#graphology
Your Character is Written into Your Handwriting
We stumbled across these bright, and interesting charts calling forth from a box of equity case files. As with most things archival, looking into the history of these records, opened a fabulous rabbit hole that we were happy to travel down!
Graphology! That is the name of the game. Graphology is the self-proclaimed science which analyzes handwriting for personality traits. These particular charts were part of two court cases in which A. Dolph Dean, Graphologist was asserting his 1932 copyright for his chart, “Character is Written into Handwriting and With this Chart You Can Read It.”
A. Dolph Dean, C. Ellsworth Bower, and Professor John W. Burke of the Personality Analysis Guild were not the only promoters of the value of graphology (at the rates of 10-50 cents per review - $1.50-$8.00 in today’s money). California newspapers were in the game as well:
The Los Angeles Times’ Muriel Stafford, provided graphological assistance with love matches, and to determine levels of culture and taste, in addition to analyzing the handwriting of everyone from George Washington (declared to be a stubborn humorist) to Bing Crosby (declared to be magnetic and easy-going). At one point, she proclaimed Los Angeles a warm-hearted, affectionate, generous city based on the handwriting of the Angelinos who wrote to her.
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