Recent Book: Evidential Documents
| Author | Wilson R. Harrison |
| Date | 01 April 1960 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0032258X6003300212 |
| Published date | 01 April 1960 |
| Subject Matter | Recent Book |
Recent
Books
History of the Madras Police. Published
under
the authority of the
Inspector General of Police, Madras. 570 pp. Price
not
stated.
TH[S
[S A
HANDSOME
VOLUME,
published in 1959 as part of the centenary
celebrations of the Madras Police, aworthy record following the great
traditions of the Indian Police, and will evoke nostalgic memories among
those of
our
readers who served in
that
great service. Some of them are
mentioned by name, among them Sir Charles B. Cunningham, Inspector
General, 1930-38.
The
history of every country tells the story of the growth
of its civil power, and so this history (to borrow aphrase
from
the
Home
Minister's tribute in a foreword)
"takes
amagnificent sweep backwards to
survey the systems of police obtaining in this country from Vedic times
onward." Sri Balakrishna Shetty, the Inspector General of Police, and his
collaborators are to be warmly congratulated on their comprehensive and
strenuous original research, resulting in a record presented in a
form
which
makes it readable to persons of widely differing tastes and interests. Special
mention must be made of the work put into the compilation of the
book
by Sri K. G. Narayanaswamy,
Deputy
Superintendent of Police, Madras.
F.T.T.
JAMES
V. P.
CONWAY:
Evidential Documents. Blackwell Scientific
Public..tions. 57s. 6d.
ACCORDING
TO
THE
[NTRODUCTION
"The
purpose of Evidential Documents is
to take some stock of
our
present state of documentary affairs, as it affects
those concerned with the enforcement of
our
civil and criminal statutes,
especially
the
latter, and to provide aready key to unlock
the
truth
from
evidential documents."
At first sight,
the
meaning of this sentence is not clear
but
after
taking
thought it is possible to perceive what the
author
intends to convey.
The
same criticism may fairly be made of many of the
other
statements in the
text which is by no means easy to read; some of the words seem strange to
British eyes and in places the language is colloquial in the extreme.
In reviewing this book, the difficulty is to determine who is
meant
by
"the
reader" in the statement quoted above.
It
certainly cannot be either
the practising document examiner or anyone who aspires to finding
out
how
asuspect document can be given a thorough and critical examination
because many
important
techniques are not mentioned and others are
referred to in the most casual manner. This treatment of the subject must
be deliberate on the
part
of the author, who, having
for
some years been
the Postal Inspector in charge of the San Francisco Identification
Labora-
tory of the United States Postal Inspection Service, must be fully acquainted
with all the standard techniques employed in the examination of documents.
Again, it is unlikely
that
the
book
was written
for
the benefit of those
members of the legal profession who may be called
upon
to deal with.cases
involving questioned documents,
for.
so
many
of
the
practical details of
some of the operations which are of Importance
In
the critical examination
of a
document
are
given,
that
the
"sight
of the wood becomes obscured by
the trees."
If
it is the investigating officer the
author
had
in mind, it must be stated
that
although
there
is much
that
apolice officer might read with advantage,
the
book
can be faulted on two grounds. In the first place some of the
phases of the work of the document examiner which
are
treated in consider-
able
detail are outside the scope of purely police activities, and secondly,
much of the practical advice, presumably included
for
the benefit of police
officers, is out
of
date.
For
example, an officer presented with the
problem
of safely transferring fragile material such as charred or ashed documents
to
the
laboratory
will find no reference to
the
greatly improve.d techniques
138 April-June 1960
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