CHAPTER XV

GUIDED HANDWRITING AND METHOD USED

The Most Frequent and Dangerous Method of Forgery--How to Detect a Guided Signature--What Guided Handwriting Is and How It Is Done--Character of Such Writing--Writing by a Guided Hand--Difficulty in Writing--Force Exercised by Joint Hands--A Hand More or Less Passive--Work of the Controlling Hand--How Guided Writing Appears--Two Writers Acting in Opposition--Distorted Writing--How a Legitimate Guided Hand is Directed and Supported--Pen Motion Necessary to Produce Same--Influence in Guiding a Stronger Hand--Avoiding an Unnatural and Cramped Position--Effect of the Brain on Guided Hand--Separating Characteristics From Guided Joint Signature--Detecting Writing by a System of Measurement.

Guided handwriting is one of the most frequent means of forgery and oftentimes the most difficult to detect. It has been established that with care the elements of each handwriting can be detected and proven in a guided signature. The leading handwriting experts of the world are unanimous in declaring that it is possible for holding another's hand in making a guided signature to infuse the character of the guider's hand into the writing.

Guided handwriting is the writing produced by two hands conjointly and is usually erratic, and at first sight, hard to connect with the handwriting of any one person.

The character and quality of writing in case of a controlled or assisted hand must depend largely upon the relative force, exercised by the joint hands. The difficulty in writing arises from the antagonizing motion of one hand upon the other, which is likely to produce an unintelligible scrawl, having little or none of the habitual characteristics of either hand.

Where one hand is more or less passive, the controlling hand doing the writing, its characteristics may be more or less manifest in the writing. But obviously the controlling hand must be seriously obstructed in its motions by even a passive hand; and since the controlling hand can have no proper or customary rest, the motion must be from the shoulder and with the whole arm. The writing will therefore be upon an enlarged scale, loose, sprawling, and can have little, if any, characteristic resemblance to the natural and habitual style of the controlling writer, and of course none of the person's whose hand is passive.

In appearance it changes abruptly from very high or very wide to very low or narrow letters. This is to be explained by the non-agreement in phase of the impulses due to each of the two writers. If both are endeavoring at the same moment to write a given stroke the length of that stroke will be measured by the sum of the impulses given by the two writers. If they act in opposition to one another, one seeking to make a down stroke while the other is trying to make an up stroke, the result will be a line equal to the difference between the stronger and the weaker force.

As these coincidences and oppositions occur at irregular but not infrequent intervals, like the interference and amplification phases of light and sound waves, the result traced on the paper might be expected in advance to be--and in fact is--a distorted writing where maxima and minima of effect are connected together by longer or shorter lines of ordinary writing.

The only state of things which can justify the guiding of a hand executing a legal instrument is the feebleness or illness of its owner.

When such assistance is required it is usually given by passing the arm around the body of the invalid and supporting the writing hand while the necessary characters are being made.

Both participants in this action are looking at the writing, and both are thinking of the next letter which must be written, and of the motion of the pen necessary to produce it. Unless the executing hand were absolutely lifeless or entirely devoid of power, it would be impossible for it not to influence the guiding and presumably stronger hand; for the least force exerted cannot fail to deflect a hand, however strong, in an unnatural and cramped position. Nor can the hand of the guider fail to add its contribution to the joint effort, however much the brain which controls it may strive to render the hand entirely passive. Both minds are busy with the same act, and insensibly both hands will write the same letter with the results just described.

Can the characteristics of each hand be separated from those of the other and the relative amount of the two contributions to the joint signature be stated?

This is a question which is naturally asked during the trial of a case involving the consideration of a guided hand. From the comparatively small number of experiments made in this direction it would be too hazardous to answer it in the affirmative, but it may be said that some of the characteristics of each hand can usually be made apparent by the system of measurement, and the indications seem to point to the probability of being able to increase the number of characteristics elicited in proportion to the number of observations made. If the significance of every part of every stroke could be properly interpreted, it follows that a complete separation of characteristics would be effected, but this would require an indefinitely large number of observations to be made and a quite unattainable skill in explaining them.

See specimens of guided signatures in Appendix.