EXIT THE HANDWRITING EXPERT.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LI, Issue 162, 30 June 1908, Page 2

EXIT THE HANDWRITING EXPERT.

" Too much reliance need not bo placed upon this class of evidence," remarked one of liis Majesty's judges the other day with rctcrcnce to the testimony of a certain handwriting expert. the saving is worthy of remembrance, hi that if probably marks the beginning of the end in an era of modern criniii? ology. At one time such evidence "was all powerlul. It was largely instrumental m sending Beck into penal servitude for seven years, and it would have sent him down for a second similar term but for a lucky accident. Yet all the while, as everybody now knows, he was innocent. ■lhe similarities between liis penmanship and that of the real culprit, .lohn .Smith, similarities which undoubtedly existed, were mere chance ones. After such an experience as this, there 'could be but one opinion as regards the value, or, rather, (lie want of value, of expert evidence of tile kind. It is not thai the expert sets himself purposely to mislead judge and jury. It is the theory itself thai is in'fault. Jlesides, such evidence, even if it were reliable, is no longer needed. A new expert has arisen to supersede the handwriting one. This is the expert in inks. The business of the latter is to determine, by careful and painstaking analysis, whether a given document Is written in one or more inks, or whether the ink used 011 any one document is the same as that 011 another.

He lirst lnade his appearance in a Court of Justice in connection with the trial last year of the poisoner Brinkley. Since then his profession has made such vast stride I,invar,l, that it is now possible to discriminate between more than one hundred brands of ink, and even to lix with approximate accuracy the date at which a letter or signature ivas penned.