Diary Handwriting

[rjpalmer]

I'm not sure now if he was giving his considered opinion, based on the handwriting style and/or content, or whether it was more a hint that he 'knew', or thought he knew, the writer's identity, and that person was the right age to have been schooled in the 1930s.

Was Melvin not quoting the opinion of one of the early document examiners? The point being that the handwriting didn't look Victorian, it looked like the work of someone schooled in the first third of the 20th Century.

Personally, I don't see how this could be anything more than a ballpark figure. A student learning to write in the 1950s could just as easily have been schooled by some old relic from the 1920s.

Some of those Catholic girl schools in Liverpool probably still have nun's older than Queen Victoria's great aunt. I recently read that the average age of a nun is now upwards of 80. Madonna and the Spice Girls wiped out a whole generation of prospects.

[DirectorDave]

Hi rj,

One more before I go off again to enjoy a nice long weekend...

Didn't Melvin at one time state that the diary was written by someone who had been schooled in the 1930s?

I'm not sure now if he was giving his considered opinion, based on the handwriting style and/or content, or whether it was more a hint that he 'knew', or thought he knew, the writer's identity, and that person was the right age to have been schooled in the 1930s.

It would certainly be good to know if Anne could have produced 63 pages of handwriting over 11 days, using the hand she didn't use when writing letters to Mike, and in a style that fooled Melvin into making that statement.

She seems to have fooled everyone else, so why should he be left out?

Love,

Caz
X

"Most likely someone schooled in the 1920's or 30's".

Which he later changed to "A man or women born in the 1950's"

So yes, they both fooled Melvin for a while.

[caz]

Anyway, I'm stepping back now, as I don't want to derail the thread, but when the time comes, I would like to reprint an observation made about the handwriting made by Melvin Harris back in January, 2004, to see what the assembled scholars think.

Hi rj,

One more before I go off again to enjoy a nice long weekend...

Didn't Melvin at one time state that the diary was written by someone who had been schooled in the 1930s?

I'm not sure now if he was giving his considered opinion, based on the handwriting style and/or content, or whether it was more a hint that he 'knew', or thought he knew, the writer's identity, and that person was the right age to have been schooled in the 1930s.

It would certainly be good to know if Anne could have produced 63 pages of handwriting over 11 days, using the hand she didn't use when writing letters to Mike, and in a style that fooled Melvin into making that statement.

She seems to have fooled everyone else, so why should he be left out?

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Posting one more example of handwriting. This is a letter dated 18 July 1994 (transcribed on p.104 of Inside Story, although not with 100% accuracy) in which Anne tells Mike she wants to divorce him because "I am afraid you left me with no choice after speaking to the newspapers" (although she hasn't at this point told Mike, or anyone else, that the Diary had been in her family since at least 1950 and that she gave it to Tony Devereux to give to him).

Hi All,

Page 104 goes on to refer to the fact that this letter came into the possession of Melvin Harris [presumably via Alan Gray, who was given it by Mike], so Keith is going to check when he gets access to his main files, because neither of us can actually recall seeing a copy of the original, which could only have come from Melvin himself, presumably via Paul Feldman, so we may only have had a transcript ourselves from whichever source, to include in our book.

In case anyone is remotely interested, Anne was furious at this intrusion into her privacy and wrote to Feldy in July 1995, claiming to have told Mike within weeks of leaving him in the January of 1994 that she had every intention of divorcing him. She blamed his drinking and the physical and mental abuse she had endured over the last few years of her marriage and said, for what it's worth, that this was nothing to do with the diary.

Have a great weekend everyone.

Love,

Caz
X

[Abby Normal]

To me her I s look like 9s and F s look like 6s. Or lowercase gs and b s. Just like the diary.

Also, the inconsistency of the writing in the diary looks like a clumsy attempt to disguise and write differently. And the overall look of the writing looks kind of like Anne’s.


So how common is writing if that it looks like 9 and 6????? I would think not very, it seems pretty unique.

[David Orsam]

Posting one more example of handwriting. This is a letter dated 18 July 1994 (transcribed on p.104 of Inside Story, although not with 100% accuracy) in which Anne tells Mike she wants to divorce him because "I am afraid you left me with no choice after speaking to the newspapers" (although she hasn't at this point told Mike, or anyone else, that the Diary had been in her family since at least 1950 and that she gave it to Tony Devereux to give to him).

[David Orsam]

For those (and the cat) who don't have a copy of the Diary immediately at hand, a reasonable reproduction of one page can be found near the bottom of this link:

http://therivermagazine.co.uk/culture/living-with-jack-the-ripper.html

Thanks RJ, that's a great page (being page 3 of the Diary) because you can clearly see the unusual way that the word "If" is written, which can be compared with the way Anne writes those two letters, and you can also see the "f" in "fly".

[rjpalmer]

For those (and the cat) who don't have a copy of the Diary immediately at hand, a reasonable reproduction of one page can be found near the bottom of this link:

http://therivermagazine.co.uk/culture/living-with-jack-the-ripper.html

Purely my amateur opinion. But the slant (or more properly the 'slope') looks a little 'drunken' to me, rolling up and to the right, not fully sure what it wants to do. Check for instance the third line from the bottom, 'the gentlest of men he had..."

The angle looks like it shifts on the last two words. Throughout, some strokes are upright, others are slanted. It seems like the hand isn't completely at easy with these movements. Agree? Disagree?

Anyway, I'm stepping back now, as I don't want to derail the thread, but when the time comes, I would like to reprint an observation made about the handwriting made by Melvin Harris back in January, 2004, to see what the assembled scholars think.

[David Orsam]

...oh brother.

Don't get your propeller stuck in the toilet.

I'll try not to.

Incidentally, do you happen to know if Anne Graham is ambidextrous?

[Scott Nelson]

...oh brother.

Don't get your propeller stuck in the toilet.

[David Orsam]

Yes, I read it, thank you. But I asked if anybody knew if Anne Graham was a left-handed writer, not ambidextrous.

No you didn't Scott. Have you seriously already forgotten what you asked?

This was your question:

Is it safe to suggest that Anne Graham is a left-handed writer?

That is not the same as asking if anyone knows she was a left-handed writer.

[Scott Nelson]

Did you read my introductory post to the handwriting images in #34 Scott?

Yes, I read it, thank you. But I asked if anybody knew if Anne Graham was a left-handed writer, not ambidextrous.

[rjpalmer]

This could account for a different direction in the slope of such handwriting.

It makes sense. I don't have time to post an example at the moment, but there are many places in the Diary where the slant (or more correctly, the 'slope') seems inconsistent. The idea of a lefty writing with their right-hand but not quite pulling it off is definitely worth considering.

[David Orsam]

Is it safe to suggest that Anne Graham is a left-handed writer?

The Diary writing appears to be written by a right-handed person.

Did you read my introductory post to the handwriting images in #34 Scott?

I'll repost below if it makes it easier:

This is from "Disguised Handwriting" by John J. Harris in the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, Volume 43, Issue 5, 1953:

"A few persons are ambidextrous and, therefore, have quite a talent for disguising handwriting."

This is from "Scientific Examination of Questioned Documents", Second Edition by Jan Seaman Kelly Brian S. Lindblom (eds), 2006:

"Disguise can be accomplished by writing with the hand opposite to that which is habitually used. This can be a very effective disguise as long as standards of wrong-handed writing are not available. Opposite-hand writing can sometimes be inferred from its relatively low degree of writing skill. Once a suspect is located, steps should be taken to obtain writings executed with both hands wherever possible. A small group of people can write with the same ease and skill using either hand. These ambidextrous writers have practiced and developed their writing to such a degree that writings produced by left and right hands do not contain features associated with disguise. In spite of a developed skill to write with both hands, writing done with the right hand differs in many ways from writing done with the left."

So if we are comparing the Diary handwriting with the handwriting of any individual we need to consider whether they might have attempted to disguise their handwriting by using their "other" hand. This could account for a different direction in the slope of such handwriting.

I understand that some 1% of the population is ambidextrous.

[David Orsam]

Thanks for these comparisons. It is intriguing, Anne's handwriting does bear a suspicious similarity to the diary. Almost what it might look like after an attempt to disguise her style slightly.

The question of course is, how likely is this so by chance alone, and how many others could be said to bear such a resemblance. True investigation would need dozens if not hundreds of samples from everyone associated with the diary. And, a clear indicator that Anne's is only one to consistently display troubling similarities.

Absolutely. One can't sensibly conclude from the similarities I've posted that Anne was the Diary's author. This is what I've been trying to stress from the start. It's possible that Anne's handwriting comes from a basic template which is and has been taught and shared by a lot of people, including the Diary author. The only point I want to make from this exercise is that it is quite a coincidence that the one person identified by Mike Barrett (in an affidavit) as the author of the Diary does happen to share a number of characteristics in her handwriting compared with the Diary author. One might say it is a coincidence which easily matches the coincidence of electrical work being carried out in Battlecrease House on the day that Mike contacted Doreen Montgomery's agency.