Arrangement, Natural Variation, Legibility and Line Continuity as Discriminating Elements in Forensic Handwriting Analysis: A Study of Herman Melville’s April 11, 1846 Hydrarchos Satire

Abstract

Along with a discussion of the CEDAR-FOX results, four of 21 discriminating elements described by Huber and Headrick in their text Handwriting Identification: Facts and Fundamentals (1999) were applied to investigate the genuineness of an 1846 handcrafted satirical newspaper called the “Hydrarchos.” As the writership of the “Hydrarchos” was unknown when the author purchased the original document in 2009, and because the author’s research pointed to Herman Melville as the probable writer, he approached Professor Sargur Srihari director of the CEDAR-FOX project at the University of Buffalo to see if Dr. Srihari’s scientific methodology and handwriting research could assist in determining whether Melville wrote the “Hydrarchos.” Once Dr. Srhihari and his colleagues’ research (2010, 2013) confirmed that Melville was the likely writer of the “Hydrarchos,” the author decided to use a more traditional approach to see if the techniques used by forensic document examiners would substantiate the CEDAR-FOX results.

Purchase Article - $10