he signatures both of drawer
and drawee, but also examine the "filling-in," the latter being just
as important, perhaps more so from a monetary point of view, as the
signatures. As a matter of fact, the commonest forgery with which we
have to deal is the "raising" of checks, and a forger of this nature
generally chooses a check bearing a genuine signature but having very
little "filling-in."

For instance, he knows that it would not be difficult to raise a check
from L3 to L3000, for all he has to do is to erase the word "pounds,"
insert the word "thousand," and then add the erased word again. I have
seen plenty of this kind of work during the time I have been examining
checks.

One of the most impudent pieces of forgery, however, that I ever came
across was a check raised from L5 to L500. The forger had evidently
relied on colossal impudence carrying him through, for he had simply
added a couple of ciphers and then between the words "five" and
"pounds" had placed an omission mark and written the word "hundred"
above, adding the initials of the drawer of the check just to give the
thing a look of careless genuineness.

It was so astounding a piece of cool audacity that we had bets on the
check, two of my assistants declaring it to be O.K., while the other
three and myself declared it to be a forgery. Further inquiries, of
course, proved that the opinion of the majority was the correct one.

It is marvelous what a vast number of signatures some paying tellers
will carry in their mind's eye, as it were, and thus be able to pass
checks by the thousand without once having to refer to the signature
books. We had a paying teller here a few years ago who was little less
than a wonder. He knew perfectly the signatures of at least 5000
customers, and could detect the alteration of a stroke in any one of
them in an instant.

More remarkable still was the fact that he recognized with equal
facility the signatures of those customers whose checks only came in
once or twice a year. But he made an art of his work, and I afterward
discovered that most of his evenings were spent in studying and
learning the signatures of the customers, for he was a wonderful hand
at copying writing, and whenever a new signature would come in, one
with which he was not acquainted, he would at once facsimile it in his
pocket-book, and by the next morning would be able to recognize it
among 10,000.

Signature clerks are not, as a rule, supposed to