THE DIFFICULTIES OF IDENTIFICATION.
AMAN, in all human probability an escaped lunatic, named Heasman, was found on Friday week in the cupboard of a house in Hackney Wick, dead. There appeared at first to be a strong presumption that he had either been murdered or had com- mitted suicide in some exceptional and, so to speak, lunatic way ; but the medical evidence tends to prove suicide by laudanum, and it is not with the mode of his death that we are just now concerned. A much stranger question arose about his identification. Great publicity had been given to the circumstances attending the dis- covery of his body, and on Sunday a number of persons, usually provided with photographs, visited the Hackney dead-house—or " mortuary," as the reporters are pleased to call it—to see if the features corresponded with those of missing friends. it is strange, but certain, that no reasonable cause for disappearance, like the breaking of the ice in Regent's Park, is ever described in London, but dozens of families are ready to testify that one of their mem- bers has disappeared. Among the inquirers was Dr. Ellis, Medical Superintendent of St. Luke's, who recognized the body, showed that the clothes were, beyond all doubt, those of a patient in St. Luke's, and declared that the name of the deceased was Heasman—the name of a patient who had recently escaped from the establishment. The name on the stockings worn by deceased corresponded with this statement. Dr. Ellis has no personal interest in the matter one way or the other, and on the following day the brother of the unhappy man, apparently an unexception- able witness, confirmed the physician's view. The body, beyond all doubt, was that of his brother, Mr. B. Heasman, recently a patient in St. Luke's. One would think such a mass of evidence was be- yond all doubt, past any reasonable cavil, yet it is certain that one visitor, totally unconnected with the asylum, produced a photo- graph very like the deceased, and that another, Mrs. Mary Ann Banks, positively affirms that the body is that of her husband, Mr. Ebenezer Charles Banks, a commercial traveller. She adhered to this statement upon oath in the Coroner's Court, her two sisters partially support her, and she has one strong circumstance in favour of her statement. Before she had seen the body she described a particular wound upon- the little finger, which wound appears to have been found. Some doubt was thrown upon her testimony before the Coroner, by a sugges- tion that she wanted to obtain some insurance depending upon her late husband's death ; but the suggestion was not supported, and the balance of evidence goes to show that Mrs. Banks, though possibly very eager to be certain of her missing husband's fate, was honest, and really believed in an identity which nevertheless is completely disproved. The interest felt in the case, an interest out of all proportion to the importance of the facts, reveals a curious doubt which is always latent in the public mind, and which has, we suspect, as much justification as popular instincts usually have, a doubt whether appearance is conclusive, or even strong evidence of identity. The doubt is probably based upon tradition, which -ideals much in stories of mistaken identity, but we are inclined to believe it much more solid than either policemen or artists would be willing to allow. A large proportion of ordinary persons, it -may be even a majority, but certainly a very large proportion, are very untrustworthy witnesses to identity when dependent on appearance alone. They are either from nature or habit incapable of appreciating form, and form alone is the unerring proof of personal identity. The difficulties in the way of identification, more especially of the dead, are to them insuperable. In the first place, people are much more similar than we always remember. Without accepting or disputing the extraordinary idea which exists in so many countries, and is the basis of so many fables, that every man has his " double " somewhere, an individual absolutely identical in appearance with himself, it is quite certain that the most extraordinary likenesses do exist among persons wholly disconnected in blood, that there are faces and forms in the world which are rather types than individualities, people so like one another that only the most intimate friends and connec- tions can detect the difference. The likeness of Madame Lamotte to Marie Antoinette is a well known historic instance, and there are few persons who have not in the course of their own experience met with something of the same kind. The writer has twice. In one case, he was on board a ship in which were two passengers, who neither were, nor by possibility could be, connected by birth or any other cir- cumstance whatever except, indeed, caste. Oddly enough, they were unaware of a likeness which was the talk of the ship, dressed in the same style, but from some inexplicable repulsion—we are stating mere facts—disliked and avoided one another. The writer, in a six weeks' voyage and with a tolerably intimate acquaintance with one of the two, never succeeded in distinguishing them by sight ; and of the remaining passengers, certainly one-half, say thirty educated persons, were in the same predicament. In the second instance the evidence is far less perfect, but sufficient for the argu- ment we are now advocating. The writer stopped short in Bond Street utterly puzzled by the apparition of one of his closest con- nections not two yards off. Clearly it was he, yet he could from -circumstances by no possibility be there. Still it was he, and the writer advanced to address him, when a momentary smile broke the spell, leaving, however, this impression, " I would have sworn to Blank in any Court of Justice. His double must be walking about Bond Street." The likeness was really astounding, quite sufficient to have deceived any number of policemen unacquainted previously with either man.
The writer has a faculty for likeness or a stupidity about identi- ties ? That is a plausible, though an erroneous explanation, and it brings up just the point we want to make. Is it not just possible —it is rather a serious supposition, when our criminal procedure is sconsidered—but is it not just possible that something like colour blindness affects this matter of identification? that there is a large number of persons whose evidence upon any question of identity, though perfectly honest, is worthy of very little trust ? that men upon this, as upon most other matters, are guilty of an uncon- -scions carelessness, like that which makes testimony about figured statements so often valueless. We are all apt to think that we observe faces very carefully, but it is quite certain, snore certain than almost any assertion of the same kind, that we do not so observe them. We are also apt to believe that the difference in faces is very great, is radical, and not dependent upon accidental features, yet it is almost certain that no such difference exists, that men are in reality as-nearly alike as animals appear to be. Take, for instance, in evidence of both these propositions—of the carelessness of our usual glance, and of the similarity among men—a fact which a number of -our readers can test for themselves. No man on landing at an Indian or Chinese port for the first time can for a few days tell one man from another. The natives are more decisively unlike than so many Englishmen, because in addition to every other distinction their complexions cover a wider range of colour ; but being similarly dressed, they seem for a few days as much alike as so many sheep, who are all alike to a Londoner, but among whom a shepherd or a dog makes no mistake. Now, if men were much unlike, more unlike than the sheep are, no such curious haziness would be possible, nor would it be if the observer were uncon- sciously in the habit of studying the form and character of each face. He has, as a rule, no such habit, but, unless an artist or a policeman, relies unconsciously on accidental circumstances, colour, hair on lip or chin, gait, expression, or peculiarity of some one feature, and should that by any accident disappear he is utterly puzzled. One-tenth, at least, of Western mankind is consciously or unconsciously short-sighted, and never sees in any true sense of seeing any face whatever, never quite catches its nuances of ex- pression, never is quite sure about its minor features, never quite ceases to idealize according to a preconceived theory of character. Even of those who do see perfectly a large proportion are not artists, never catch the speciality of the face they are looking at enough to caricature it, —some faces won't submit to caricature, Lord Derby's, for instance, and Mr. Gladstone's, in both of which the caricaturist invariably intensifies the whole expression—and really recollect it mainly by its accidents of colour or the like, accidents which may disappear in life, and which do disappear in death. It is not easy to recognize the photographs of men whose appearance depends on colour, and death does its work in destroy- ing colour even more perfectly than the sun. Fatness and thin- ness, too, are great aids to recognition ; yet they are temporary, dependent sometimes on mere accidents of health. We have all of us met friends whom we have not seen, say, for three years, who have grown wider, if not wiser, in the interval, and whom we should not without speech have recognized. Death, as a rule, while it leaves much unchanged, abso- lutely destroys every distinction based either upon colour or upon fatness, and modifies thinness in the most unexpected way, revealing unsuspected depths about brow and mouth, while
leaving the cheek untouched. No child is recognizable in death by mere acquaintance, because in children's faces
the prominent points are colour and contour. An actor cannot change his real face, but only the accidents of the face ; yet Mr. Webster, for example, has once or twice deceived his audience for some minutes, and could, we suspect, deceive them, if that were his object, altogether. Think, again, of the excessive difficulty with which the memory retains a face. Portrait painters of half a century's standing will tell you that they hardly retain the impression of a sitter five minutes, though they have been studying him keenly ; that their own first touches from him as he sits are invaluable helps ; that they would all, if it were convenient for art reasons, like to keep a photograph in full view for their work when the original is away. We think we remember, but in five minutes we forget, the half of a friend's face nearly as perfectly as we forget the whole of our own. Clearly if identification were as easy as we are apt to believe, we should not so forget faces. And their expression ? Doubtless, expression, being, so to speak, an intellectual rather than a physical fact, stirring and rousing the intellect of the observer, his secret and almost instinc- tive likes and dislikes, remains longer fixed in the mind than mere feature. The witness who arrested Judge Jeffries might have forgotten his face, did forget it, in fact, for Jeffries when seized had only changed his wig, but he could not forget the ferocious glare of those insufferable eyes. But expression changes quickly, may change permanently. We all say every now and then " His face quite changed," while nothing is changed except, perhaps, the expression and the colour. Madness, extreme anger, drink, will all change a well known face till it is almost irrecognizable ; and though, no doubt, it requires a combination of circumstances to deceive a wife as to her husband's identity, still there is one expression which in a case like that of Hackney Wick she has never seen, and that is death, of all influences the one which may most modify expression, both by altering the set of the features, and changing the emotional medium through which we regard them. No doubt there are faces so marked and so individual, so completely isolated from any type, and so independ- ent of accident, that it is almost impossible they should ever be forgotten or mistaken. It would have been nearly impossible for Sir Thomas More to disguise himself, and we question if Dr. Newman or Mr. Tennyson could abolish the expression of eye and brow sufficiently to bailie recognition ; and there are artiste, and as the public believes detectives, who would recognize any face under any disguise. But the majority of men trying under changed circumstances to recognize ordinary faces from their memories of feature alone are liable, we feel convinced, to self- deceptions as extraordinary and yet as natural as that we may charitably attribute to this Mrs. Balks, or that which prompted the evidence against the marine so nearly hung for his share in the recent Manchester emeute.
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