( 419 ) 



XXI. — On the Comjyosition of a New Writing-Ink, which, in i^esisting Chemical 

 Deletion, promises to diminish the chance of the Falsification of Bills, Deeds, and 

 other Documents. By Thomas Stewart Traill, M. D., F. R. S. Ed. Sfc, Pro- 

 fessor of Medical Jurisprudence in the University of Edinhurgh. 



Reafl Monday, 19th February 1838. 



The preparation of my Lectures on Medical Jurisprudence involved a consi- 

 deration of the means of diminishing the chances of successful forgery, and again 

 engaged me on a subject to which, many years ago, my attention had been very 

 painfully turned by the frequency of executions for that crime. This will scarcely 

 appear exaggeration, when it is stated, that, in the year 1809, there were no less 

 than thirteen executions for forgery in the county of Lancaster, where I then re- 

 sided : and when it is recollected that, in the fourteen years preceding 1819, two 

 hundred and four individuals perished on the scaffold for that offence in England 

 and Wales, every means of discouraging so fertile a source of misery and crime 

 must be allowed to be a subject of no trifling importance. 



Many of those forgeries were no doubt counterfeits of Bank of England notes, 

 in which the effacing of writing-ink had no concern ; but Parliamentary returns 

 shew that, out of forty convictions for forgery throughout England in 1833, no 

 more than sixteen were connected with the Bank. 



A Statistical Report, published in France in 1836, gave 292 as the number 

 of persons committed for forgery in that kingdom in 1831 ; while in Belgium there 

 were 39 ; in Spain 44 ; and in Britain 44. This gives, in proportion to the popu- 

 lation of each, for 



Belgium, with n population equalling 

 France, 



4,082,427, 

 32,960,584, 

 13,950,000, 

 20,721,350, 



1 



in 104,677 

 .... 112,877 



Spain, 



.... 317,045 



Britain, 



.... 470,990 



On the Continent the crime is more frequently attempted by erasure of 

 writing-ink than in this country ; yet the facilities which Chemistry affords of 

 falsifying deeds, and of deleting signatures engrossed with common ink, without 

 leaving a trace of the writing, has often in Britain also tempted to forgery. 

 Hence the discovery of a cheap and durable writing-ink, as one mode of diminish- 

 ing crime, and of protecting the interests of the public, has been considered as 

 meriting the attention both of the moralist and the legislator ; and has lately been 



VOL. XIV. part II. , 3 P 



