Twinwriting

For centuries the juridical systems of the civilized world have assumed that the natural handwriting of no two persons is the same. In most commercial transactions a signature is considered as good as a face or a fingerprint. Even the most skilful forgers find it next to impossible to perform in public. Thus successful forgeries of travelers' checks, which must be countersigned under scrutiny, are almost unknown.

Students of handwriting as well as the courts have accepted this long-standing assumption. Robert Saudek, London graphologist, set out to uncover exceptions.* In the March issue of Duke University's Character and Personality ("An International Quarterly for Psychodiagnostics and Allied Studies'') published this week, he reproduces twelve lines of bold, graceful, rapidly written script, with this comment: "It is out of the question that ten years ago any expert would have admitted the possibility . . . that parts of this specimen could have been written by different persons."

The first six lines were penned by a 20-year-old girl named Benita. The last six were written by her identical twin sister Minnette. Benita and Minnette went to the same schools, were inseparable companions.

Investigator Saudek examined the writing of 234 pairs of identical twins, found that 5% wrote the same hand. Other pairs wrote enough alike to deceive a bank teller completely, to make experts hesitate. This degree of resemblance he also found in the handwriting of two young girls, no kin, both taught to write in the school of Edinburgh's Royal Hospital for the Deaf.

*In his recently published Anonymous Letters: A Study in Crime and Handwriting, Graphologist Saudek discusses the writing of twins, U. S. blackmail letters, the role of handwriting in France's famed Dreyfuss case.

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