Bury's handwriting

[Wyatt Earp]

Well i wont flog a dead horse then,

Interesting though

Oh, it’s far from a dead horse.

In 2010 an interesting article, “Forensic Document Examiners’ Skill in Distinguishing Between Natural and Disguised Handwriting Behaviors” was published in Journal of Forensic Sciences (v.55, no.5, pp.1291-5).

When asked to give an opinion on which of two handwriting samples was disguised, FDEs made the correct call 73% of the time, and laypeople made the correct call 80% of the time. FDEs were much more inclined to give a response of “inconclusive,” however, and as a result of that, their error rate was significantly lower than that of laypeople (p.1292).

An area where FDEs struggled was where the disguise was executed with fluency (p.1293).

On one question, each and every FDE who expressed an opinion made the wrong call (p.1293).

If I were you, I would feel free to “boggle away” about Bury and the Lusk letter.

[Boggles]

I would feel free to “boggle away” about Bury and the Lusk letter

Yes i am actually in my own mind still convinced same, but in the interests of not appearing stubborn I'm content to ''boggle away quietly to myself''. For now at least.

[Wyatt Earp]

While the handwriting characteristics linking Bury to the Lusk letter are not unusual, we can take things a step further and look at the frequency with which a couple of these traits manifest themselves in his writing.

In the case of conjoined words, or words that are connected by a common stroke, this trait occurs 2 times in Bury's confession letter, which I counted as 186 words long. In Bury's native handwriting, then, it occurs once every 93 words.

Next we can look at the two handwriting specimens where Bury is disguising his handwriting, the "Letter from Ellen" and the Ogilvy letter.

In the "Letter from Ellen" it occurs 4 times in a document I counted as 218 words long, for a frequency of once every 54.5 words and in the Ogilvy letter it occurs 1 time in a document I counted as 56 words long, or once every 56 words. Hence, when Bury is disguising his handwriting, this trait occurs much more frequently than when he is writing in his native hand.

In the Lusk letter, this trait occurs 1 time (I have "I took" as being the only instance of this, taking "out if" as overlapping words, not words that are connected by a common stroke) in a document that is 55 words long, or once every 55 words. We see, then, that the Lusk letter is right on target for what we would expect in a specimen of disguised handwriting by Bury.

We can conduct a similar survey with respect to words that are split up in some way (e.g., "s end," "Ki dn e"). In Bury's native hand, in the confession letter, this trait occurs about once every 11 words.

In his two specimens of disguised handwriting it occurs more frequently. In the Ogilvy letter, I have this as once every 2 words and in the "Letter from Ellen," I have it is as once every 4.73 words.

In the Lusk letter, I have it as once every 2.6 words, which fits within the range of what we would expect in a piece of disguised handwriting by Bury.

We can quibble about how to define "words," or contest specific examples, but I think the figures I'm providing here should be roughly accurate.

[Aethelwulf]

Not a million miles away is it?

Excellent work Wiggins/Boggles. It is definitely striking that Bury's C of Corney, M of Mrs and Y of Corney are very similar to From Hell's C of catch, M of mister and Y of you. The heavy blotchy style on the address (e.g. Stratford and E) are similar. Having seen other examples of Bury he does a good line in invasive letters (e.g. q of queer), similar to Lusk. I definitely think From Hell's author was disguising his hand writing and level of literacy. There are too many outbreaks of fluid joined up writing ('only') of an accomplished hand and the letter is set out in the proper form - sender top right, addressee below left, first line indented.