Definition
In the law of evidence, comparison of hands is a method of proving or disproving the authenticity of a handwriting specimen or signature by placing it alongside another specimen of known authorship and examining whether both were written by the same hand. The comparison may be offered to establish that a disputed document was signed or written by a particular person, or to show that it was not.
The term "hands" here refers to handwriting — each person's distinctive manner of forming written characters. The comparison may be conducted by a witness familiar with the subject's handwriting, by a skilled expert, or, in some jurisdictions, by the trier of fact examining the specimens directly.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): "Hand" in the sense of handwriting is recognized but somewhat archaic in everyday English. Common speakers would typically say "handwriting comparison" or refer to forensic document examination.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Webster's defines "hand" to include "handwriting; style of penmanship," and gives as an example "a good hand." The compound "comparison of hands" would have been intelligible to a nineteenth-century general reader, though its technical evidentiary significance would not be obvious from ordinary usage alone.
The gap matters for researchers using historical sources: the phrase sounds descriptive but carries specific evidentiary weight — and specific common-law restrictions — that ordinary usage of "comparing handwriting" would not suggest.
Common Confusion
Comparison of hands should not be confused with proof of handwriting by a subscribing witness (who attests from personal knowledge of the writer's script) or by a witness who saw the document executed. Those methods rest on direct knowledge or attestation; comparison of hands is an inferential method based on visual similarity between specimens. The distinction was significant at common law because the admissibility rules governing each method differed sharply. Additionally, modern forensic document examination — a formal scientific discipline — descends from but is not identical to the historical comparison-of-hands practice; the modern field involves instrumentation, standardized methodology, and expert qualification requirements that the older evidentiary rule did not contemplate.
Why It Matters in Research
The central research trap is the sharp historical divergence between English and American practice. Under traditional English common law, comparison of hands was generally inadmissible as proof of handwriting. The underlying concern was that jurors and even judges were considered incompetent to evaluate handwriting similarity without independent guidance, and that fabricated comparison specimens could be introduced to manipulate the result. Burrill cites Doe v. Suckermore, 5 Ad. & Ell. 703, as the leading English authority for exclusion.
American jurisdictions split from this rule at varying times and to varying degrees. Some states — New York among them in the period Burrill covers — followed the English exclusionary approach, as shown by the New York citations Burrill provides (5 Hill's R. 182; 1 Denio's R. 343). Other American states admitted comparison evidence earlier and more broadly. This means that a researcher working with pre-twentieth-century American case law must determine the applicable jurisdiction's rule at the time of the decision before drawing conclusions about what comparison evidence was or was not admissible.
By the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, statutory reform in many American jurisdictions explicitly authorized comparison of handwriting specimens, including by the trier of fact. Federal practice eventually codified this in the Federal Rules of Evidence. Researchers should not assume that a modern permissive rule was in force in the period covered by a historical source.
A further complication: early cases often conflate the question of who may make the comparison (expert versus lay witness versus the jury itself) with the threshold question of whether comparison is admissible at all. These are distinct issues that later doctrine separated more cleanly.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's entry is compact but precise. It correctly identifies comparison of hands as a mode of proof in the law of evidence, accurately characterizes the English exclusionary rule, and flags the American jurisdictional split — notably New York's adherence to the English approach at the time of writing. The cited authorities (Best on Presumptions, §§ 162–171; the Adelphi and Ellis reporter; Hill's and Denio's New York reports) were standard references for mid-nineteenth-century evidence practice.
What Burrill does not address: the emerging American trend toward admissibility, the question of jury comparison without expert assistance, or the eventual statutory reforms that would largely displace the common-law exclusionary rule. For research extending past the mid-nineteenth century, Burrill's entry captures a moment in doctrinal time rather than the full arc of the rule's development. Researchers should treat it as a baseline and trace forward through later treatise literature and statutory compilations.
Jurisdictional Note
England maintained the exclusionary rule well into the nineteenth century; American states diverged, with some following England and others admitting comparison evidence by common law or statute. Modern American federal and state practice is governed by evidence codes that generally permit both expert and lay comparison of handwriting specimens, making the historical English rule primarily relevant to cases arising under pre-reform law.