Description
The belief that most people could accurately compare signatures was challenged by the emergence of experts in handwriting analysis.These people argued that the accurate comparison of signatures, and handwriting in general, required training in breaking down writing into its constituent parts.The attempt to advance handwriting analysis as a science brings to the foreground the not always coherent assumptions that allowed the signature to be accepted as an accurate and reliable form of identification.The development of techniques to verify handwriting offers an important point of entry into the historically specific nature of how handwriting was understood to link a person to a document.In the second half of the nineteenth century the acceptance of evidence from handwriting experts in courtrooms demonstrates important changes in how the relationship between a person and their writing could be proved and hence different conceptions of the relationship between identity and identification.The basis for legal resolution of disputes over the authenticity of written documents changed from personal knowledge of the writer to the belief that accurate identification could be achieved through the articulation of designated facts visible to experts who by following a specific set of procedures could analyze handwriting as a series of precisely measured marks.The emergence of handwriting analysis through claims to rationality and objectivity is what turned it into a modern form of identification.The circumstances of many cases meant it was an acquaintance of the purported writer who most frequently provided evidence.In short, personal knowledge of individuals began to be seen as a problematic basis for evaluating disputes as the small social circles in which documents, especially financial notes, had circulated disappeared by the middle of the century.12Handwriting analysis as a field of expertise also emerged in a period in which it was increasingly accepted that, if properly understood, small variations in appearance and behavior could be seen as meaningful.This belief developed in the last half of the nineteenth century with the emergence of identification techniques such as fingerprinting, anthropometry, and social statistics, along with the popularity of detective novels such as Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes series.13 In line with this, handwriting experts argued the minute particulars of handwriting deemed irrelevant or even irretrievable prior to the first half of the nineteenth century were the only basis for reliable evidence in courts.Outside of the courtroom the reading of identity from handwriting more often took the form of graphology.This also sought to attribute the assumed link between personal identity and handwriting to science and thus contributed to moving identification away from the opinion and subjectivity of personal knowledge to the method and objectivity of science.Below the text of the passport and immediately preceded by the valediction, which began with the phrase Given under my hand, was the signature of the secretary of state.The format of the passport as a letter complete with a signature does give the text an implied autobiographical anchor.As a result, the State Department considered it necessary to halt the issuance of passports as there was no individual, and thus no signature, to render a passport effective.18 While a seal can be understood as an impersonal signature, the secretary’s handwritten signature was distinct from the other techniques that represented the state such as the ornamentation that adorned passports.The signed names of secretaries of state personalized what became during the nineteenth century an increasingly large bureaucratic structure.It was anticipated that the signature as a graphic form considered personally distinct would give the notes an aura of uniqueness.21The secretary of state’s signature as a sign of uniqueness, something authentic on a passport printed from a standardized template, emphasizes the significance of a personal mark on an impersonal document.In the case of Secretary of State William Seward, whose right hand had been permanently injured, his stenographer believedthe capitals in his signature were distinguishable, but it was little more than an impatient wave lie, a heavy trailing of the hand, that joined the S and the d.We have wondered whether the foreign officials who scrutinized the travelers’ passports could read the signature at the bottom.In this context the pointlessness of a passport having the actual signature of the secretary of state was not lost on some department officials.The introduction of a stamp was probably the result of the dramatic increase in the number of passport issued.These expressed the concern that European border guards treated their passports with suspicion because the secretary of state’s signature was stamped onto the passport.That is, the officials more than likely read into a handwritten signature a personalized token of authenticity.The signature was intended to verify the authenticity of the passport through the uniqueness of the script and the consistent replication of that script.Following this logic, a stamp, or some other way of reproducing a standardized signature, would be more desirable than a handwritten signature as it is virtually impossible to consistently repeat exactly the same signature.However, the cultural assumptions behind the signature as a graphic symbol of authenticity and legitimacy made clear Root’s belief that a document is more valuable if signed by the pen than if signed by the stamp.29 A handwritten signature gave the passport authenticity through an assumed relationship between body, pen, and paper.A stamped signature gave the passport authenticity through a logic of standardization.Despite Root’s acknowledgment of the significance of a handwritten signature, the State Department’s response to these complaints about the lack of a personal touch in its passport moved the passport further in the direction of a standardized document and thus towards its emergence as a modern identification document.Department officials stopped stamping signatures onto the passport, instead, a facsimile of the secretary’s signature was engraved on the plate used to print the passport.
