Diary Handwriting

[David Orsam]

Nothing was said, incidentally, in the opening post about Anne being a "potential forger". She is obviously an alleged and suspected forger due to what her husband claimed in his January 1995 affidavit but what I said we were going to do in this thread is to compare her handwriting to the handwriting in the diary. That's it.

[caz]

Before we consider a comparison of the handwriting of the Diary with the handwriting of any single individual (i.e. Anne Barrett)...

So okay, David didn't write, in so many words, that Anne was a 'potential forger', but one wonders how anyone could possibly infer from the above that he wasn't thinking of her in those terms! Not that there's anything wrong with that, but David very obviously still gives credence to Mike's claim that Anne's handwriting is in the diary, or presumably he wouldn't have bothered starting this thread. So let's hope he soon demonstrates, with examples, exactly why he still entertains the idea that Mike may have been telling the truth about this.

Then we can all see for ourselves if this idea has legs.

Love,

Persona Non Grata
X

[caz]

The Chief Diary Defender is clearly unnerved and afraid of the possibilities revealed by an examination of Anne's handwriting and now is reduced to throwing out strange accusations.

What's interesting is to compare what was written by the Chief Diary Defender in #18 with what was written in #27, which was supposed to be a clarification of #18

This was from #18:

"We shall see in due course, but I'd have thought someone like Anne, who'd have seriously needed the skill to disguise her own hand very well, while trying to maintain the overall consistency and fluidity of someone writing naturally, would also have taken care over such details, or made it far easier on herself by not producing a whacking 63 pages of writing with so much completely avoidable repetition. That would have been asking for trouble."

And this is from #27:

"I'd have thought any forger who seriously needed the skill to disguise their own hand very well, while trying to maintain the overall consistency and fluidity of someone writing naturally, would also have taken care over such details, or made it far easier on themselves by not producing a whacking 63 pages of writing with so much completely avoidable repetition. That would have been asking for trouble."

Spot the difference? It's not difficult is it? I don't know whether to call it a classic Diary Defender sleight of hand, because the previous version was quoted, but it's not a clarification, it's a complete change of meaning, as the phrase "someone like Anne" has been airbrushed out of history. Yet, it was the very notion that we can possibly speak of, and eliminate, "someone like Anne" that I was complaining of!!!

If we simply focus on the latest so-called clarification, in respect of "any forger", it seems that the Chief Diary Defender has managed to rule out the Diary as being a forgery (old OR modern) on the basis of the inconsistent handwriting!!! Something that no handwriting expert or document examiner has so far been able to do!

And the same person has also ruled it out as having been written by Maybrick.

So let us leave that person to her dream world and continue in the real one...

I only mentioned Anne because David did, in his opening post! How hard can this be?

I also specified a forger who, like Anne or anyone else, had been in it for the money and needed to disguise their normal handwriting to have had any hope of getting away with it.

I even referred to the handwriting not resembling Maybrick's as an argument for a hoaxer [unidentifiable as any of the suspected modern forgers] who didn't give two hoots about the appearance of the handwriting if it was never meant to be taken seriously in the first place. That's hardly ruling it out as a hoax, is it??

Love,

Persona Non Grata
X

[David Orsam]

Before doing a comparison of Anne's handwriting with the Diary handwriting let us consider a couple of quotes.

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.

Given that the author of the Diary is likely to have disguised their handwriting what can we tell from an examination of any individual's handwriting?

Let's take Anne for example. There is no doubt that some of her characters are different from those in the Diary. The formation of her letter "l" for example is different. The way the Diary author writes a capital "J" cannot be found in Anne's handwriting.

Yet, at the same time, there are a number of quite interesting similarities. But I do want to say that there is no way of drawing any conclusions from these similarities. Certainly none of Anne's normal handwriting can be said to be identical to the Diary author's handwriting. All I want to say in this thread that the similarities present us with quite a coincidence in that the person identified by Mike in his January 1995 affidavit as the transcriber of the affidavit shares a number of handwriting characteristics with the author of the Diary.

Below is one example from a number of letters of Anne that I've seen - I've also seen her signature on her marriage certificate - and I will comment on individual characters in separate posts.

[David Orsam]

One thing to notice about Anne's handwriting is that there is quite a long stroke over the letter "t" - which covers most of the word "the" in the example posted - albeit not quite as long as the Diary author's.

I should say that this is one thing that does appear in Anne's test sample provided to Keith Skinner in 1994.

I don't think this is particularly rare, although not everyone does it by any means, but I note it nevertheless.

[David Orsam]

Now this is rather interesting. The letter "i". It's fairly unusual in that it looks like the number 9.

The Diary author also writes it as a number nine but usually, although not always, adds a loop at the bottom.

You can compare with the word "if" on page 3 of the Diary and you can see a very plain looking "i" without a loop at the bottom on page 10 of the Diary and a loopy one on page 2.

It's a shame I can't post examples side by side from the Diary but as there are copyright issues involved you will need to do the comparison yourself I'm afraid.

[David Orsam]

Possibly the most unusual character formation by both the Diary author and Anne is the letter "f". They both write it like the letter "b".

You can see a couple of examples in the Diary on page 3 ("fly" and "from") and the word "fact" on page 31.

This is Anne writing "from".

[David Orsam]

Both Anne and the Diary author share a similar characteristic when forming the letter "T".

The top left of the letter looks like a little "H".

True that the Diary author adds a loop at the bottom of the T but you can compare Anne's "T" in "Thats" with the authors "T" in Time on page 2 of the Diary.

[David Orsam]

Is it just me or does Anne's "s" look like the letter "n"?

It's something the Diary author does too, see the word "shake" on page 8.

[David Orsam]

I don't want to make too much of Anne's capital "A" other than that she writes it in the same form as lower case "a" (but larger).

The Diary author does frequently put a distinctive diagonal line through this letter, which Anne does not, but not always and you can compare Anne's "A" with the "A" in "Abberline" on page 30 although I don't suggest there is anything particular similar between the two character formations other than that they are not "A".

[David Orsam]

Anne has a fairly unusual way of writing the "M" in "Mike".

To me, it looks like a little "n" next to a very large "n"

The Diary author does something similar when writing the name "Michael" on pages 2 and 10 of the Diary.

Not exactly the same by any means, but similar nonetheless.

[David Orsam]

This is the "G" in "Graham" from Anne's marriage certificate. It has a circular loop at the top, in the same way that the Diary author includes one in the word "God" on page 61 of the Diary.

[David Orsam]

Finally, this is an example of an "E" from Anne's marriage certificate. It has a little loop at the top which can be compared to the "E" in "England" on page 24 of the Diary.

[David Orsam]

Now this is rather interesting. The letter "i". It's fairly unusual in that it looks like the number 9.

The Diary author also writes it as a number nine but usually, although not always, adds a loop at the bottom.

You can compare with the word "if" on page 3 of the Diary and you can see a very plain looking "i" without a loop at the bottom on page 10 of the Diary and a loopy one on page 2.

It's a shame I can't post examples side by side from the Diary but as there are copyright issues involved you will need to do the comparison yourself I'm afraid.

One thing about the letter "i" or "I" in Anne's normal handwriting (in the correspondence I have seen) is that it looks rather different to the way it is written in the test sample provided for Keith Skinner in 1994. I don't make any point about this. Anne might have different ways of writing characters at different times but I would say that it would have made it difficult for someone like Sue Iremonger to make a comparison between Anne's normal handwriting and that of the Diary author.

[David Orsam]

Just to add that most of the individual handwriting examples I posted came out rather larger than I was aiming for, as they didn't need to be quite that big. Hope that doesn't make it hard to do the comparisons.