18-19th Century Document Forgery

[johnsonjoshuak]

I'm writing a section of my new novel in which one officer is trying to implicate another in spying. The technology is roughly early American Civil War.

In addition to stealing messages from their mutual commander and planting them on the target officer, I wanted to have the officer doing the deed to hire a document forger to mimic the target officer's handwriting and write letters and memos so that it looks like the target's handwriting.

I know that in the medieval era, clerics would have done all of the writing and document forgery but who would have done it in the 18th-19th century? It doesn't have to be professional-currency forgery, just something quick.

I'm thinking just your average, middle of the road literate con-man but I wanted to have someone who would have a reason to be good at it.

 

[CupofJoe]

I would imagine that in a [semi-] literate society then there will be professional criminal forgers in the underworld.
It's not the words and writing that would be the limiting factor but stamps [pressure or stick], seals, watermarks and the like.
They would take a lot of copying and faking.
It depends on what the documents are needed for. If it was something fairly minor [a travel permission?] then it might be easy enough knock one up that would fool people for a minute or two.
If it is a tittle deed to a property or a writ for arrest, then I guess those would be far harder to fake.
If your conman is really good, then he can probably "sell" almost anything to the right mark [I mean person...] and get them to believe what he is showing them is the real deal...

 

[Caged Maiden]

I don't know what kind of setting you have, but if you're looking for someone capable of forging documents, hand-written letters, and signatures, you could consider where illiterate people of the time got their writing done?.

I suppose illiterate people might go to a telegraph office, or maybe a bank, or post office, or maybe a clerk's office of some sort (make something up if you have to), and dictate their letter. I suppose the problem you're hung up on is whether the writing would then be close enough to the target's writing (historically, letters were more precise than the way they are now, and stylistic writing we see today simply wasn't the norm). So maybe just write it themselves, since they can read? I mean, I wouldn't look closely at handwriting that I thought was from my friend. I wouldn't compare it to an older letter, unless something stuck out as really odd, like misspellings suddenly riddling a letter when my buddy is a good speller, or the opposite, he can suddenly spell! I know that when I made out my Christmas cards this year, some of them were written neatly, and the last half I did were significantly less neat. But when you look at people's writing from the 40s, 50s, especially in Europe, everyone's handwriting looks the same. I can't tell whether my Grandma or one of her sisters wrote the names on the photos. It's impossible to tell.

But like I was trying to say, if these men are all educated and can write, it's likely their handwriting is good enough to make a pretty convincing copy. Also, signatures are what most people expect to have forged, but if they're sending memos...would they sign every message? That sounds excessive to me.

If you're totally set on hiring a forger because it's the right choice for your story (as in, the MC needs to leave camp for an afternoon so some crap can hit the fan while he's gone), then I'd look at a banker, lawyer, telegrapher, post officer, whatever else you can come up with, and make sure there's a legitimate reason this businessman who has taken an oath has decided to criminalize his activities for profit or whatever. I guess when you say Civil War era, I'm thinking "not in Boston", or something. If your action is happening in a city (rather than in a less populated region, like I'm picturing in my head), and the MC is familiar with the area, then you'll have some sort of organized crime and people with reputations for getting signatures on things. However, if someone asked me today where to get something forged in Columbus, Ohio, where I've lived for over a year, I'd have no clue where to get that done. Or buy pot. Or find a bar that allows underage drinking, or any other service that isn't publicly advertised. HA! So if the soldiers are traveling, they may not even know where to begin.

 

[johnsonjoshuak]

So, the society is semi- to mostly-literate, so writing is a skill that most people have.

The problem is that, like you said, the memos and messages aren't going to be signed so I wanted to have someone who can make the messages look like the target officer's handwriting and it can be tied to him without having a signature.

 

[skip.knox]

Your question makes me think of the Baron of Arizona. Read the articles about him, don't watch the movie. This guy was 19thc and he forged a ton of stuff that let him pose as owner of vast tracts of land in Arizona. Cast him as a Spanish grandee of some sort. It's a wild tale. As Caged Maiden implied, who you are trying to fool will dictate the quality of the forgery.

Short version: forgeries were done all the time and did not require any special skills ... unless you were trying to fabricate something like a Bank of London note and get it passed *at* the Bank of London.

A quick search on "famous document forgeries of the nineteenth century" turned up a bunch of hits. I had to include "document" because without it it's mostly about art forgery, which is rather a different horse.

 

[Caged Maiden]

All I'm saying, is that if YOU were looking at a note written by your friend, you might notice that the writing is odd if say, the little hearts she makes over her "i"s is missing, but would you really suspect the Christmas card that came from her wasn't written by her? How "different" would the handwriting have to be for you to go, "huh, wonder who wrote that, because it certainly wasn't my friend Mary, she dots her "i"s with little hearts.

In the past, handwriting was more standardized than it is today. What we do now is a loosey-goosey form of writing that is acceptable today when everyone can read and write. In the 50s, when my grandmother and her sisters and friends were all writing things on photos and in baby books, and whatever else, their handwriting all looked so similar, I can't tell who wrote the letters. Because in Europe at the time, in the 30s and 40s, when those women were receiving an 8th grade education and nothing more, handwriting was something people did in a standardized form.

So again, forging a certified document, you'd need the right stamp, the right paper, the right ink, etc. so it looked authentic, but if you wanted to send a personal letter to a guy and pretend it was from his friend or whatever, all you'd have to do is get close enough. No reasonable person would question the note's authenticity unless something looked VERY odd. Like I said, misspellings when the friend is very educated, or sudden good grammar from an idiot.

I don't think you need a forger for what you're proposing, and i'd think the very inclusion of one would overcomplicate a situation that doesn't warrant it. I wrote forgery into one of my novels, so I'm not against it by any stretch, but for the specific thing you're talking about, I'd question whether it even needs to be done that way.

I mean, does he think the officer will somehow immediately think to check pen pressure, paper quality, or word slant? That's the kind of thing that would stick out in a bad way to me as a reader if he did, honestly. I'd be asking myself why the spy guy didn't do what I do whenever I have to sign my husband's name to something--practice it ten times and then forge it myself, getting close enough for even him to wonder whether he wrote it.

The one situation I could see in which a forger might be really necessary, is if the target is left-handed and the spy guy simply cannot pull that off. But I'd think the forgery itself would be less secure a secret if someone were hired to do it. Think about it like this--if the spy is the only one who knows the letters are forged, no one's gonna leak information. If he hires someone to forge it, there's another person who can attest to the authenticity of the document. So...he has a chance of being incriminated, where if he did it on his own, and no one knows who made the forgery, even if it's found out, no one can point a finger at him. That alone would make me really hesitant to hire a forger unless absolutely necessary.

If you think you need a forger to do it, I tried to suggest some options in my last post. I think as a writer though, sometimes you have to consider how smart readers are, and many of them have probably also forged things in a pinch (as almost all married people have to do on rare occasion). It might do more harm than good to include something that doesn't make sense.

Anyways, either way you decide to go, just think about the bigger consequences of each possibility. Both for readers and for the characters. I've learned this lesson the hard way, in critiques, where I felt a detail made perfect sense, but my readers certainly pointed out how there were more logical ways to accomplish the same goal. Hope my earlier suggestions help if you still need a professional forgery done.

 

[skip.knox]

>In the past, handwriting was more standardized than it is today

Depends on when "in the past" is. I know a bit about medieval manuscripts and can tell you that a trained diplomatist (nothing to do with politics, 'diplomatics' is the study of documents) can tell when, for example, there is a change of hands in a medieval monastic chronicle.

On the other hand is the example of Lorenzo Valla who, around 1440, proved the Donation of Constantine was a forgery without ever actually seeing the manuscript itself. Mainly because there wasn't one!

I agree with Caged Maiden, on this one.

 

[Caged Maiden]

>"in the past" is what I said it was twice, the first half of the 20th century, all my family photos have too similar writing to tell who wrote them. I'm not saying all people write alike, but it's reasonable to say that at times in our past when reading and writing were a privilege, people worked harder to maintain the standard they were taught (sometimes by harsh teachers who demanded perfection?), and not deviate from it as we do today. Look at a bunch of seniors writing sometime...it's uncanny how the letters all look so similar, much more so than when young people write, like those girls in school who made me jealous with their perfectly formed big bubble letters. And mine were all slanted and narrow.

I agree with your example that calligraphy, which is very precise, is still subject to the individual nuances of a particular hand.

But looking at a text and saying, "oh, someone new came in here at this point right here," is certainly a different thing than getting a letter from your cousin one night, then three nights later, getting another, and scrutinizing them side by side to see if they're the same. No one who isn't crazy would do that.

Also, I would bet in that Medieval scenario, if you held up a page and asked the guy (even though he's a master scribe or whatever) "who wrote this page?" he probably wouldn't be able to name the person without thorough research. That's why modern day handwriting analysts look for several markers: pen pressure, word slant, and all kinds of nuances to the letters themselves. And even in that scenario, you're comparing a master of writing to an army officer...just a guy who reads words on occasion and has not been thoroughly inspired in his lifetime by the artistry of the written word. I'd expect a scribe to do far better on the "who wrote this" test than a common literate person.

If I were to set out intent on forging someone's writing, i could do it in a day, I'm sure (unless they're bubble letters, which elude me in every way). Maybe I wouldn't fool analysts in a court setting, but I could certainly get it by a lay person. I've done it before, not for anything illegal, but because i wanted fancier handwriting. I have about four types of completely different handwriting I can consistently maintain, and I've never given it much effort. If my sole purpose was forging a few short notes to someone, I could look at their letters and come up with a good forgery in a short time. And since the spy would need an example to take to a forger, it means he's got an example of the target's writing. And also, forgers don't simply pick up a pen and voila, they can write like someone else. They have to take a little time to get good at it, too. that's why forgers focus on documents, rather than notes. They have a printed document, and then they fill in a signature, or whatever. It isn't magic. That's why you order documents from a forger and return later to get them. The only thing a professional forger might have on a lay person, is that sometimes they're skilled in an odd way, like they write upside down, separating their own ability to read from the inclination to write letters in their natural way? I know that's how some forgers work (and some lefties). Not sure if there are other tricks. For me, it's like I try not to read words. I write Medieval manuscripts and I hate calligraphy. So I make a copy of the whole passage in my modern hand, then I write it in pencil on a lined paper in calligraphy letters, then finally I write the pencil on the document, and finally I cover the pencil with ink with a quill or nib pen. It's a lot of labor, but the easiest way not to mess it up for me, is to just focus on each letter and its correct form, and forget what you're actually writing. And, by the end, I've written it at least four times, so I've gotten more precise at the calligraphy letters' particular strokes of the pen. Not sure how forgers actually think and picture stuff.

 

[johnsonjoshuak]

The only reason I was looking for something more than just the average person copying documents is because the person who is supposed to find these documents (the mutual superior officer of the two people in question) and he's worked with both of these people for several years. He might not question your average document, but the ones I'm looking at having created are coded messages and troop dispositions etc, so I would reckon that when the superior finds the forged documents, she'd at least be able to tell the difference between the two.

I don't think I'm going to involve anything as specific as a professional document forger, but maybe some sort of notary.