For several years Mr. D. N. Carvalho, the New York photographer, has
made a specialty of the delicate use of photography which is brought
into play more and more in connection with criminal cases in which
disputed handwriting, forgeries, counterfeit money, etc., are features.
The results now achieved are the outcome of years of experiment, and
the photographic expert becomes in the end an expert in handwriting.
Mr. Carvalho's gallery of records is an interesting illustration of
what perseverance and ingenuity, aided by photography, can do toward
solving apparently hopeless mysteries. To a reporter, who visited his
studio, he said:
"We can do a great many things to bring the truth to light by the aid
of photography. There is scarcely a case nowadays in which it is not
brought into play if disputed handwriting is concerned. Of course the
most famous case of late years was the Morey letter case. There is a
photograph of the Morey letter up there in a corner. It yet remains a
mystery, but we are certain that Garfield did not write it. I first
found by photography that the envelope had been tampered with by the
following process: Cutting the envelope open, so as to get a single
thickness of paper, I put it between two sheets of plate glass, and
placed it where the sun passed through it, the camera being placed
on the shady side. Although no half-erased writing could be detected
on the envelope with the naked eye or a glass, the difference in the
thickness of the paper where erasures had been made showed plainly, as
the light came through more clearly, and the erased words, which gave
rise to so much discussion, were discovered.
"Below the Morey letter is a photograph of the signature of Alonzo C.
Yates. Yates, you may remember, was a rich Philadelphia clothier, who,
late in life, married a cook in the Astor House, and died, leaving a
million or so to the wife. The daughters by a first wife disputed the
signature to the will. I was employed by John D. Townsend to show the
genuineness of the signature. We got thirty or forty genuine signatures
of Yates admitted by both sides, and showed that a man never writes
his name the same way twice. Then I took the signature of the will and
another admitted by both sides, and enlarged them until each was 9 feet
4 inches long. The peculiarities of the writing became so apparent when
shown upon that enormous scale--the signatures were so evidently by the
same person--that the contestants gave up the case.
"There is a portrait of Theophilus Youngs. He married a clairvoyant
many years ago in Boston and disappeared. His widow pretended to
recognize his body in one that was found in the bay soon after, and he
was given up as dead. Some years after his father died, and the widow
put in a claim for a share of the property. The contestants, by whom
I was employed, contended that Youngs was yet alive, and eventually
produced him in court. The alleged widow refused to recognize him,
and I was called upon to prove he was the man. The widow produced
a photograph which she said was one of the pictures of Youngs, her
husband. A good many years had passed, and although the likeness was
a strong one, there was enough difference in the appearance of Youngs
and the photograph to make a jury hesitate. I put Youngs in the same
position in which he was taken in the picture, the genuineness of which
was admitted, and made a photograph of the same size. Then the likeness
became more apparent, and exact measurements showed the two faces to
measure the same in all respects. For instance, the distance between
the mouth and the eye, which is seldom the same in two persons, was
exactly equal. Then one picture was made transparent and superimposed
over the other, and the two faces matched perfectly. The jury decided
that the claimant was not an impostor.
"In the case of Hall, the head clerk of the Newark Treasurer's office,
everything depended upon showing that he changed a figure 5 into a
figure 3. He ran away to Canada, and was brought back upon a charge
of forgery. His counsel claimed that the figure had not been changed,
and that if the mark of an eraser was found, and that the figure 5 had
been changed, it was caused by the accidental slip of an ink eraser
used in the margin. I made photographs of the page, and by means of a
stereopticon threw a picture of that particular figure upon a screen 10
feet high. Upon that scale several interesting things came out. It was
seen very plainly that the figure had been altered from a 5 to a 3, but
the erasure had been made with a different material from the erasure in
the margin. We tried a rubber ink eraser, and the result was the same
as seen in the margin. Then we tried a steel penknife, and the result
enlarged a thousand times was the same as seen over the figure 3. This
disposed of the 'accident' theory, and Hall was convicted.
"I was employed in the Cadet Whittaker case, and worked for weeks at
the famous letter of warning--a few words scribbled on a piece of
paper, which Whittaker was suspected of writing. All the cadets were
called upon to give specimens of their handwriting, and the writing of
No. 27 was declared by the experts to be that of the note of warning. I
believed that it was not, and, taking the specimen of No. 27's writing
upon which he was suspected, I duplicated the note of warning, cutting
the same letters out of 27's specimen, and placing them together as
nearly as possible in the order of the famous note. It was a work of
tremendous labor, but when done it showed the innocence of No. 27. It
was suspected that the scrap of paper upon which the note of warning
was written was torn from a letter sheet which Whittaker sent to his
mother, but that theory was disposed of upon enlarging the two edges to
the size at which a fine cambric needle looks like a crowbar. Then it
was seen that the two edges had never been together. The verdict in the
Whittaker case was finally reversed upon the ground that the court had
come to a decision from the examination of lithographs of the note of
warning, which I proved by comparison with a photograph were incorrect.
Whittaker, by the way, is teaching school now in the northern part of
this State. He made speeches for Cleveland in his neighborhood during
the election campaign last autumn."
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[Continued from Supplement No. 384, page 6127.]