In order to improve the recognition rate of totally unconstrained handwritten numerals, a verification stage is added after classification to distinguish the ambiguous numerals between two or more classes. Two recognition methods, structural method and statistical method, are used to overcome the limitations of a single method and deliver a much more reliable recognition system. The recognition rate is 71.32% using structural method without verification. The verification stage improves the recognition rate from 71.32% to 87.50%. After combining the structural method with statistical method, the final recognition rate reached up to 95.59%