"ARE you an expert in handwriting." "Yes, I am," replies the expert. But the question naturally arises, "What is an expert in handwriting?" Where does he qualify? What is the length of his apprenticeship to this strange art which enables a man to detect forgers, to track murderers, to interpret documents which are abracadabra beyond the ken of most mortals? It is not such a mysterious art either. Like other mysteries, it is simple enough when you know how it's done. Mr. Inglis was the expert who gave some evidence the other day in the great divorce case. Photographs of the anonymous letters which at last alarmed Mr. Crawford into action had been placed in his hand. He was instructed to compare these with certain of Mrs. Crawford's letters known to be in her handwriting, and in his examination pointed out the points of resemblance in the two sets of correspondence. The following account of a short conversation with Mr. Inglis may interest our readers:-

THE EXPERT'S WORKSHOP.

      "Chabot" was once a name familiar in our ears as a king among experts. He was a terror to forgers and other gentlemen too adroit with the pen. Many a man's heart has sunk into his boots when that well-known name was called in the court. But Mr. Chabot is dead. The race of experts is small. To-day the two great authorities in caligraphy are Mr. Netherclift and Mr. Inglis, who has just figured in the Crawford case. Mr. Inglis has his headquarters in Red Lion-square on the first floor of one of those old-fashioned houses, with curious wrought iron door knockers and broad staircases, once the residences of a past generation of the great world of fashion, but now given up to offices and warehouses. When the night falls and business is over the house seems filled with strange shadows, and you have an ideal scene for a murder or some horrid deed of violence. But unless it is some victim whom his skill has helped to immure for a term of his natural life who has returned to wreak a long-cherished revenge, there is little in Mr. Inglis's special sanctum to tempt the night bird. Imagine a little room, oblong in shape, with an office table and a slope, a well-worn chair, both drawn up to the window, through which you can see the soot-laden foliage of the square waving to and fro in the puffs of wind, a cupboard, a few books, and there you have a tolerably accurate picture of the workshop of a much-dreaded expert.

A CURIOUS RELIC.

      Ornaments, pictures? Mr. Inglis is a sensible man. I-e wants no such trifles to amuse himself. In that little room he works. There is indeed some document in a plain black frame, which on inspection proves to be a facsimile of a famous will, to criticise which he was called in. Mr. Whalley was worth £70,000. He was a miser, and died in a cottage where he paid 9s. a week for his rooms. He had made his will in bed, writing it in pencil in presence of two gentlemen. The pencil broke just as he was about to put his signature to the document. He was induced to write that in ink. He died. The two gentlemen rubbed out the pencil marks, drew up a fresh one of their own in ink, which was disputed. The experts succeeded in deciphering the pencil marks through the ink, for, as Mr. Inglis explained, a pencil leaves a furrow on the paper as the cutter of a plough does in the ground. It may be grown up, but there it is below. The two gentlemen are now in prison.

THE TRAINING OF AN EXPERT.

      Mr. Inglis is a Scotchman and cautious, about fifty at a guess, with a rubicund visage and a pair of keen eyes looking through a busby fringe of eyelashes, talking in slow and measured accents, as if he were contemplating the effect of every word. "I shall be glad to answer any questions in my power; but about my special evidence in the case not a word. Go on." "Experts are the growth of years; but I do not think you can make an expert either, though you may train him up to a certain point. I am a facsimilist, that is, I reproduce any handwriting for lithographic purposes. Any handwriting, no matter how cramped or how illegible. But I have had nearly forty years' practice, and constant work, and I may add I love my business, which is a very important factor in success. By this means the hand and the eye have been trained to work in unison." Then Mr. Inglis proceeded to tell me of the dangers of the ink pot, running over some of the famous cases in which he has been concerned, and illustrating them by various documents and facsimiles. The more one talks with these myrmidons of the law the greater pessimist one becomes. Here is a bundle of cheques, each signed by different writers, to the unaccustomed eye. But here is the clue in a letter of three or four lines which goes far to prove that John Smith, say, signed them all. It was his habit to run up a small account and pay with a forged cheque, receiving the difference in sterling money.

THE DETECTIVE ON THE TRACK.

      Mr. Inglis produces his report carefully docketed, lifts up the slope on his desk, and takes out his most faithful and trusty tool — a magnifying glass. "Do you see the point?" is the favourite expression with which he emphasizes his comparisons. You see an elaborate report, dotted over with lines of red ink and cabalistic signs, which gives the document the appearance of a sheet of equations. But a little explanation makes them clear enough. He scrutinizes one document, whatever it may be, for a time, and having familiarized himself with the features of the writing, he compares closely the other document, and follows up the clue. The junction of the letters, the slopes, the size of the letter, and of the lines, the formation of the capitals, the loops, each is scrutinized carefully. One important axiom is that no man or woman ever signs his or her name twice exactly alike. Among the peculiarities which might escape the non-observant mind in the world of hand-writing one may note the fact that a servant is apt to imitate the writing of his master. A private secretary, it is often noticed, often falls unconsciously into the style of his chief. If twenty young ladies are educated at the same school, and taught writing by the same master, their penmanship will have much in common. In Mr. Inglis's opinion the latter-day spread of education by Board Schools will effect a decided change, for the better, in the writing of another generation.

ONE OF THE ANONYMOUS LETTERS. Gaslight note: one week after this article appeared in the Pall Mall Gazette, it was reprinted in the Pall Mall Budget [Vol 34, no 931 (1886-jul-29) p09] with the above illustration.

THE TELL-TALE TRACING PAPER.

      A report is afterwards made which, as I have said, is a curiosity. On sheets of tracing-paper, fastened on to a white surface, are shown — loop for loop, letter for letter, habit for habit — in one column the false writing, in the other the real handwriting of the person suspected. To each of these is attached, in red ink, for facility of recognition, the letter, two numbers in the form of a fraction — say a ⅔, the 2 representing the line in the document from which it is taken, the 3 indicating the word where the "a," the letter in which he detects a similarity. And so the whole problem is worked out. Take as an example one paragraph from Mr. Inglis's evidence the other day, in which he points out some similarities between the anonymous letters received by Mr. Crawford and the acknowledged letters of Mrs. Crawford. "I find," says Mr. Inglis, "in the letter marked B and the envelope of the anonymous letter that the letter 'f' in Crawford has been originally a single down stroke without being crossed, and it has been crossed by some other party, or, at all events, with other ink. I find in the words 'yours affectionately' in the letter to Mrs. Rogerson the same 'f' without being crossed. Then the capital 'C' in Crawford is made very small; it is a small 'c' in an enlarged form — that is to say, no loops from the top to the bottom. This is the usual form used by Mrs. Crawford in her signature. The figure 3 on the envelope is the same as on the letter to Mrs. Rogerson. The final 'd' in 'defiled' in the anonymous letter is in agreement with the same letter in the word 'glad,' and in the word 'would' in the second letter to Mr. Stewart.'

THE EXPERT IN "FOUL PLAY."

      Those who have read a certain very fascinating novel called "Foul Play," by Charles Reade and Mr. Dion Boucicault, will remember how the villain was exposed by the cleverness and insight of an expert named "Undercliff." Mr. "Undercliff" was no other than Mr. Netherclift, to whom the novelist went for advice. "The lawyers often sneer at experts; but then four experts out of five are rank impostors — a set of theorists who go by arbitrary rules framed in the closet, and not by large and laborious comparison with indisputable documents. These charlatans are not aware that five thousand cramped and tremulous, but genuine, signatures are written every day by honest men, and so they denounce every cramped or tremulous writing as a forgery. The varieties in a man's writing, caused by his writing with his glove on or off with a quill or a bad steel pen, drunk or sober, calm or agitated, in full daylight or dusk, &c., all this is a dead letter to them, and they have a bias towards suspicion of forgery; and a banker's clerk, with his mere general impression, is better evidence than they are. But I am an artist of a very different stamp. I never reason a priori. I compare; and I have no bias." Mr. "Underclff's" method is Mr. Inglis's — comparison.

THE EXPERT IN A FAMOUS TRIAL.

      Mr. Inglis takes down from his shelves with a natural pride some portly tomes of Lord Cockburn's own edition of his famous summing up in the Tichborne trial. As a sort of appendix are pages of the facsimiles used in the trial for the purpose of showing the identity of Arthur Orton's hand with that of the assumed Roger, now in America, and their difference from those of the real Roger. Mr. Inglis points out the beautiful symmetry of the sharp loops at the beginning of each line and asks you to look for any trace of this habit in the writing of the Claimant. To study these pages would be a complete guide to the expert's art, for you have pages of loops and individual letters, of tricks and peculiarities in style, the real and the false, side by side. Lord Cockburn, unlike some other judges, attached much importance to handwriting as a factor in criminal cases: "The evidence of professional witnesses is to be viewed with some degree of distrust, for it is generally with some bias. But within proper limits it is a very valuable assistance in inquiries of this kind. The advantage is that habits of handwriting — as shown in minute points which escape common observation, but are quite observable when pointed out — are detected and disclosed by science, skill, and experience. And it is so in the comparison of handwriting by the assistance of experts." That was his compliment to the experts in the summing up in the Tichborne case.

JUST LIKE THE RED INDIAN BRAVE.

      "You see," says Mr. Inglis, "it is done on the same principle as the Red Indian brave on the war path follows up with indomitable patience the track of his foe." To him every leaf may be a signpost on the road, a broken twig as intelligible as a broad path; a footstep here, or grass trampled on there, each directs him on his way. He may be pulled up short when he comes to a river here, he may be baffled by a watercourse there, but he never gives in, and in the end generally gets to the goal. In an article which appeared some time ago in Cornhill on experts in handwriting, to which Mr. Inglis referred, a number of interesting cases were mentioned. There was the case of "Jemmy Wood of Gloucester," in the year 1836, towards the elucidation of which the expert contributed materially, and for the first time received public recognition before the courts in the public manner that later made his name so familiar. Mr. James Wood, draper and banker of Gloucester, died worth a million of money, and as he was known to have the singular humour of secreting codicils where people as a rule only look for cobwebs, codicils accordingly turned up after his death with a regularity and of a contradictory force truly astonishing, at least to any one not sufficiently gifted to trace the source from which they in all probability emanated. On the authenticity of many of these codicils the expert was called upon to pronounce. A famous case was that of Roupell, the member for Lambeth, the son of the notorious smelter, and founder of Roupell Park, at Brixton, whose name he forged indiscriminately for ten years to deeds of gift, conveyances, and wills, and who was duly sentenced to penal servitude for life after squandering more than three hundred thousand pounds. But there is no more end to them than there is to the mysterious transactions which make up our daily life.