Review: Crime in Ink
| Published date | 01 April 1930 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0032258X3000300217 |
| Date | 01 April 1930 |
| Subject Matter | Review |
REVIEWS
CRIME
IN
INK.
By
CLAIRE
CARVALHO
and
BOYDEN
SPARKES.
1929.
lOS.
6<1.
(Charles Scribner's Sons.)
THIS
book gives accounts of some of the remarkable cases in which Mr. David
N. Carvalho, the American handwriting expert, played an important part, as
well as records of conversations between him and his daughter, who is one of
the authors of the book. She says that at times her father's deductions might
seem like magic, but she makes it abundantly clear that he based his compari-
sons upon those characteristics of their manuscript of which the writers are
unconscious.
From this volume an interesting insight may be obtained into the work
of a handwriting expert, in connection with forged wills, anonymous letters,
casesof divorce and even of murder. Although it is not a technical treatise on
handwriting, the student may occasionally get a useful hint. For instance, a
suspected person, who might be inclined to alter his normal writing when
asked for specimens of it,
if
allowed to scribble to dictation long enough, will
probably write in his accustomed fashion
out
of sheer boredom.
Mr. Carvalho wasconsulted in many thousands of casesduring his career,
and he occasionallywent out of his way, asin the Dreyfus case, to help people
who in his opinion
were
innocent of the charges made against them, and in
such instances he charged no fees. At times he was called in to decide
questions in connection with old manuscripts, and his examination of the
handwriting of Mr. Peter S. Ney, the Carolina schoolmaster, and of Marshal
Ney, one of Napoleon's lieutenants, supported the persistent rumour that this
distinguished soldier was not shot
but
allowed to escape.
The
opinion of Mr. Carvalho on the relationship of handwriting and
character is of considerable interest. He has affirmed that after all his study
of penmanship, and after having sent thousands of forgers to prison, he had
never learned an important thing about their characters. He defined char-
acter as the sum of the abilities, purposes and habits of the individual. Edgar
Allan Poe he stigmatized as a reckless, dissolute genius;
but
his manuscript,
he contended, would seem to have been written by a well-ordered, self-
controlled person, with a passion for system. Mr. Carvalho was of opinion,
also, that
anyone
who endeavoured to judge Shakespeare by the standards of
the graphologist would slander him. Forgers are usually thieves;
but
the
natural handwriting of most of those examined by Mr. Carvalho was beautiful
-in
fact he considered that skill in penmanship had very often been the thing
that had transformed an apparently honest man into a crook.
THE
POLICE
AND
THE
CRIME
PROBLEM. Edited by
THORSTEN
SELLIN.
1929. $2. (Annals of the American Academy of Political and
Social Science, November 1929. Philadelphia, U.S.A.)
THIS
publication is of considerable interest to the police officer.
The
first
part contains twelve articles on the organization and functions of the United
States police. First, as regards the municipal police, it is pointed out how
multifarious their duties
are;
what are the defects of a municipal council, of
a police board, of an elected Commissioner of public safety and of an inde-
pendent and irremovable police chief; how the difficulties of the municipal
police are augmented by their relations with the State police, the elected
Sheriff and the elected public prosecutor; how unsatisfactory is the training;
what are the weaknesses of the patrol systems.
The
picture drawn of the Sheriff is a gloomy one.
That
of the State
police is brighter,
but
the author finds the personnel unsatisfactory, the ad-
ministration and leadership inefficient, and co-ordination lacking.
The
chief
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