Hutch in the 1911 Census?

[Crystal]

Morning Fisherman-I wasn't criticising you, so no defence is necessary. I was making an observation based on recent posts,that's all. I don't think this is finished, either, but neither do I think we're getting any further with these circular arguments. Best wishes Fisherman

[Fisherman]

Okay, here it is; my translation of the letter I have received from Frank Leander at the forensic document examination team at SKL.

I asked about two things in my letter to SKL:
1. Can we use a consistency of two samples of signatures by the same hand with ten years inbetween them to tell whether the writer would have been consistent ten years before or after the decade we know of?
2. When do we form the way we write a signature and what may have an impact on how it is written?

Here is what Frank Leander tells us (my translation):

”The fact that two samples of handstyles with an dividing time span of approximately ten years are very like each other does not have to mean that one can be certain that samples another ten years before or after them would be conform. Most people develop their writing abilitites during the school years, and in the upper teenage years they will have developed their own handwriting, more or less. In old age it is not unusual that the handstyle deteriorates owing to things like sickness, eye problems, medication etcetera. There are, though, large individual variations and there are circumstances that may change the handwriting also under the more stable middle period, like for example changing of the name, rationalization in the manner of writing owing to doing a lot of writing in the everyday job, choice of type of pen, etcetera.
In this context, it is also important to realize that one writes differently depending on who is supposed to read what you have written. Notes from a lecture, only meant for the writers own use, often has another character than a letter one writes to somebody outside your circle of aquaintances.

The answers have been formulated by Frank Leander in cooperation with Ulla-Britt Åberg. We both work with forensic examinations of documents.”

So that is the wiew of the foremost expertise in my country. I identify three immediate areas of interest:

1. Toppys signature consistency between 1898-1991 cannot be used to state that he would have written in the same fashion in 1888.

2. Our signatures have reached the essential form that they will keep throughout our lives in the lat teenage years, more or less.

3. We change our handwriting owing to the events when we write. And we must of course realize that all of the the three events we are investigating represented contacts with authorities. Only one of the events could be regarded as an everyday event, more or less, and that is the census. It must be kept in mind, though, that this too was an occasion where authorities were involved, though not directly.
In the other two instances, we are dealing with very unusual things - one is the wedding day, when the wedding certificate is signed, and the other is knit to a very gruesome murder, where the writer brought what was considered all-important information to the investigating police.
If I read Leander correctly, things like these may have had an impact on how the writer performed.

The best,
Fisherman

[DVV]

Hi Fish,
I'm confident that Sue Iremonger would agree with Frank Leander's observations.
I'm confident that she knew all this when she examined the signatures.

Amitiés mon cher,
David

[DVV]

David writes:
"Have also to try my new fishing-rod this evening."
Well, well, David - you entertain SOUND interests too!
The best,
Fisherman

Oh Fish,
I came back empty-handed and had to eat chicken.
Not a single suicidal sea-bream.
Must be the tourists...
Or is it that Toppy put a spell on me...?
Hope you're luckier in the Baltic.

Amitiés,
David

[Fisherman]

Oh, I am, David - thanks! Brought home a very nice seatrout yesterday. It fought every bit as fiercely as Ben does...!

The best,
Fisherman

[Fisherman]

David writes:

"I'm confident that Sue Iremonger would agree with Frank Leander's observations.
I'm confident that she knew all this when she examined the signatures."

Good on you, David - since I know next to nothing about Iremongers observations and working methods, I remain distinctly inconfident about her role in all of this ...

The best,
Fisherman

[richardnunweek]

Hi fisherman,
So handwriting comparisons is all about trying to interpret the mood one is in when sighning, .
For Eg . stress produces possibly more pronounced strokes
A desire to impress may result in a more elaborate stroke.
Contentment many result in a much calmer signing.
All of this surely is basic common sense, and may be a good guide in attempting to give a character reading, but all we want to know, is the confirmation that Topping signed those signatures, not the mood he was in at the time.
Regards Richard.

[Crystal]

And that you can't have, I'm afraid, Richard - not on signature comparison, anyway. Sorry.

[Crystal]

Maybe I should change my signature to 'History finds a way'..

[Fisherman]

Crystal writes, to Richard Nunweek:

"that you can't have, I'm afraid, Richard - not on signature comparison, anyway."

I would not be too confident about that, Crystal - especially not since you yourself have provided an expert who said that these signatures had much enough in common to have been signed by the same hand...

The best,
Fisherman

[Ben]

Hi Crystal,

Caz is a sad, bored old woman with a Maybrick fixation, and with such emptiness of intellect that she has recently been reduced to following me around wherever she can, trying to pick up on perceived errors because she knows it irritates me. She knows full well that we're all susceptible to the sort of errors that she delights to highlight. She's knows that my writing abilities are vastly superior to her own and her silly daughter's, and she knows I'm aware of the difference between "bearing" and "baring". I substituted one for the other because I was writing in haste. Reasonable people would accept this.

Too bad she had to reveal her laughable ignorance by criticizing my use of the word "upmost", which anyone with half a brain will know is an abbreviation for "uppermost", meaning of the highest position or priority. So looks like it's only 4/10 for the latest attempt to bring me down a peg or two.

Hi Caz,

Bang on topic, how about Ben's initial reading of Sue Iremonger’s ‘definitely’ (as first posted by Jonathan) as ‘may be’ and, unforgivably, on an inventive level that would leave Hutch himself speechless with admiration: ‘she doesn’t eradicate the possibility of the first signature being written by the same individual who wrote the other two’.

But you mentioned earlier that Iremonger may have been supplied with that information - erroneous or not - before she even conducted her analysis, so in your scenario, the "definitely" wasn't even Iremonger-generated, but was supplied to her from the outset. You'll disavow that earlier suggestion of yours if it means trying to score imagined points over me, but it won't work so well.

[Ben]

Hi Fish,

Thanks for the information.

Toppys signature consistency between 1898-1991 cannot be used to state that he would have written in the same fashion in 1888.

Not with certainty, I'll grant you (well, I've already granted to you that ad nauseam), but I don't see how my initial view, that Toppy was unlikely have altered his signature to a radical extent, based on the consistency over a 13-year period, has been challenged. I can envisage him writing more neatly, perhaps, when faced with different forms of authority or authority figure, but I can't see the following mentality, somehow: "Oh boy, these are investigators, and this is a murder investigatin. I might get into serious doo-doo if I close my G-loop and fail to double-stem my capital H, so here goes nothing!"

That's intended to be friendly and light-hearted as opposed to sarcastic, but it was my intention to illustrate that the "altering one's signature depending on the nature of the authority or situation" can only be taken so far.

if only people had been able to agree on the very obvious thing that the signatures we are discussing are good matches.

Ah, that's slightly more irritating, Fisherman. It may be an "obvious thing" to you, but to others it's equally "obvious" that the signatures are not a match, and the preponderance of expert opinion to date has also expressed the opinion that Toppy wasn't the witness.

All the best,
Ben

[Crystal]

Hi Ben

I'm sure you don't need me to defend you against Caz, my friend, it's just that I really don't - indeed can't - see the point of trawling through 100 plus pages of this thread and then coming out at the end of it with a few spelling niggles. I would have thought the substance of what we said here was of paramount importance to this debate, myself.

Who could be bothered? And why?

But maybe I was wrong, since you say she follows you around. Maybe she does like you after all?

Nah! It's just petty, malicious nonsense. I like to think I can counter that sort of thing just by being friendly..

Gosh, I hope I'm not like that when I'm old! What a terrible thought!

[DVV]

One day, God willing, I'll an old sad bored Provençal with a Flemtchinson fixation.
Pray for me.

Amitiés,
David

[Fisherman]

Ben writes:

"I can't see the following mentality, somehow"

As I have already - scores of pages on this thread ago - pointed out to you that I used to have a mother who was very careful about being neat when she wrote to the authorities (ANY authorities), I can immediately recognize what Frank Leander is talking about here. It is another thing altogether to try and establish how and in what direction these things may have changed Toppys handwriting. We know very little about his personality and even less of his sentiments towards authorities, and therefore it applies that we cannot use the information Leander offers other than in a general sense. And that is what I do - I recognize that the writer/s of the signatures we are dealing with was/were in situations that were not everyday, ordinary situations in two out of three occasions. And in the third, there was also a contact with the authorities involved. I also recognize that an authority like Frank Leander points out that signatures may be to an extent situation-specific. Taken together, this tells me that when we look at the differences involved in the signatures, one explanation to them MAY be that they were written in situations that could have affected the writers signature.

As long as we do not invest in an new examination of an acclaimed examiner, general rules and trends are what we have. And they should be weighed into any serious assessment of the specific signatures and this specific case.

The best,
Fisherman