.
After a trial which lasted four days, the judge (Sir John Bigham) summed up, and the jury, after a short retirement, found the prisoner guilty.
Until the end he protested his innocence.
The most sensational trial that has taken place in this country for many years was that of Robert Wood, a young artist, in 1907, on the charge of murdering a woman.
The story of the crime itself is a particularly sordid one, but the behaviour of the prisoner in court, and the excited state of public feeling upon the subject gave a profound psychological interest to the trial.
A woman had been found brutally murdered in her lodgings in a small house in Camden Town, and no trace could be found of the murderer.
In the fire-grate, however, had been found some charred fragments of a letter, while in the chest of drawers a post card that had escaped notice had been discovered.
A reproduction of this post card was posted up at the police-stations and published in the papers, and was soon recognised by several people as being in the handwriting of Robert Wood.
In the meantime, Wood, finding that suspicion was likely to attach to him, persuaded a girl of his acquaintance, named Ruby Young, to promise to support his statement that he had been with her upon the evening when the murder took place.
A day or two later Ruby Young became uneasy as to the effect her promise was likely to produce, and asked the advice of a journalist as to what would be the best thing to do, putting the case as a hypothetical one. The man, however, at once saw to what she alluded, and immediately telephoned to the police, and this led to the arrest of Robert Wood.
At the police court proceedings an expert opinionwas given that the fragments of charred paper found in the grate of the dead woman, were in the handwriting of Wood, and evidence was also given by the present writer that the pigment in which the characters were written was identical with that of a marking-ink pencil found upon the prisoner.
For a long time Wood denied that he had had anything to do with these fragments. Subsequently, at the beginning of the trial at the Old Bailey, he admitted that he had written them, though to the end he strenuously refused to admit that the words had the meaning which they appeared to suggest.
He denied that they referred to any appointment made with the dead woman for the day upon which she was murdered.
The proof of the fact that these bits of charred paper had really been written by Wood brought him very close to the scene of the crime, and his attempt to create a false alibi and to get Ruby Young to bear this out still further strengthened the suspicion against him.
The most telling evidence, however, was the statement of a carman, who had, he asserted, seen a man leave the house of the murdered woman at five o’clock in the morning. He had not seen the face of the man, but had noticed that he had a characteristic swinging walk, and when taken to the police station had identified the prisoner among a number of other men, who had been made to walk round the yard, as the man that he had seen coming down the steps of the house.
Other evidence was given as to Wood’s having beenseen in the company of the deceased woman on several occasions in the past, although he asserted that he had only known her a few days and had seen her only once or twice. The bad reputation of most of these witnesses detracted from the value of their evidence.
Mr. Marshall Hall, who conducted Wood’s defence, made a very brilliant speech, in which he laid stress upon the weak points in the case for the prosecution—the evidence that had been gathered from a tainted source, the complete absence of any motive for the crime, and the fact that the jury were trying the prisoner for murder and not for immorality or lying.
He urged that the keynote in this case was that Wood, who had a great deal of vanity, could not take upon himself the responsibility of admitting what would cause him to occupy a lower position in the estimation of those who had given him their undivided respect and affection.
What, he asked, was the evidence of murder? The only iota of evidence that turned the scale against Wood was that of the man McGowan, who stated that he had seen the prisoner leaving the house, and had afterwards recognised him by an alleged peculiarity in his gait.
Two months after the arrest of her lover, Ruby Young, for the first time, had said that he had a peculiar gait similar to that described by McGowan, and so far as she was concerned this, said counsel, was a gross and vindictive lie.
The chief evidence called for the defence was thatof Wood’s father and brother, who stated that he was at home on the night of the murder, and of a neighbour who had lived beneath them, who had seen Wood come home that evening.
A ticket collector named Westcott, employed at King’s Cross station, stated that he lived in the same road, and that on the early morning, when Wood was stated to have been seen, he left his house at five minutes to five. He was then wearing a loose overcoat. Westcott was a broad-shouldered man, and a boxer, and had a brisk swinging walk. It was this man, it was suggested, whom McGowan had mistaken for Wood.
Wood, himself, was put into the box and gave his evidence in a low, and at times, nearly inaudible voice, though he showed not a sign of nervousness. He gave emphatic denials to the questions put to him in cross-examination by Sir Charles Matthews, but he admitted having lied in the matter of the false alibi that he had attempted to set up. He was, he said, in a tight corner, and any man would have done the same if placed in the same conditions.
With reference to the fragments of paper on which were words in his handwriting he denied that they were part of a letter, and suggested that it might have been some scrap of writing taken from his pocket by the dead woman. The theory of its referring to an assignation was, he suggested, an act of imagination upon the part of the prosecuting counsel.
The judge, Sir William Grantham, in summing up the case, pointed out that had it not been for the conduct of Wood himself in telling lies and keepingback what he knew, there would have been no justification for such a lengthy trial.
The evidence of McGowan was, he said, open to a certain amount of doubt, owing to the fact that the witness had not mentioned at once about having noticed a peculiarity in the walk of the man he saw leaving the house in St. Paul’s Road, just before five o’clock on the morning of September 12th.
Then the statements of Ruby Young did not bring the crime home to the prisoner at all. That was a remarkable feature in the case. A number of witnesses for the Crown did not directly connect the prisoner with the crime.
The inference, in view of the evidence of other witnesses, was that Wood in his evidence had been lying all through. But the jury could not convict him because he was a liar. It was mainly in consequence of Wood’s own false statements that the prosecution were bound to rely upon the evidence of the other witnesses who had come forward.
“Although,” said the judge in concluding his address to the jury, “it is my duty to do all I can to further the interests of justice, it is also my duty to inform the jury that they must not find a man guilty unless no loophole is left by which he can escape. In my judgment, strong as is the suspicion in this case, I don’t think the prosecution have brought the case near enough home to the prisoner—with the exception of the evidence of McGowan. That evidence, if implicitly relied upon, would justify you in finding him guilty; but that evidence is considerably controverted. I don’t think the identification, even if true, is sufficient tojustify you in finding this man guilty. Therefore, although it is a matter for you alone, it is my duty to point out the effect of the evidence, and it is my duty to point out that unless the effect of the evidence is so conclusive that there can be no doubt in anyone’s mind, you should give the prisoner the benefit of the doubt, and say you don’t think he is guilty.”
It was a quarter to eight in the evening when the jury retired to consider their verdict, and before eight had struck they were back again in court, and had pronounced their verdict of “Not guilty.”
Cheer on cheer swept through the court, and for some minutes it was impossible for the judge and the court officers to obtain silence. Men and women thronged round the dock eager to grasp the hand which Robert Wood held out to them over the rail.
Outside, in the street, the dense mob that thronged up to the very doors of the court, took up the cry, and yelled itself hoarse with the words “Not guilty. Not guilty.”
The public had long before this decided that Wood was innocent, and the orgies of wild enthusiasm that followed upon the announcement of the verdict were some indication of the tense excitement that had been pent up for so many days. Robert Wood had become the popular hero of the hour.
It is difficult now to account for this hero-worship of a man who had done nothing to justify such worship, except upon the theory of an emotional infection that had destroyed the balance of collective judgment. This want of proportion reached its limit perhaps in an article written for a Sunday paper by one of thebest known actresses. After describing the emotional stress through which she had passed while waiting for the jury to give their verdict she mentioned that she had gone into the hall. There she had noticed a forlorn little figure of a girl wandering listlessly up and down. Someone told her that this was Ruby Young, and for a moment she had felt an impulse to go and speak to her, for she pitied her from the bottom of her heart. And as she looked at her, with tears welling up in her eyes, she thought of Peter when he had gone out and wept bitterly!
It was a matter of the greatest difficulty for those connected with the case to force a way through the surging crowd that was waiting to give a boisterous welcome to the acquitted artist and his solicitor and counsel, and to vent their disapproval upon witnesses who had dared to give evidence against him, and particularly Ruby Young.
For hours she waited, trembling, within the building, for it was not thought prudent to allow her to venture outside; and it was quite late at night before, disguised as a charwoman, she was able to make her escape through a small door that had not attracted the notice of the mob.
This was the climax of one of the most unpleasant features of the trial, in the course of which several of the witnesses had complained to the judge of the attempts that had been made to intimidate them from giving their evidence.
Another memorable feature in the trial was the behaviour of the accused.
Throughout his ordeal Wood seemed to be moreconcerned about the impression he was making upon the spectators in court than about the necessity of accounting satisfactorily for many suspicious circumstances that told against him.
So well did he appear to be able to control his emotions that, as he himself wrote afterwards, he could notice whether one of the actresses who attended the trial day by day, smiled upon him.
Never for one moment did he lose this self-control or appear otherwise than an unconcerned witness of the events upon which his life depended.
This absence of nerves in the accused is what struck most people as one of the strangest features in a strange trial, and caused Mr. Hall Caine, who was present in the court throughout the whole time, to write of him: “That he felt nothing I will not dare to say, that his mental processes were not frequently stirred to such pain as comes of baffling difficulties, but that the ordeal of his trial was a terrible one to him I absolutely refuse to believe. Robert Wood, innocent of the murder of Emily Dimmock, is yet the most remarkable man alive.”
In what trial upon a charge of murder has there ever been witnessed the sight of the prisoner, whose life was hanging in the balance, laughing and chatting with his friends, and making sketches of the judge, the counsel, and the witnesses? Even at the most crucial moment of the trial, when the jury had withdrawn to consider their verdict he exhibited no trace of anxiety, but until called below sat calmly sketching, while he waited for their return.
And thus Mr. Hall Caine wondered, as he got theprisoner to sign his name upon the back of a copy of the charred fragments of the letter, whether “with all his mental alertness, his intellectual activity, his temperamental composure, this was not one of those men, the rare and mysterious men, who lack some necessary quality on the moral side of their nature.”
SYMPATHETIC INKS
The so-calledsympathetic inks, by which is understood inks that give a writing that is invisible, or nearly so, until it has been acted upon by the air or treated with a special reagent, have been put to many ingenious uses by the criminal.
Some five years ago an innocent-looking individual called at the laboratory of one of the leading consulting chemists in London, and asked whether he could be supplied with a writing fluid that would give writing which would fade away in a short time, and also with another ink that would produce words that would be invisible for some time and then appear. He gave as his reason for requiring these that he wanted to amuse a small boy.
The sequel was seen a few weeks later when the same plausible individual was arrested for swindling on the race-course. He had made tempting bets on certain horses, the names of which he had written on slips of paper, and had handed these slips to those who had accepted his wagers.
In a short time the name of the horse on each slip of paper gradually faded away while the name of another horse slowly appeared in its place.
One man to whom one of these slips had been given, having been warned by another victim, hurried away to the police station, and was in time to let the superintendent see the name of an “outsider” replace thatof one of the favourites upon which he had laid his money.
This appears to have been the last detected attempt to use a sympathetic ink upon the race-course. A disappearing ink frequently used for this purpose is a weak solution of starch containing a slight trace of iodine, the effect of which is to produce a faint blue colour. On exposure to the air the colour of writing done with such a fluid soon fades away.
Fugitive dye-stuffs have also been employed as disappearing inks, and some of these, such as quinoline blue, give characters that rapidly disappear when exposed to sunlight.
An ink that is invisible for some time is a solution of silver nitrate in ammonia, which gradually becomes black when acted upon by air and light. Or certain dye-stuffs such as magenta, that have been treated with a bleaching reagent in just sufficient quantity to decolorise them fulfil the same purpose, the original colour gradually reappearing as the oxygen of the air acts upon the pigment.
The earliest inks that were rendered visible by chemical reagents were believed to act by magnetism.
Thus in a medical book of the seventeenth century, written by Brossonius, a “magnetic fluid” is described made from “arseniated liver of sulphur,” which only became visible when looked at with the “eyes of affection.” This appears to have been nothing more mysterious than an ink of lead acetate, the characters written with which could be rendered visible by exposing them to the vapour of sulphuretted hydrogen.
Inks of this kind were also mentioned, in 1669, byOtto Tachen, who referred to them asaquæ magnetice e longinquo agentes, but pointed out that there was nothing magnetic in their action. The termsympathetic inkappears to have originated with Le Mort, who applied it to the lead acetate ink, and later on the name was extended to all secret inks.
The best known sympathetic inks consist of solutions of cobalt salts, the writing done with which changes on heating from a nearly invisible pink to blue. This peculiarity of cobalt to form two series of salts containing different amounts of water was discovered in 1715 by Waiz.
Other compounds that may be used as sympathetic writing fluids include tannin, which forms ordinary ink on the addition of iron sulphate; cobalt nitrate which becomes blue on adding oxalic acid, and gold chloride which gives a purple colour with tin chloride.
Some thirty years ago a patent was taken out by Kromer for the use of a sympathetic ink in detecting any tampering with envelopes. The two dried constituents of the ink, say tannin and iron sulphate, are separated by the adhesive gum upon the envelope, so that should steam be applied to open the letter, the two substances come into contact, and form an ink, which leaves a stain upon the paper.
Printing inks based upon these principles are used in preparing the groundwork of cheques, so that any attempt to remove the writing from the cheque by means of chemical agents will be betrayed by the change of colour upon the body of the paper.
The value of sympathetic inks in detecting an offender was strikingly shown in the recent Suttonlibel case, in which a woman was found guilty of sending offensive cards through the post.
The story is a very remarkable one. For many months during 1908 and the early part of 1909, there was an epidemic of anonymous post cards in Sutton, many people receiving them and no one being able to trace their origin.
Among other people who received these cards was a Mrs. Tugwell, and in some of them it was stated that she and another woman were “not fit members” of a certain congregation. Suspicion fell upon the housekeeper of the Roman Catholic priest, Annie Dewey, and mainly on the evidence of a handwriting expert, she was committed for trial at the Assizes.
The writing on the libellous cards was undoubtedly extremely like that of Miss Dewey, and, as events subsequently proved, was a very skilful imitation of it by someone who wished to throw suspicion upon her. When the Assizes came on, no evidence was offered by the prosecution and the case was dismissed. The libels still continued, however, and Mrs. Tugwell having received more libellous cards, her husband again took the matter up, and Miss Dewey was once more committed for trial in March, 1910. The trial was a very exhaustive one, but no convincing evidence was brought against the accused, who was therefore acquitted.
In the meantime a number of suspicious circumstances pointed to the conclusion that Mrs. Tugwell herself was the author of the libellous cards and letters, and that she had also apparently written those that she had received through the post.
In order to obtain proof of this the police, by arrangement with the postal authorities, marked a large number of stamps with a sympathetic ink, that would not become visible until it had been treated with another reagent.
Instructions were given to the postmaster that these marked stamps were to be supplied to none but members of the Tugwell family.
In April two more libellous post cards were sent to Canon Cafferata, a Roman Catholic priest, and the stamps upon these cards were two of those marked with the invisible ink.
The house of the Tugwells was now watched by the police, and one evening when Mrs. Tugwell was seen coming out, the pillar-box close at hand was immediately cleared of all its letters by an official. Mrs. Tugwell then put two letters in the box, both of which contained foul libels. One of these was addressed to a friend of hers and the other to herself.
The handwriting on both these letters was an imitation of that of Miss Dewey. A warrant was now issued for the arrest of Mrs. Tugwell, and when her house was searched, envelopes having the same watermark as that of the envelopes containing the libellous letters were discovered. There were also found some French books containing the French phrases used in the letters, and several pieces of blotting paper upon which were words and phrases occurring in libellous letters.
REMARKABLE FORGERY TRIALS