I9I4.] PSYCHOLOGY OF JURORS AND JURIES. 317 



city every day, for I notice that that pavement was relatively not 

 dangerous or bad. 



I am not quarrelling with the verdict in which I had a part. It 

 was not very serious either way except as a matter of abstract 

 justice. I am merely trying to show how much more those pictures, 

 in conjunction with the strained reiterations of witnesses, counted 

 for than they were really worth. The mind believed what was true 

 in them because they were photographs and excused and apolo- 

 gized for what seemed untrue (but was really very true) — also be- 

 cause they were photographs. 



In an article on " Photography and Crime " Mr. C. H. Claudy 

 says : 



" Any capable photographer knows how to magnify or minimize certain 

 parts of the perspective of any view. Thus, a long-focus, narrow-angle lens 

 will give a totally different result from a wide-angle, short-focus lens. In a 

 suit for damages because of obstructions left upon the street, for instance, a 

 lawyer will have a photographer use the latter lens and stand close to the 

 alleged obstructions. A pile of earth, particularly if photographed low, will 

 appear very large in proportion to the vanishing perspective of the street. A 

 natural-angle photograph, made with a ten-inch lens on a five-by-seven 

 plate, will give a totally different idea of the size of the obstruction. 



" Cracks in buildings, as evidence of the damage done by subway con- 

 struction or sewer-laying, can not be brought before a jury; but photographs 

 of them can be so used as evidence. A clever photographer, by manipula- 

 tion of his illumination, so that one side of the crack throws a heavy shadow 

 can make such fissures appear far larger than they really are. Pictures of 

 hills, to show the locality of a runaway, can be made steep or flat according 

 to how the camera is handled. It is not, therefore, necessary to resort to 

 actual changing of the negative and print to make the camera deceptive, 

 and more and more are our courts coming to understand this fact." 



I have been startled several times with the seeming unevenness 

 and bad brick-laying in a brick extension wall of my own house. In 

 early summer the low afternoon sun throws long shadows length- 

 wise from irregularities in the brick quite unobservable at other 

 times. A photograph of the wall at such a time might be shown as 

 strong evidence that the wall had suffered some kind of disruption. 

 Yet the fact is that it is finely and evenly laid. 



No allegations of attempt to falsify in the case under considera- 

 tion are here intended. It is true that in the pictures the little streets 

 looked broad and fine but the defects of the pavement and the curb 



