Is it possible to identify a writer from the words of a text? Or more to the point, in the case of forgery, is it possible to prove that a person could not have written a text?
The premiss of forensic linguistics is that an individual expresses himself in a unique way. Similar, to the human fingerprints left on the surface of objects, each individual’s textual output and speech expression also contain a unique identifier known as a “linguistic fingerprint”. To some extent, this “linguistic fingerprint” reflects the uniqueness and relative stability of an individual’s language.
Forensic linguistics or linguistic fingerprinting is not new. It was used to prove in 1963 that the confession of Timothy Evans was a fabrication (too late to do him any good; he was hanged in Pentonville Prison in 1950).
It was also able to show in 1975 that the confessions of the Birmingham Six were fabricated.
More recently, the application of linguistic fingerprinting identified the ‘Unabomber’ in the USA (1966, note 1).
The volume of authentic as well as contested written material that is associated with Roger Casement makes the ‘Black Diaries’ suitable for a linguistic fingerprinting analysis. However, there have only been two short studies by Eoin Ó Máille et al. These were published in 1993 and 1994.
It would be fair to say that these works have been studiously ignored! In Wikipedia it says rather sniffily that Ó Máille used:
“a computer programme which was designed to tell the ‘reading age’ of North American schoolchildren… Linguistic analysis is something a little more subtle than that!” (Note 2)
But the remark is a way of not engaging with the issues raised. The software is merely a means of collecting data and organising it in a coherent form. The critics have not discovered any errors in the data.
Probably, the most striking part of Eoin Ó Máille’s 1993 study (note 3) is a table of words that are used frequently in the authentic 1910 Diary but are not used at all in the 1910 ‘Black Diary’. The following are the words with the number of times they appear in the genuine diary in brackets. To repeat, they do not appear at all in the 1910 ‘Black Diary’:
Ability (12); actually (46); argument (15); among (22); blackmen (16); British Co. (13); British Consul (10); British subjects (14); Cannibals (12); circumstance (13); citizen (12); compell/ed/ing (22); concern (17); confess (23); consider (11); conversation (12); coward/ly (19); dangerous (10); deny/ied (11); describe (23); desire (22); enslave (18); establish (15); guilty (22); Hardenberg (18); humane (10); illegal (22); ignorant (11); induce (15); justify (10); Katenere (16); lash/es (28); lawless (22); mention (18); merely (58); moreover (12); obey/obedient (12); oblige (12); obtain (22); obvious (29); pantaloons (13); payment (27); point of view (13); power (34); racionales (17); realise (15); relate/ion (27); reply/ied (20); sardines (10); scandal (8); shareholders (13); speak the truth (12); squat/ted/ing (15); strength/en (14); subsequent (14); sufficient (10); task (34); testify (7); unless (15); untruthfully (11); value (36); wise/otherwise (26); wrongdo/er/ing (8).
In the above table the words “actually” (46) and “merely” (58) are particularly striking examples. Other differences might be as much political as linguistic. For example, “Hardenberg” (18) refers to the American who co-wrote an article in the investigative magazine Truth, which first brought the attention of the British public to the atrocities in the Putumayo. “Katenere” (16) was a chief of the Boras tribe who rebelled against the conditions of slavery. His story made a deep impression on Casement, but not apparently on the Black Diarist! As Angus Mitchell has pointed out, the ‘Black Diaries’ are an attempt to diminish the horror of Imperialist exploitation.
Also, as Ó Máille remarks, the reason why “Blackmen” (16) does not appear in the Black Diary is that the author of the latter preferred to use the term “nigger”.
The word “racionales” (17) refers to persons of mixed race who had adapted to Western values; could read and write; and acted as enforcers against the indigenous population. But such hierarchal distinctions were lost on the Black Diarist.
Ó Máille notes that, in the authentic 1910 Diary, there are numerous Irish expressions which are absent from the ‘Black Diary’. An example is “this bangs Banagher”, while the Black Diarist uses the phrase “this takes the cake”. Conversely, there are English expressions which it is inconceivable that Casement used. For example, there is in the ‘Black Diaries’ the Cockney expression: “I scoffed it in a brace of shakes”.
Ó Máille occasionally strays from the linguistic theme to identify other anomalies. He thinks it was impossible for Casement to have written anything in his Diary on October 19th and 20th 1910, because he was engaged in a long and arduous journey. The authentic diary has a description of the events of the previous two days on 21st October, but the Black Diary has entries on 19th and 20th which Ó Máille considers an impossibility.
Ó Máille says that the Black Diarist describes taking a boat from Atenas to Lima—which would be an impossibility (requiring the crossing the Andes mountains).
Another error that occurs is that the Black Diarist, in the 1903 Diary, referred to the election of James Craig in N. Fermanagh. But the diarist has anticipated Craig’s election by three years! He wasn’t elected until 1906 (note 4).
Ó Máille makes some of the points covered by Paul Hyde in his book (note 5) and in this magazine regarding the various versions of when the Diaries were found and what was found. He also makes the point that the British authorities relied on Casement’s 1903 diary for its investigation of the Congo. But where is the actual diary? It could not be the 1903 ‘Black Diary’!
There is also a reprint of a disgusting letter by the slaver Julio Arana to Casement, while the latter was awaiting trial, urging him to retract his report on the Putumayo.
The final page has a report from The Times newspaper dated 6th August1960, noting that what Ben Allen was shown in 1916 was not what the British released in 1959.
The study published by Ó Máille et al (note 6) in 1994 is more technical.
Furthermore, it claims that the linguistic fingerprint in the Black Diaries matches that of Basil Thomson—who was sacked from Scotland Yard for “goofing a forgery of Pravda, the Soviet newspaper”.
The 1994 study compares authentic Casement material with the 1903 and 1910 Black Diaries. The various charts in the study show strikingly similar results for the Black Diary documents, which contrast sharply with the data for the authentic material.
One of the findings was that, in authentic Casement documents, the sentences tend to be long whereas the Black Diary sentences are quite short.
In the case of the authentic 1910 Diary, the average number of words per sentence was 38.3.
The report also calculated the average for another authentic Casement document written in 1913 and came up with a figure of 36.4. These figures are remarkably close to each other for documents written with a gap of three years.
But, in the ‘Black Diaries’, the results are completely different. The 1910 ‘Black Diary’ has an average of 10.6 words per sentence, while the 1903 ‘Black Diary’ has a mere 7.9 per sentence.
It is possible that the 1903 and 1910 Black Diaries were written by the same person, but the data suggests that neither were written by Casement.
These slim reports are very convincing, but they need to be verified and validated by more comprehensive reports. Advances in Artificial Intelligence should make such investigations quite inexpensive. It is time for such investigations to be conducted to bring closure to this subject to the satisfaction of all reasonable people.
John Martin
Note 1
Are the Words in the Black Diaries Casement’s? by Jack Moylett, British Association for Irish Studies, July 2002.
Note 2
Wikipedia doesn’t attribute the quotation to anyone, but the source is from Jeffrey Dudgeon. He says that the “family’s genealogist”, Hugh Casement, wrote this in a letter to him.
Dudgeon tells us that Hugh shares a common descent from Roger’s great-grandfather (so not a very close relative). He goes on to say that Hugh is a systems analyst but apparently has no expertise in linguistics (p 644 of Dudgeon’s ’s book, Roger Casement, The Black Diaries, 3rd edition).
Note 3
Roger Casement: The Forged Diaries Exposed, Eoin Ó Máille, 1993.
Note 4
This error provoked a 2-page incoherent rant by Jeffrey Dudgeon in his book (3rd edition, p120). Apparently, the forgery theorists are “grasping at straws” for pointing out this error! But, of course, the Black Diarist not only thought Craig was elected in 1903, but that he was elected by a “big majority”. And he also got the day of polling wrong. The obvious explanation for all these errors is that the diary was not written contemporaneously. But here is Dudgeon’s explanation:
“Given Casement’s habit of non-specificity where subject and object, and the order of events are concerned, and his lack of self-analysis or explanation, it is surprising that more has not been made of the opaque nature and the sequencing confusion of so many diary entries”.
The first part of the above refers to “Casement”. But what Casement is he talking about? Certainly, not the authentic Casement! It seems to be an article of faith with Dudgeon that Casement wrote the Black Diaries. Therefore, the errors and inconsistencies must be Casement’s errors and inconsistencies!
Indeed, it’s surprising that there are not more errors and inconsistencies given the tendency of “Casement” to make errors and inconsistencies, as evidenced by the Black Diaries! It’s a circular argument!
Note 5
Anatomy of a Lie: Decoding Casement, Paul Hyde, 2023
Note 6
The vindication of Roger Casement:computer analyses & comparisons of the Dublin 1910 diary & the London 1903 & 1910 diaries,
Eoin Ó Máille, M. Uí Callanán, & Michael Payne
Post-Script
A wreath-laying ceremony organised by the Roger Casement Summer School was held at the statue of Casement in Dun Laoghaire on 3rd August. The only two political parties represented were Fianna Fail and Aontu. Mary Fayne, who happens to be a Fine Gael councillor, spoke on behalf of Dun Laoghaire Rathdown County Council.
There has been an upsurge in interest in Casement, but the focus is on his humanitarian work and his opposition to the oppression of indigenous peoples. There is less interest in placing this in an Irish context. There is also no reference to his opposition to the bitter World War which Britain mounted against Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire—wars which were to have disastrous consequences for Europe and Palestine.
