THE CASE OF MR. GEORGE EDALJI SPECIAL INVESTIGATION BY SIR A. CONAN DOYLE Due to the success of the Sherlock Holmes stories, many people wrote letters to Conan Doyle over the years, asking him for help with real life crimes. The author was also a member of an organisation called the Crimes Club which began in 1904 and which met regularly to debate famous criminal cases, and included other writers of his day. Evidence from real unsolved crimes was available for all members to study, and lectures on methods of crime were given by actual criminals. Conan Doyle also wrote for a series in the Strand Magazine on the history of crime in 1901, called Strange Studies from Life. Sometimes, however, he did get directly involved with criminal cases, themselves. The two most famous examples were George Edalji and Oliver Slater, which follows next in this works. Conan Doyle’s involvement in both these cases led to the establishment of the Court of Criminal Appeal in both England and Scotland. In 1903, over a period of six months in Great Wyrley, near Birmingham, 16 animals were found slashed to death with shallow slits along their stomach. George Edalji was convicted specifically for an injured pony mutilated in the middle of the night and discovered in a field not far from Edalji’s home. His trial inferred that he was also responsible for the other slayings. Staffordshire police charged him of mutilating animals and writing a threatening letters; some strangely enough accused Edalji himself of the mutilations. That the animal slayings continued after George Edalji’s imprisonment was discounted by the local authorities, who by now had come up with a theory that a cult was continuing the work Edalji had started. Conan Doyle believed this was a case of deliberate racism both on the part of the local authorities and other unknown culprits, due to Edalji’s mixed heritage — his father was Indian and his mother English.
CONTENTS THE CASE OF MR. GEORGE EDALJI CASE OF GEORGE EDALJI: LETTER FROM SIR A. CONAN DOYLE FACSIMILE DOCUMENTS — No. 1 WHO WROTE THE LETTERS? — No. 2 THE “MARTIN MOLTON” LETTERS — No. 3. STATEMENT OF THE CASE AGAINST ROYDEN SHARP EVIDENCE OF HIS CHARACTER BEFORE THE CRIMES MR. WYNNE’S STATEMENT
THE CASE OF MR. GEORGE EDALJI SPECIAL INVESTIGATION BY SIR A. CONAN DOYLE The first sight which I ever had of Mr. George Edalji was enough in itself to convince me both of the extreme improbability of his being guilty of the crime for which he was condemned, and to suggest some at least of the reasons which had led to his being suspected. He had come to my hotel by appointment, but I had been delayed, and he was passing the time by reading the paper. I recognised my man by his dark face, so I stood and observed him. He held the paper close to his eyes and rather sideways, proving not only a high degree of myopia, but marked astigmatism. The idea of such a man scouring fields at night and assaulting cattle while avoiding the watching police was ludicrous to anyone who can imagine what the world looks like to eyes with myopia of eight dioptres — the exact value of Mr. Edalji’s myopia according to Mr. Kenneth Scott of Manchester-square. But such a condition, so hopelessly bad that no glasses availed in the open air, gave the sufferer a vacant, bulge-eyed, staring appearance, which, when taken with his dark skin, must assuredly have made him seem a very queer man to the eyes of an English village, and therefore to be naturally associated with any queer event There, in a single physical defect, lay the moral certainty of his innocence, and the reason why he should become the scapegoat Before seeing him I had read the considerable literature which had been sent to me about his case. After seeing him I read still more, saw or wrote to everyone who could in any way throw light upon the matter, and finally visited Wyrley and had a useful day’s work upon the spot. The upshot of my whole research has been to introduce me to a chain of circumstances which seem so extraordinary that they are far beyond the invention of the writer of fiction. At all times in my inquiries I have kept before my mind the supreme necessity of following truth rather than any preconceived theory, and I was always prepared to examine any point against the accused with as much care as if it made for his innocence, but I have felt at last that it was an in suit to my intelligence to hold out any longer against the certainty that there had been an inconceivable miscarriage of justice. Let me now tell the strange story from the beginning. I hope that the effect of my narrative will be to raise such a wave of feeling in this country as will make some public reconsideration of his case inevitable, for I am convinced that such reconsideration can only end in his complete acquittal and to his restoration to the ranks of that honourable profession from which he has been most unjustly removed. The story begins as far back as the year 1874, when the Rev. S. Edalji, a Church of England clergyman of Parsee origin, was married to Miss C. Stoneham. An uncle of the bride, as I understand it, held the gift of the living of Great Wyrley, which was a parish, half agricultural and half mining, about six miles from Walsall, in Staffordshire. Through this uncle’s influence Mr. Edalji became vicar of Great Wyrley, a cure which he has now held for thirty-one years, living a blameless life in the sight of all men. Placed in the exceedingly difficult position of a coloured clergyman in an English parish, he seems to have conducted himself with dignity and discretion. The only time that I can ever find that any local feeling was raised against him was during elections, for he was a strong Liberal in politics, and had been known to lend the church school-room for meetings. Some bitterness was aroused among the baser local politicians by this action. There were three surviving children from this union — George, who was born in 1876, Horace in 1879, and Maud in 1882. Of these Horace received a Government post, and was absent at the time when the long persecution to which the family had been subjected culminated in the tragedy which overwhelmed his brother. In the year 1888, George Edalji being at that time twelve years of age, a number of threatening anonymous letters were received at the vicarage. The aid of the police was called in, and an arrest was made. This was of the servant-maid at the vicarage, one Elizabeth Foster, who was accused, among other things, of writing up ribald sentences about her employers on outhouses and buildings. She was tried at Cannock in 1889, but her solicitor pleaded that it was all a foolish joke, and she was bound over to keep the peace. An attempt has been made since to contend that she was not guilty, but I take it that no barrister could make such an admission without his client’s consent. She and her friends were animated afterwards by bitter feelings of revenge; and there is good reason to believe that in this incident of 1888 is to be found the seed which led to the trouble of 1893-95 and the subsequent trouble of 1903. The 1892-95 letters openly championed Elizabeth Foster; the 1903 ones had no direct allusion to her, but a scurrilous postcard on Aug. 4 contained the words, “Why not go on with your old game of writing things on walls?” this being the very offence Elizabeth Foster was charged with. The reader must remember that in 1888 George Edalji was a schoolboy of twelve, and that the letters received at that date were in a formed handwriting, which could not possibly have been his. In 1892 the second singular outbreak of anonymous letters began, some of which were published in the Staffordshire papers at the time by Mr. Edalji, in the hope that their style or contents might discover the writer. Many were directed to the vicarage, but many others were sent to different people in the vicinity, so malevolent and so ingenious that it seemed as if a very demon of mischief were endeavouring to set the parish by the ears. They were posted at Walsall, Cannock, and various other towns, but bore internal evidence of a common origin, and were all tainted with the Elizabeth Foster incident. They lasted for three years, and as they were accompanied by a long series of most ingenious and elaborate hoaxes, it is really wonderful that they did not accomplish their proclaimed purpose, which was to drive their victim off his head. On examination of such of these letters as I have been able to see their prevailing characteristics are: 1. A malignant diabolical hatred of the whole Edalji family, the 16-17-18-year-old George coming in for his fair share of the gross abuse. This hatred is insane in its intensity, and yet is so coldly resolute that three years of constant persecution caused no mitigation. Here are extracts to illustrate the point “I swear by God that I will murder George Edalji soon. The only tiling I care about in this world is revenge, revenge, revenge, sweet revenge, I long for, then I shall be happy in hell.” “Every day, every hour, my hatred is growing against George Edalji.” “Do you think, you Pharisee, that because you are a parson God will absolve you from your iniquities?” “May the Lord strike me dead if I don’t murder George Edalji.” ‘Tour damned wife.” “Your horrid little girl.” “I will descend into the infernal regions showering curses upon you all.” Such are few of the phrases in which maniacal hatred of the Edalji family is shown. 2. The second characteristic of the letters is a frantic admiration, real or feigned, for the local police. There was a Sergeant Upton on duty in Cannock, who is eulogised in this way: “Ha, ha, hurrah for Upton! Good old Upton! Blessed Upton. Good old Upton! Upton is blessed! Dear old Upton! Stand up, stand up for Upton, Ye soldiers of the Cross. Lift high your Royal banner, It must not suffer loss.” “The following in this district we love truly — the police of Cannock in general.” Again: “I love Upton. I love him better than life, because for my sake he lost promotion.” 3. The third characteristic of these letters, besides hatred of Edalji and eulogy of the police, is real or simulated religious mania, taking the form, in some portions of the same letter, that the writer claims to be God, and in others that he is eternally lost in hell. So consistent is this that it is hard to doubt that there was a real streak of madness in the writer. 4. A fourth remarkable characteristic of the letters is the intimacy of the writer with the names and affairs of the people in the district. As many as twenty names will sometimes be given, most of them with opprobrious epithets attached. No one can read them and doubt that the writer lived in the immediate neighbourhood, and was intimately acquainted with the people of whom he spoke. One would imagine that under these circumstances there would be little difficulty in tracing the letters to their source, but, as a matter of fact, the handwriting was never recognised, nor was the culprit discovered. The opinion was strongly held, however, by those who were most concerned, that there was a connection with the former incident, and that the letters were done by some male ally or allies of the discharged maid. Whilst these letters had been circulating the life of the Edaljis had, as I have already said, been made miserable by a series of most ingenious and daring hoaxes, many of which might have seemed comic had it not been for the tragedy of such a persecution. In all sorts of papers the curious wants of the Rev. S. Edalji, of Great Wyrley, broke out by letter and by advertisement Forgery caused no qualms to the hidden conspirator. Mr. Edalji became in these effusions an enterprising matrimonial agent, with a number of ladies, their charms and fortunes most realistically catalogued, whom he was ready to dispose of to any eligible bachelor. His house was advertised to be let for the most extraordinary purposes. His servant-girl was summoned over to Wolverhampton to view the dead body of a non-existent sister supposed to be King at a public-house. Trades people brought cartloads of unordered goods to the vicarage. An unfortunate parson from Norwich flew across to Great Wyrley on the urgent summons of the Rev. Shapurji Edalji, only to find himself the victim of a forgery. Finally, to the confusion of anyone who imagines that the youth George Edalji was annoying himself and playing heartless tricks upon his own people, there came a forged apology in the public Press, beginning with the words: “We, the undersigned, G.E.T. Edalji and Fredk. Brookes, both residing in the parish of Great Wyrley, do hereby declare that we were the sole authors and writers of certain offensive and anonymous letters received by various persons during the last twelve months.” The apology then goes on to express regret for utterances against the favourite protégé of the unknown, Upton, the sergeant of police at Cannock, and also against Elizabeth Foster. This pretended apology was, of course, at once disowned by the Edaljis, and must, I think, convince any reasonable man, if there were already any room for doubt, that the Edaljis were not persecuting themselves in this maddening fashion. Before leaving this subject of the anonymous letters of 1893, which breathe revenge against the Edalji family, I should like to quote and strongly emphasise two expressions which have a lurid meaning when taken with the actual outcome of the future. On March 17, 1893, this real or pretended maniac says in a letter to the father: “Before the end of this year your kid will be either in the graveyard or disgraced for life.” Later, in the same letter, he says: “Do you think that when we want we cannot copy your kid’s writing?” Within ten years of the receipt of that letter the “kid”, or George Edalji, had indeed been disgraced for life, and anonymous letters which imitated his handwriting had played a part in his downfall. It is difficult after this to doubt that the schemer of 1893 was identical with the writer of the letters in 1903. Among the many hoaxes and annoyances practised during these years was the continual laying of objects within the vicarage grounds and on the window-sills, or under the doors, done with such audacity that the culprit was more than once nearly caught in the act. There was one of these incidents which I must allude to at some length, for though it was trivial in itself, it has considerable importance as forming a link between the outrages of 1893 and of 1903, and also because it shows for the first time the very strong suspicion which Captain the Honourable G. A. Anson, Chief Constable of Staffordshire — influenced no doubt by those reports of his subordinates, which he may or may not have too readily believed — has shown towards George Edalji. Personally I have met with nothing but frankness and courtesy from Captain the Hon. G. A. Anson during the course of my investigation, and if in the search after truth I have to criticise any word or action of his, I can assure him that it is with regret and only in pursuit of what seems to me to be a clear duty. On Dec. 12, 1892, at the very beginning of the series of hoaxes, a large key was discovered lying upon the vicarage doorstep. This key was handed to the police, and was discovered in a few days to be a key which had been taken from Walsall Grammar School. The reason why I say that this incident has an important bearing upon the connection between the outrages of 1893 and those of 1903 is that the very first letter in the latter series proclaimed the writer to be a scholar at Walsall Grammar School. Granting that. he could no longer be a scholar there if he were concerned in the hoaxes of 1893, it is still an argument that the same motive power lay behind each, since we find Walsall Grammar School obtruding itself in each case. The incident of the key was brought before the chief constable of the county, who seems at once to have concluded that young George Edalji was the culprit George Edalji was not a scholar at the Walsall School, having been brought up at Rugeley, and there does not appear to have been the slightest reason to suppose that he had procured a key from this six miles distant school and laid it on his own doorstep. However, here is a queer-looking boy, and here are queer doings, and here is a zealous constable, the very Upton whose praises were later to be so enthusiastically voiced by the writer of the letters. Some report was made, and the chief constable believed it. He took the course of writing in his own hand, over his own name, in an attempt to bluff the boy into a confession. Under date Jan. 23, 1893, he says to the father, in a letter which now lies before me: “Will you please ask your son George from whom the key was obtained which was found on your doorstep on Dec. 12? The key was stolen, but if it can be shown that the whole thing was due to some idle freak or practical joke, I should not be inclined to allow any police proceedings to be taken in regard to it. If, however, the persons concerned in the removal of the key refuse to make any explanation of the subject, I must necessarily treat the matter in all seriousness as a theft. I may say at once that I shall not pretend to believe any protestations of ignorance which your son may make about this key. My information on the subject does not come from the police.” Considering the diabolical ingenuity of the hoaxer, it would seem probable that the information came directly or indirectly from him. In any case, it seems to have been false, or, at least, incapable of proof, as is shown by the fact that after these threats from the chief constable no action was taken. But the point to be noted is that as early as 1893, when Edalji was only seventeen, we have the police force of Staffordshire, through the mouth of their chief, making charges against him, and declaring in advance that they will not believe any protestation of innocence. Two years later, on July 25, 1895, the chief constable goes even further. Still writing to the father he says: “I did not tell Mr. Pry that I know the name of the offender” (the writer of the letters and author of the hoaxes), “though I told him that I had my suspicions. I prefer to keep my suspicions to myself until I am able to prove them, and I trust to be able to obtain a dose of penal servitude for the offender; as although great care has apparently been exercised to avoid, as far as possible, anything which would constitute any serious offence in law, the person who writes the letters has overreached himself in two or three instances, in such a manner as to render him liable to the most serious punishment. I have no doubt that the offender will be detected.” Now, it must be admitted that this is a rather sinister letter. It follows after eighteen months upon the previous one in which he accuses George Edalji by name. The letter was drawn from him by the father’s complaint of gossip in the neighbourhood, and the allusion to the skill of the offender in keeping within the law has a special meaning, in view of the fact that young Edalji was already a law student. Without mentioning a name, he assures Edalji’s father that the culprit may get a dose of penal servitude. No doubt the chief constable honestly meant every word he said, and thought that he had excellent reasons for his conclusions; but the point is that if the Staffordshire police took this attitude towards young Edalji in 1895, what chance of impartiality had he in 1903, when a culprit was wanted for an entirely new set of crimes? It is evident that their minds were steeped in prejudice against him, and that they were in the mood to view his actions in the darkest light At the end of 1895 this persecution ceased. Letters and hoaxes were suddenly switched off. From that date till 1903 peace reigned in Wyrley. But George Edalji was resident at the vicarage all the time. Had he been the culprit there was no reason for change. But in 1903 the troubles broke out in a far more dangerous form than ever. It was on Feb. 2, 1903, that the first serious outrage occurred at Wyrley. On that date a valuable horse belonging to Mr. Joseph Holmes was found to have been ripped up during the night Two months later, on April 2, a cob belonging to Mr. Thomas was treated in a similar fashion; and a month after that a cow of Mrs. Bungay’s was killed in the same way. Within a fortnight a horse of Mr. Badger’s was terribly mutilated, and on the same day some sheep were killed. On June 6 two cows suffered the same fate, and three weeks later two valuable horses belonging to the Quinton Colliery Company were also destroyed. Next in order in this monstrous series of barbarities was the killing of a pony at Great Wyrley Colliery, for which George Edalji was arrested and convicted. His disappearance from the scene made no difference at all to the sequence of outrages, for on Sept. 21, betwixt his arrest and his trial, another horse was disembowelled, and, as if expressly to confute the views of those who might say that this outrage was committed by confederates in order to affect the trial, the most diabolical deed of all was committed, after Edalji’s conviction upon Nov. 3, when a horse and mare were found mutilated in the same field, an additional touch of horror being added by the discovery of a newly-born foal some little distance from the mare. Three months later, on Feb. 8, 1904, another horse was found to be injured, and finally, on March 24, two sheep and a lamb were found mutilated, and a rough miner named Farrington was convicted, upon entirely circumstantial evidence, and condemned to three years. Now here the results of the police are absolutely illogical and incompatible. Their theory was that of a moon-lighting gang. Edalji is condemned as one member of it, Farrington as another. But no possible connection can be proved or was ever suggested between Edalji and Farrington; the one a rude, illiterate miner, the other the son of the vicar and a rising professional man; the one a loafer at public-houses, the other a total abstainer. It is certainly suggestive, presuming that Farrington did do the deed for which he was convicted, that he was employed at the Wyrley Colliery, and may have had to pass in going to his work that very pony which Edalji was supposed to have injured. It is also, it must be admitted, suggestive that while Edalji’s imprisonment had no effect upon the outrages, Farrington’s was at once followed by their complete cessation. How monstrous, then, to contend, as the Home Office has done, that no new facts have arisen to justify a revision of Edalji’s case. At the same time, I do not mean to imply Farrington’s guilt, of which I have grave doubts, but merely that, as compared with Edalji, a strong case could be made out against him. Now let me, before examining the outrage of Aug. 17, 1903, which proved so fatal to Edalji, give some account of the fresh epidemic of letters which broke out in the district. They were synchronous with the actual outrages, and there were details in them which made it possible, though by no means certain, that they were written by someone who was actually concerned in the crimes. It cannot be said that there is absolute proof that the letters of 1903 were by the same hand as those of 1895, but there are points about their phrasing, about their audacity and violence of language, finally, about the attentions which they bestow upon the Edalji family, which seem to point to a common origin. Only in this case the Rev. Edalji escapes, and it is the son — the same son who has been menaced in the first series with disgrace for life — who receives some of the communications, and is referred to in the others. I may say that this series of letters present various handwritings, all of which differ from the 1895 letters, but as the original persecutor was fond of boasting that he could change his handwriting, and even that he could imitate that of George Edalji, the variance need not be taken too seriously. And now for the letters. They were signed by various names, but the more important purported to come from a young schoolboy, named Greatorex. This youth denied all knowledge of them, and was actually away in the Isle of Man when some of them were written, as well as on Aug. 17, the date of the Wyrley outrage. It is a curious fact that this youth, in going up to Walsall every day to school, travelled with a certain number of schoolfellows upon the same errand, and that the names of some of these schoolfellows do find their way into these letters. In the same carriage travelled young Edalji upon some few occasions. “I have known accused by sight for three or four years,” said Greatorex at the trial, “he has travelled in the same compartment with me and my schoolmates, going to Walsall. This has not occurred many times during the last twelve months — about a dozen times, in fact.” Now, at first sight, one would think this was a point for the police, as on the presumption that Edalji wrote these anonymous letters it would account for the familiarity with these youths displayed in them. But since Edalji always went to business by the 7.30 train in the morning, and the boys took the same train every day, to find himself in their company twelve times in one year was really rather more seldom than one would expect. He drifted into their compartment as into any other, and he seems to have been in their company but not of it Yet the anonymous writer knew that group of boys well, and the police, by proving that George Edalji might have known them, seemed to make a distinct point against him. The “Greatorex” letters to the police are all to the effect that the writer is a member of the gang for maiming cattie, that George Edalji is another member, and that he (Greatorex) is prepared to give away the gang if certain conditions are complied with. “I have got a dare-devil face and can run well, and when they formed that gang at Wyrley they got me to join. I knew all about horses and beasts and how to catch them best… they said they would do me in if I funked it, so I did, and caught them both King down at ten minutes to three, and they roused up; and then I caught each under the belly, but they didn’t spurt much blood, and one ran away, but the other fell… Now 111 tell you who are in the gang, but you can’t prove it without me. There is one named from Wyrley, and a porter who they call , and he’s had to stay away, and there’s Edalji, the lawyer … Now I have not told you who is at the back of them all, and 1 shan’t unless you promise to do nothing at me. It is not true we always do it when the moon is young, and the one Edalji killed on April 11 was full moon.” (It is worth mentioning here that there was no outrage at all within a week of that date.) “I’ve never been locked up yet, and I don’t think any of the others have, except the Captain, so I guess they’ll get off light.” I would draw attention in passing to the artistic touch of “ten minutes to three.” This is realism overdone, as no mutilator on a dark night could readily consult his watch nor care to remember the exact hour to a minute. But it corresponds closely to the remarkable power of imaginative detail — a rather rare gift — shown in the hoaxes of 1893-95. In the next letter, also to the police, the unknown refers to his previous communication, but is a good deal more truculent and abusive than before. “There will be merry times at Wyrley in November,” he says, “when they start on little girls, for they will do twenty wenches like the horses before next March. Don’t think you are likely to catch them cutting the beasts; they go too quiet, and lie low for hours, till your men have gone”… Mr. Edalji, him they said was locked up, is going to Brum on Sunday night to see the Captain, near Northfield, about how it’s to be carried on with so many detectives about, and I believe they are going to do some cows in the daytime instead of at night … I think they are going to kill beasts nearer here soon, and I know Cross Keys Farm and West Cannock Farm are the two first on the list… You bloated blackguard, I will shoot you with father’s gun through your thick head if you come in my way or go sneaking to any of my pals.” This letter was addressed, like the last, to: The Sergeant, Police Station, Hednesford, Staffordshire. bearing a Walsall post mark of July 10, 1903. Edalji is openly accused of the crimes in the letters, and yet the police put forward the theory that he himself wrote them, and founded upon the last sentence of them, which I have quoted, that second charge, which sounded so formidable in his indictment, viz., of threatening to murder Sergeant Robinson. A few days previously a second police officer, Mr. Rowley, of Bridgtown, had received another letter, evidently from the same hand. Here the detail as to the method of the crime is more realistic than ever, though no accusations against others are made. I quote this letter in extenso: “Sir — A party whose initials you’ll guess will be bringing a new hook home by the train from Walsall on Wednesday night, an he will have it in his special long pocket under his coat, an if you or your pals can get his coat pulled aside a bit you’ll get sight of it, as it’s an inch and half longer than the one he threw out of sight when he heard someone a slopin it after him this morning. He will come by that after five or six, or if he don’t come home tomorrow he is sure on Thursday, an you have made a mistake not keeping all the plain clothes men at hand. You sent them away too soon. Why, just think, he did it close where two of them were hiding only a few days gone by. But, sir, he has got eagle eyes, and his ears is as sharp as a razor, and he is as fleet of foot as a fox, and as noiseless, and he crawls on all fours up to the poor beasts, an fondles them a bit, and then he pulls the hook smart across ‘em, and out their entrails fly, before they guess they are hurt. You want 100 detectives to run him in red-handed, because he is so fly, and knows every nook and corner. You know who it is, and I can prove it; but until £100 reward is offered for a conviction, I shan’t split no more.” There is, it must be admitted, striking realism in dais account also, but a hook — unless it were a billhook or horticultural hook — could not under any circumstances have inflicted the injuries. It seems absurd enough that these letters incriminating himself in such violent terms should be attributed to young Edalji, but the climax is reached when a most offensive postcard, handed in at Edalji’s own business office, is also sworn to by the expert employed by the police as being in Edalji’s own writing. His vile effusion, which cannot be reproduced in full, accuses Edalji of guilty relations with a certain lady, ending up with the words, “Rather go back to your old game of writing anonymous letters and killing cows and writing on walls.” Now this postcard was posted at Wolverhampton upon Aug. 4, 1903. As luck would have it, Edalji and his sister had gone upon an excursion to Aberystwyth that day, and were absent from very early morning till late at night Here is the declaration of the station official upon the point: “On the night of 4th of August, 1903, and early morning of the 5th I was on duty at Rugely Town Station, and spoke to Mr. George Edalji and his sister, who were in the train on their return from Aberystwyth. William Bullock, Porter-Signalman, Rugeley Town Station.” The station-master at Wyrley has made a similar declaration. It is certain, then, that this postcard could not have been by him, even had the insulting contents not made the supposition absurd. And yet it is included in that list of anonymous letters which the police maintained, and the expert declared, to be in Edalji’s own handwriting. If this incident is not enough in itself to break down the whole case, so far as the authorship of the letters goes, then I ask, what in this world would be sufficient to demonstrate its absurdity? Before leaving this postcard, let me say that it was advanced for the prosecution that if a card were posted at certain country boxes to be found within two and a half miles of Wyrley they would not be cleared till evening, and so would have the Wolverhampton mark of next day. Thus the card might have been posted in one of these out-of-the-way boxes on the 3rd, and yet bear the mark of the 4th. This, however, will not do. The card has the Wolverhampton mark of the evening of the 4th, and was actually delivered in Birmingham on the morning of the 5th. Even granting that one day was Bank Holiday, you cannot stretch the dislocation of the postal service to the point that what was posted on the 3rd took two days to go twenty miles. Now, during these six months, while Edalji was receiving these scurrilous letters, and while the police were receiving others accusing the young lawyer, you will naturally ask why did he not take some steps himself to prove his innocence and to find out the writer? He did, as a matter of fact, everything in his power. He offered a reward of £25 in die public Press — a reward, according to the police theory, for his own apprehension. He showed the police the letters which he received, and he took a keen interest in the capture of the criminals, making the very sensible suggestion that bloodhounds should be used. It seems hardly conceivable that the prejudice of the police had risen to such a point that both these facts were alleged as suspicious circumstances against him, as though he were endeavouring to worm himself into their confidence, and so find out what measures they were taking for the capture of the offender. I am quite prepared to find that in these dialogues the quick-witted youth showed some impatience at their constant blunders, and that the result was to increase the very great malevolence with which they appear to have regarded him, ever since their chief declared, in 1895, “I shall not pretend to believe any protestations of ignorance which your son may make.” And now, having dealt with the letters of 1903, let me, before I proceed to the particular outrage for which Edalji was arrested and convicted, say a few words as to the personality of this unfortunate young man, who was, according to the police theory, an active member, if not the leading spirit, of a gang of village ruffians. Anyone more absurdly constructed to play the role could not be imagined. In the first place, he is a total abstainer, which in itself hardly seems to commend him to such a gang. He does not smoke. He is very shy and nervous. He is a most distinguished student, having won the highest legal prizes within his reach, and written, at his early age, a handbook of railway law. Finally, he is as blind as the proverbial bat, but the bat has the advantage of finding its way in the dark, which would be very difficult for him. To find a pony in a dark field, or, indeed, to find the field itself, unless it were easily approached, would be a hard task, while to avoid a lurking watcher would be absolutely impossible. I have myself practised as an oculist, but I can never remember correcting so high a degree of astigmatic myopia as that which afflicts Mr. Edalji. “Like all myopics, Mr. Edalji,” says an expert, “must find it at all times difficult to see clearly any objects more than a few inches off, and in dusk it would be practically impossible for him to find his way about any place with which he was not perfectly familiar.” Fearing lest it might be thought that he was feigning blindness, I asked Mr. Kenneth Scott, of Manchester-square, to paralyse the accommodation by atropine, and then to take the result by means which were independent of the patient. Here is his report: Right eye — 8.75 Drop Spher. — 1.75 Drop cylind axis 90°. Left eye — 8.25 Drop Spher. “I am prepared to testify as to the accuracy of the above under oath,” says Mr. Kenneth Scott. As to what such figures mean, I will bring it home to the uninitiated by saying that a glass made up to that prescription would cause the normal healthy eye to see the world as Edalji’s eyes always see it. I am prepared to have such a glass made up, and if any defender of the police will put it on at night, and will make his way over the route the accused is alleged to have taken inside of an hour, I will admit that what seems to me absolutely impossible could be done. I may add that this blindness is a permanent structural condition, the same in 1903 as in 1906. I appeal to the practising oculists of this country, and I ask whether there is one of them who would not admit that such a condition of the eyes would make such a performance practically impossible, and that the circumstance must add enormously to a defence which is already overwhelmingly strong. And yet this all-important point was never made at the trial. It is this studious youth who touches neither alcohol nor tobacco, and is so blind that he gropes his way in the dusk, who is the dangerous barbarian who scours the country at night, ripping up horses. Is it not perfectly clear, looking at his strange, swarthy face and bulging eyes, that it is not the village ruffian, but rather the unfortunate village scapegoat, who stands before you? I have brought the narrative down to the Aug. 17 outrage. At this period twenty constables and detectives had been brought into the district, and several, acting, I presume, upon orders from higher quarters, watched the vicarage at night. On Aug. 17 Edalji, following his own account, returned from his day’s work at Birmingham — he had started in practice there as a lawyer — and reached his home about 6.30. He transacted some business, put on a blue serge coat, and then walked down to the bootmaker’s in the village, where he arrived about 8.35, according to the independent evidence of John Hands, the tradesman in question. His supper would not be ready before 9.30, and until that hour he took a walk round, being seen by various people. His household depose to his return before supper-time, and their testimony is confirmed by the statement of Walter Whitehouse, who saw the accused enter the vicarage at 9.25. After supper Edalji retired to bed in the same room as his father, the pair having shared an apartment for seventeen years. The old vicar was a light sleeper, his son was within a few feet of him, the whole house was locked up, and the outside was watched by constables, who saw no one leave it. To show how close the inspection was, I may quote the words of Sergeant Robinson, who said, “I saw four men observing it when I was there … I could see the front door and side door. I should say no one could get out on the side I was watching without my seeing.” This was before the night of the outrage, but it is inconceivable that if there was so close a watch then, there was none on the 17th. By the police evidence there were no less than twenty men scattered about waiting for the offender. I may add at this point some surprise has been expressed that the vicar should sleep in the same room as his son with the door locked. They slept thus, and had done for many years, so that the daughter, whose health was precarious, might sleep with the mother, and the service of the house, there being only the one maid, should be minimised. Absurd emphasis has been placed by the police upon the door being locked at night I can only suppose that the innuendo is that the vicar locked the door to keep his son from roving. Do we not all know that it is the commonest thing for nervous people to lock their doors whether alone or not, and Mr. Edalji has been in the habit of doing so all his long life. I have evidence that Mr. Edalji always locked his door before he slept with his son, and that he has continued to lock his door after his son left him. If, then — to revert to the evidence — it is possible for a person in this world to establish an alibi, it was successfully established by Edalji that night from 9.30 onwards. Granting the perfectly absurd supposition that the old vicar connived at his son slipping out at night and ripping up cattle, you have still the outside police to deal with. On no possible supposition can George Edalji have gone out after 9.30. And yet upon that night a pony had been destroyed at the Great Wyrley Colliery. Sergeant Parsons gave evidence that he saw the pony, apparently all right, at eleven o’clock at night It was very dark, but he was not far off it. It was a wild night, with rain coining in squalls. The rain began about twelve, and cleared about dawn, being very heavy at times. On the 18th, at 6.20, a lad, named Henry Garrett, going to his work at the colliery, observed that the pony was injured. “It had a cut on the side,” he said. “The blood was trickling from the wound. It was dropping pretty quickly.” The alarm was at once given. Constables appeared upon the scene. By half-past eight Mr. Lewis, a veterinary surgeon, was on the spot. “The wound,” he deposed, “was quite fresh, and could not have been done further than six hours from the time he saw it.” The least learned of laymen might be sure that if the pony was standing bleeding freely at six it could not have been so all night, as the drain must have exhausted it. And here, on the top of this obvious consideration, is the opinion of the surgeon, that the injury was inflicted within six hours. Where George Edalji was during those six hours has already been shown beyond all possible question or dispute. So already the whole bottom has dropped out of the case; but, none the less, the indefatigable police went on with their pre-arranged campaign. That it was pre-arranged is evident, since it was not on account of evidence, but in search of evidence, that the constables raided the vicarage. The young lawyer had already started for his day’s work in Birmingham. The startled parents were ordered to produce all the young man’s clothing. The mother was asked for his dagger, but could produce nothing more formidable than a botany spud. A hunt was made for weapons, and a set of razors belonging to the vicar were seized. Some were said to be wet — a not uncommon condition for razors in the morning. Dark spots were perceived upon the back of one, but they proved upon chemical examination to be rust stains. Twelve men quartered the small garden, but nothing was found. The clothes, however, were a more serious matter. One coat was seized by the police and declared to be damp. This is vigorously denied by the vicar, who handled the coat before it was removed. Damp is, of course, a relative term, and all garments may give some feeling of dampness after a rainy night, when the whole atmosphere is humid; but if the condition had been caused by being out in the wild weather which prevailed that night, it is certain that the coat would have been not damp, but sopping wet The coat, however, was not one which Edalji used outside, and the evidence of Mr. Hands was called to show that he had not worn it the night before. It was an old house-coat, so stained and worn that it is not likely that an ambitious young professional man would, even in the lamplight, walk in the streets and show himself to his neighbours in such a garment But it was these very stains which naturally attracted the attention of the police. There were some whitish stains — surely these must be the saliva of the unfortunate animal. They were duly tested, and proved to be starch stains, probably from fish sauce or bread and milk. But there was something still more ominous upon this unhappy coat. There were, according to Inspector Campbell, “dark red or brown stains, right cuff much more stained than the left. There were other stains on each sleeve, further up, reddish brown or white. The coat was damp … There are other spots and stains upon it.” Now the police try to make two points here: that the coat was damp, and that there were stains which might have been the traces of the crime upon it. Each point is good in itself; but, unfortunately, they are incompatible and mutually destructive. If the coat were damp, and if those marks were blood-stains contracted during the night, then those stains were damp also, and the inspector had only to touch them and then to raise his crimson finger in the air to silence all criticism. Rut since he could not do so it is clear that the stains were not fresh. They fell twelve hours later into the capable hands of the police surgeon, and the sanguinary smears conjured up by tire evidence of the constable diminished with absurd swiftness until they became “two stains in the centre of the right cuff, each about the size of a threepenny bit” This was declared by Dr. Butter to be mammalian blood, He found no more blood at all. How these small stains came there it is difficult to trace — as difficult as to trace a stain which I see now upon the sleeve of my own house-jacket as I look down. A splash from the gravy of underdone meat might well produce it At any rate, it may most safely be said that the most adept operator who ever lived would not rip up a horse with a razor upon a dark night and have only two threepenny-bit spots of blood to show for it The idea is beyond argument. But now, having exhausted the white stains and the dark stains, we come to the most damning portion of the whole indictment though a careful consideration may change one’s view as to who it is who is damned by it. The police claimed that they discovered horse-hairs upon the coat. “On the sleeve,” says Inspector Campbell, “I found brownish hairs, which look like horse-hairs, There are some on now.” Now, let us listen to the very clear statement of the vicar upon the subject I transcribe it in full: “On Aug. 18, 1903, they called at the vicarage at about eight o’clock in the morning, and in compliance with their request Mrs. Edalji showed them a number of garments belonging to her son, George Edalji. As soon as they saw the old coat they began to examine it, and Inspector Campbell put his finger upon one place and said that there was a hair there. Mrs. Edalji told him that it was not a hair, but a thread, and Miss Edalji, who was present then, remarked that it looked like a ‘roving.’ This was all that Inspector Campbell had said to them about the hair before I came down. When I saw him he told me that he had found horse-hairs upon the coat. The coat was then spread out upon the desk in the study. I asked him to point out the place where the hairs were to be seen. He pointed out a lower part of the coat, and said, There’s a horse-hair there.’ I examined the place and said, There is no hair here at all.’ Some further conversation followed, and then suddenly he put his finger upon another place on the coat nearer to where I was standing, and, drawing two straight lines with his finger, he said, ‘Look here, Mr. Edalji, there’s horse-hair here.’ I looked at the place for a moment, and in order to have more light upon it, I took up the coat with both my hands and drew nearer to the window, and after carefully examining it I said to him, ‘There is, to be sure, no hair here, it is a clear surface.’ He then said that he wanted to take the coat with him, and I said, ‘You can take the coat. I am satisfied there is no horse-hair upon it.’ “Now I have said it over and over again, and I say it here once more, that there was absolutely no horse-hair upon the coat. If there had been any I could not have failed to see it, and both Mrs. Edalji and Miss Edalji looked at the coat at the same time, and saw no hair of any sort upon it.” Incidentally it may be mentioned in connection with this statement, in which Miss Edalji entirely concurs, that we have the evidence of Miss Foxley, formerly of Newnham College, and then head mistress of the High School, that Miss Edalji was an exceedingly competent scientific observer. She adds, “Wilful misstatement on her part is as impossible in itself as it is inconsistent with her high principles and frank, straightforward character.” Now, here is a clear conflict of evidence between two groups of interested people — the constables on the one hand, eager to build up their case; the household on the other, eager to confute this terrible accusation. Let us suppose the two statements balance each other. But is it not evident that there was only one course open for the police now to establish their point and that if they did not avail themselves of it they put themselves out of court? Their obvious course was then and there to send for a referee — die police doctor, or any other doctor — and picking samples of the hair from the coat to have sealed diem in an envelope, calling the new-comer to witness when and where they had been obtained. Such a proceeding must silence all doubt But they did nothing of the kind. What they actually did was to carry off the coat upon which three reputable witnesses have sworn there were no hairs. The coat then disappears from view for twelve hours. In the meantime the pony has been put out of its pain, and a portion of its hide was cut off with the hairs attached, and also secured by the police. The coat had been taken at eight in t he morning. It was seen by Dr. Butter, the police surgeon, at nine in the evening. At that hour Dr. Butter picked twenty-nine undoubted obvious horse-hairs from its surface. The prosecution have here to break their way through two strong lines of defence, each within the other. On the one hand, if Edalji had done the crime the evening before, it was his blue serge coat, and not his house-coat, that he wore, as is shown by the independent evidence of Mr. Hands. In die second line of defence is the oath of the family that there were no hairs in the morning, which is strengthened by the failure of the police to demonstrate there and then a fact which could have been so easily and completely demonstrated. But now we are faced by the undoubted fact that the hairs were there, upon the cuffs and the left breast, by evening. Why was the coat not taken straight to the surgeon? Why was a piece of the animal’s hide sent for before the coat was shown to Dr. Butter? One need not fly to extreme conclusions. It is to be remembered that the mere carrying of hide and coat together may have caused the transference of hairs, or that the officers may themselves have gathered hairs on their clothes while examining the pony, and so unconsciously transferred them to the coat. But the fact that the hairs were found just on the cuffs and breast will still recur in the mind. It would be sad indeed to commit one injustice while trying to correct another, but when the inevitable inquiry comes this incident must form a salient point of it There is one test which occurs to one’s mind. Did the hairs all correspond with the type, colour, and texture of the hairs on the sample of hide? If they did, then they were beyond all question conveyed from that sample to the coat. The cut was down the belly, and the portion taken off was from the side of the cut. The under hair of a horse differs greatly from the longer, darker, harsher hair of the sides. A miscreant leaning against a horse would get the side hairs. If all the hairs on the coat were short belly hairs, then there is a suggestive fact for the inquiry. Dr. Butter must have compared their appearance. Since writing the above I have been able to get the words of Dr. Butter’s evidence. They are quoted: “Numerous hairs on the jacket, which were similar in colour, length, and structure to those on the piece of skin cut from the horse.” In that case I say, confidently — and all reflection must confirm it — that these hairs could not possibly be from the general body of the pony, but must have been transferred, no doubt unconsciously, from that particular piece of skin. With all desire to be charitable, the incident leaves a most unpleasant impression upon the mind. If one could for a moment conceive oneself performing this barbarity, one would not expect to find hairs upon one’s coat. There is no necessary connection at all. Anxious to avoid the gush of blood, one would imagine that one would hold off the animal with the flat of one hand and attack it with the other. To lean one’s coat against its side would be to bring one’s trousers and boots in danger of being soaked in blood. So much for the saliva stains, the blood stains, and the hairs. There remain the questions of the trousers and the boots. The trousers were said by the police to be damp, and stained with dark mud round the bottom. The boots were very wet The boots were the same ones which Edalji had admittedly used during his sixty-minutes’ walk upon the evening before. It was fine in the evening, but there had been heavy rain during the day, and puddles everywhere. Of course his boots were wet The trousers were not a pair used the evening before, according to the family. No attempt was made to show blood marks on boots or trousers, though Mr. Sewell, a well-known veterinary surgeon, deposed afterwards that in making such an incision a skilled operator would wear an apron to prevent his clothes from being soaked. It is an interesting point brought out by the evidence of some of the witnesses of the prosecution, that the mud at the place of outrage was yellow-red, a mixture of clay and sand, quite distinct from the road mud, which the police claim to have seen upon the trousers. And now we come to the farce of the footprints. The outrage had occurred just outside a large colliery, and hundreds of miners going to their work had swarmed along every approach, in order to see the pony. The soft, wet soil was trampled up by diem from six o’clock onwards; yet on four o’clock of that afternoon, eight hours after the seizure of the boots, we have Inspector Campbell endeavouring to trace a similarity in tracks. The particular boot was worn at the heel, a fairly common condition, and some tracks among the multitude were down at the heel, and why should not the one be caused by the other? No cast was taken of the tracks. They were not photographed. They were not cut out for purpose of expert comparison. So little were they valued by Inspector Campbell that he did not even mention them to the magistrates on the 19th. But in retrospect they grew more valuable, and they bulked large at the trial. Now, once again, the police are trying to make a point which in itself would help them, but which is incompatible with their other points. Their original theory was that the crime was done before 9.30. There was heavy rain on and off all night It is perfectly clear that any well-marked footsteps must have been left after the rain stopped, or when it had nearly stopped. Even granting that the earth was soft enough, as it was, to take footprints before then, this heavy rain would blur them to a point that would make identification by a worn-down heel absurd. What becomes then of all this elaborate business of the footmarks? Every point in this case simply crumbles to pieces as you touch it. How formidable it all sounds — wet razor, blood on razor, blood and saliva and hair on coat, wet boots, footmark corresponding to boot — and yet how absolutely futile it all is when examined. There is not one single item which will bear serious criticism. Let us pass, however, from these material clues to those more subtle ones which the bearing or remarks of the youth may have furnished. These will bear examination even less than the others. As he waited upon the platform for the 7.30 train an ex-constable, now an innkeeper, named Markhew, came up to him and asked him to stay, as Inspector Campbell wished to see him. At the same moment someone announced that a fresh outrage had been committed, upon which Markhew says that Edalji turned away and smiled. Now, it is perfectly clear that a guilty man would have been much alarmed by the news that the police wished to see him, and that he would have done anything but smile on hearing of the outrage. Edalji’s account is that Markhew said, “Can’t you give yourself a holiday for one day?” on which Edalji smiled. Which is the more probable version I leave to the reader. The incident was referred to by the prosecuting counsel as “the prisoner’s extraordinary conduct at the station.” He went to his office in Birmingham, and there, later in the day, he was arrested by the police. On the way to the station, after his arrest, this unfortunate youth made another deadly remark: “I am not surprised at this. I have been expecting it for some time.” It is not a very natural remark for a guilty man to make, if you come to think of it; but it is an extremely probable one from a man who believes that the police have a down on him, and who is aware that he has been accused by name in malignant anonymous letters. What else would he have said? Next day and the following Monday he was before the magistrates, where the police evidence, as already set forth, was given. The magisterial proceedings lasted till Sept 4, off and on, when a prima facie case was made out and the prisoner committed to the Staffordshire Quarter Sessions. How far a case of this importance should have been referred to any less tribunal than the assizes I leave to legal opinion. Again the criminal made a remark which rose up in judgment against him. “I won’t have bail,” said he to Police-constable Meredith, “and when the next horse is killed it will not be by me.” In commenting upon this, Mr. Disturnal, the prosecuting counsel, said, “In refusing bail the prisoner made use of a very significant observation, and it went to suggest that the prisoner knew perfectly well what he was about when he refused bail.” The inference here is that it was pre-arranged that a friend of Edalji’s would do a fresh crime, in order to clear him. Was ever a more unfair utterance! It was, “Heads I win, tails you lose!” If no crimes occur, then it is clear we have the villain under lock and key. If crimes do occur, then it is clear that he is deep in conspiracy with others. As a matter of fact both Edalji’s decision to remain in gaol and his remark were the most proper and natural things in the world. He believed that there was a strong conspiracy against him. In the face of the letters he had even’ reason to believe so. So long as he was in his cell he was safe, he thought from this conspiracy. Perhaps another crime would be committed, and in that case, he thought in the innocence of his heart that it would clear him. In his wildest dreams he could never have imagined that such a crime would be fitted in as a link in the chain against him. A crime was committed, and it occurred upon Sept 21, between Edalji’s committal and trial, whilst he lay in Stafford Gaol. The facts are these: Ham’ Green was the nineteen-year-old son of a farmer who lived somewhere between the vicarage and the scene of the outrage for which Edalji was convicted. He and Edalji knew each other slightly, as neighbours in the country must do, but how slight was their acquaintance may be shown by the fact that when, in the course of my inquiry, I asked Edalji what Green’s writing was like, he had to admit that he had never seen it. Consider the utter want of common ground between the two men, the purblind, studious teetotal young lawyer of twenty-seven, and the young Yeomanry trooper of nineteen, one of a set of boisterous young fellows, who made a centre of mirth and also of mischief at each annual training. Edalji entered no public-house, and was at work from early morning to late at night. Where was there room for that blood-brotherhood which would make the one man risk any danger and sacrifice his own horse for the sake of the other? Green’s charger was found disembowelled. It was not a very valuable animal. In one estimate it is placed at five pounds. Whether it was insured or not there is a conflict of evidence. For days there was scare and conjecture. Then, at the end of that time, it was known that Green had signed a confession which admitted that he had himself killed his own horse. That confession undoubtedly exists, but Green, having had a week or two to think things over, and having in the meantime got a ticket to South Africa, suddenly went back on his own confession, and declared, with much circumstantiality of detail, that he had not done it and that the confession had been bullied out of him by the police. One or other statement of Green’s must be a falsehood, and I have sufficient reason myself, in the shape of evidence which has been set before me, to form a very clear opinion what the actual facts of the case were. When a final clearing of the case arrives, and there is a renewed inquiry on the basis that Edalji is innocent, and that the actual perpetrators have never been punished, there are many facts which maybe laid before the authority who conducts it Meanwhile the task which lies immediately before me is not to show who did do the crime — though that I think, is by no means an insuperable problem — but that Edalji did not and could not have done them. I will leave young Green there, with his two contradictory statements, and I will confine myself to his relation with the case, whichever of the statements is true. And, first of all, here are the police who claim to hold his written confession. Then why did they not prosecute? It will not do to say that it is not a crime to kill your own horse. It is not a crime to shoot your own horse from humane motives, but it is at all times a crime, as the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals would very quickly show, to disembowel a horse on a dark night, be it fifty times your own. Here is an outrage of the same sort which has convulsed the countryside for so many months, it is brought home by his own confession to the offender, and yet the police refuse to prosecute, and connive at the man’s flight from the country. But why? If it was not that the prosecution of Green would bring out facts which would interfere with the successful prosecution of Edalji, then, again, I ask, why? Far be it from me to be unjust to the police, but again it is their own really extraordinary behaviour which drives one to seek for hypotheses. The Home Office says that all inquiry has been made in this case, and that everything has been investigated and the matter closed. That is the official answer I received only a fortnight ago. Then can the Home Office give any good reason why Green was not prosecuted? The point is a very vital one. Green was present at Edalji’s trial, was not called, and left afterwards for South Africa. He had been subpoenaed by the police, and that, no doubt, was what prevented the defence from calling him. Rut had they done so, and had he spoken in public as he has spoken in private, there would have been an end of all possibility, according to my information, of the great miscarriage which ensued. It may be noted before leaving this extraordinary incident that the reason given by Green in his confession was that the horse had to be killed, having been injured in the Yeomanry training, but nowhere has he ever said a word to suggest that he was acting in collusion with George Edalji. And now at last we come to the trial. Here, as at every point of this extraordinary case, there are irregularities which will be more fitly dealt with by a lawyer. Suffice it that though the case was of such importance that it is generally thought that it should not have been at Quarter Sessions at all, it was at the lesser of the courts which make up that tribunal that it was at last tried. In Court A a skilled lawyer presided. Sir Reginald Hardy, who conducted Court B, had no legal training. I have not a word to say against his desire to be impartial and fair, but here was a young man, accused of one of a series of crimes for which the whole county was longing to find someone who might be made an example of The jury would naturally have the same feelings as their fellow-citizens. Hence it was peculiarly necessary to have a cold legal mind to cool their ardour and keep diem on firm ground of fact, far from prejudice and emotion. Yet it was in the court of the layman that the case was tried. The ground over which the prosecution advanced is already familiar to the reader. We have the clothes which have now become “wet”. They were merely “damp” in the previous inquiry, and we have the word of the vicar that this dampness was imperceptible to him, coupled with the fact that any bloodstains would then have been liquid. We have the down-at-heel boot, which was fitted into impressions which must have been made after rain, whereas the whole police theory was that the crime was committed before the rain. We have the bloodstains which sank from smears into two threepenny-bit patches, and we have the hairs which made their appearance thirteen hours after the coat had been in the hands of the police, and after it had been associated with the strip of horse’s hide. Then came the letters. There was a strong probability that whoever wrote the letters knew something of the crimes. What matter that the letters actually accused Edalji himself and vilified him in all sorts of ways? What matter that one villainous postcard in the same writing as the others was posted at Wolverhampton when he was at Aberystwyth? What matter that in the original series of anonymous letters the writer had said, “Do you think we cannot imitate your kid’s writing?” None of these things weighed as compared with the expression of opinion by an expert that the letters were in George Edalji’s own writing. As the unfortunate prisoner listened to such an opinion he must have felt that he was in some nightmare dream. And who was the expert who expressed these views which weighed so heavily with the jury? It was Mr. Thomas Gurrin. And what is the record of Mr. Thomas Gurrin? His nemesis was soon to come. Within a year he had to present himself before the Beck Committee, and admit the terrible fact that through his evidence an innocent man had suffered prolonged incarceration. Does this fact alone not convince my readers that an entire reconsideration of the Edalji case is a most pressing public duty? There is absolutely the whole evidence — the coat-boot- razor business, the letter business, the so-called incriminating expressions which I have already analysed, and the one fact, which I admit did really deserve consideration, that a group of schoolboys with whom once a month young Edalji may have travelled were known also to the writer of the letters. That is all. I have shown what each link is worth. And on that evidence a young gentleman, distinguished already in an honourable profession, was torn from his family, suffered all the indignities of a convict, was immured for three of the best years of his life, was struck from the roll on which with such industry and self-denial he had written his name, and had every torture made ten-fold more bitter by the thought of the vicar at home, of his mother and of his sister, so peculiarly sensitive, from their position in the church, to the scoff and the derision of those around them. It is a tale which makes a man hot with indignation as he reads it One word as to the evidence of the family, upon which so much depends. It has been asserted that it was given in a peculiar way, which shook the confidence of the jury. I have had some experience of the Edaljis, and I can say with confidence that what seemed peculiar to the jury arose from extreme anxiety to speak the absolute, exact truth. An experienced barrister who knew them well remarked to me that they were the most precisely truthful people he had ever met—”bad witnesses,” he added, “as they are so conscientious that they lay undue stress upon any point of doubt” It must be admitted that the defence was not as strong as it might have been made, which does not seem to have been due to any shortcomings of the counsel so much as to a deficiency in the supply of information. The fact is that the consciousness of innocence was in this case a danger, as it caused some slackness in guarding every point So far as I can find, the whole story of the early persecutions of 1888 and of 1893-5 was not gone into, nor was their probable connection with that of 1903 pointed out The blindness of Edalji, a most vital fact was not supported by an array of evidence; indeed, I think that it was hardly mentioned at all. At all points one finds things which might have been better, but even granting that one cannot but feel the amazement which Sir George Lewis has voiced, when the jury brought in “Guilty,” and Sir Reginald Hardy sentenced the prisoner to seven years. Now, once again, let me state the double dilemma of the police, before I leave this portion of my statement Either Edalji did the crime before ten o’clock that night or after ten o’clock that night. The latter case must be laughed out of a commonsense court by the fact that his father, the vicar, spent the night within a few feet of him, that the small vicarage was bolted and barred, no one being heard to leave it and that the police watchers outside saw no one leave it If that does not establish an alibi, what could? On the other hand, supposing that he did it before ten, or rather before 9.30, the time of his return home. You have to face the supposition that after returning from a long day’s work in Birmingham he sallied out in a coat which he was only known to wear in the house, performed a commonplace mission at the boot-shop in the village, then, blind as he was, hurried off for three-quarters of a mile, through difficult tortuous ways, with fences to climb and railway fines to cross (I can answer for it, having myself trod every foot of it), to commit a ghastly and meaningless crime, entirely foreign to his studious and abstinent nature; that he then hurried back another three-quarters of a mile to the vicarage, arrived so composed and tidy as to attract no attention, and sat down quietly to the family supper, the whole expedition from first to last being under an hour. The mere statement of this alternative supposition seems grotesque enough, but on the top of the gross, inherent improbability you are up against the hard facts that the pony was bleeding freely in the morning, and could not have so bled all night, that the veterinary surgeon deposed that the wound could not possibly be more than six hours old, no other veterinary surgeon being called to contradict this statement, and that the footprints on which the police relied were worthless unless left after the rain, which began at twelve. Add to this that the pony was seen standing apparently all right by the police themselves at eleven o’clock, and the case then seems to me to be overpoweringly convincing. Take whichever supposition you like, and I say that it is demonstrably false, and an insult to commonsense, to suppose that George Edalji committed the crime for which, through the action of the Staffordshire police, the error of an expert, and the gross stupidity of a jury, he has been made to suffer so cruelly. I do not know that there is much to add, save a bare recital of the events which have occurred since then. After Edalji’s conviction the outrages continued unabated, and the epidemic of anonymous letters raged as ever. The November outrage upon Mr. Stanley’s horses was never traced, but there was some good local information as to the author of that crime, and a widespread conviction in the district, which may have been utterly unjust that the police were not too anxious to push the matter, as any conviction would certainly disturb the one which they had already obtained. This incident also, will furnish some evidence for the coming inquiry. Finally, in March, 1904, a man, named Farrington, was convicted for injuring some sheep. No attempt has ever been made to trace any connection between this man and Edalji. In the Green case not only was there no attempt to prove complicity between Green and Edalji, but I have evidence to show that the police had a most positive statement from Green that he had nothing to do with Edalji, obtained under circumstances which make it perfectly convincing. And yet, in face of this fact, Mr. Disturnal, the mouthpiece of the police at the trial, was permitted to say, referring to this outrage: “The letters which would be read would show that the writer of them was not acting alone, but in conjunction with some other people, and he put it to the jury, what was more likely than that, if there was a gang operating in the way suggested, one of its members would commit a similar outrage in order to create evidence for the defence?” Counsel, no doubt, spoke according to his instructions; but what are we to think of those from whom such instructions issued, since they had the clearest proof that there was no connection between Green and Edalji? Such incidents shake one’s confidence in British justice to the very foundations, for it is clear that the jury, already prejudiced by the nature of the crimes, were hoodwinked into giving their conviction. A few words as to the sequel. The friends of the prisoner, organised and headed by Mr. R. D. Yelverton (late Chief Justice of the Bahamas), to whose long, ceaseless, and unselfish exertions Edalji will owe so much when the hour of triumph comes, drew up a memorial to the Home Secretary, setting forth some of the facts as here recorded. This petition for reconsideration was signed by ten thousand people, including hundreds of lawyers and many KC.’s, and was reinforced by the strongest letters testifying to Edalji’s character from men who must have known him intimately, including Mr. Denning, his schoolmaster; Mr. Ludlow, the solicitor with whom he was for five years articled; the Honorary Secretary’ and Reader of the Birmingham Law Society, and many others. Now every man of the world will admit that the schoolmaster’s testimony is of very great importance, for any traits of cruelty will show themselves most clearly at that age. This is what Mr. Denning says: “During the five years your son George was here I have never known him commit any acts of cruelty or unkindness. I have always found him a thoroughly upright and well-principled youth, in whom I could place every confidence.” Grier, his school-mate, writes: “He was several years older than myself, but always treated me with great kindness. I never knew him cruel to any animal, and from what I knew of him then — for I came to know him well — I should say he was quite incapable of any act of cruelty.” How foolish the loose gossip and surmise of Stafford seem in the face of page after page of testimonials such as these. The memorial had no effect, and some inquiry should certainly be made as to how its fate was determined. It would be indeed a vicious circle if a police prosecution, when doubted, is referred back again to the police for report. I cannot imagine anything more absurd and unjust in an Oriental despotism than this. And yet any superficial independent investigation, or even a careful perusal of the memorial, must have convinced any reasonable human being. The friends of Edalji, headed by Mr. Yelverton, naturally demanded to see the dossier at the Home Office, but, as in the Beck case, the seekers after justice were denied access to the very documents which they needed in order to prove their case and confute their opponents. I have said it was as in the Beck case. I might well have gone to a more classic example, for in all its details this seems to me to form a kind of squalid Dreyfus case. The parallel is extraordinarily close. You have a Parsee, instead of a Jew, with a young and promising career blighted, in each case the degradation from a profession and the campaign for redress and restoration, in each case questions of forgery and handwriting arise, with Esterhazy in the one, and the anonymous writer in the other. Finally, I regret to say that in the one case you have a clique of French officials going from excess to excess in order to cover an initial mistake, and that in the other you have the Staffordshire police acting in the way I have described. And that brings me to what is the most painful part of my statement, and the one which I would be most glad to shirk were it possible for me to do so. No account of the case is complete which does not deal with the attitude taken up by Captain Anson, Chief Constable of Staffordshire, against this unhappy young man. It must, I suppose, have taken its root in those far-off days from 1892 to 1895, when Edalji was little more than a boy, and when Sergeant Upton, for reasons which make a tale by themselves, sent reports against him to his superior at Stafford. It was at that early date that Captain Anson delivered those two memorable dicta.- “You may tell your son at once that I will not believe any profession of ignorance,” and “I will endeavour to get the offender a dose of penal servitude.” Now, I have no doubt Captain Anson was quite honest in his dislike, and unconscious of his own prejudice. It would be folly to think otherwise. But men in his position have no right to yield to such feelings. They are too powerful, others are too weak, and the consequences are too terrible. As I trace the course of events this dislike of their chief s filtered down until it came to imbue the whole force, and when they had George Edalji they did not give him the most elementary justice, as is shown by the fact that they did not prosecute Green at a time when his prosecution would have endangered the case against Edalji. I do not know what subsequent reports prevented justice from being done at the Home Office — (there lies the wickedness of the concealed dossier) — but this I do know, that, instead of leaving the fallen man alone, every possible effort was made after the conviction to blacken his character, and that of his father, so as to frighten off anyone who might be inclined to investigate his case. When Mr. Yelverton first took it up, he had a letter over Captain Anson’s own signature, saying, under date Nov. 8, 1903: “It is right to tell you that you will find it a simple waste of time to attempt to prove that George Edalji could not, owing to his position and alleged good character, have been guilty of writing offensive and abominable letters. His father is as well aware as I am of his proclivities in the direction of anonymous writing, and several other people have personal knowledge on the same subject.” Now, both Edalji and his father declare on oath that the former never wrote an anonymous letter in his life, and on being applied to by Mr. Yelverton for the names of the “several other people” no answer was received. Consider that this letter was written immediately after the conviction, and that it was intended to nip in the bud the movement in the direction of mercy. It is certainly a little like kicking a man when he is down. Since I took up the case I have myself had a considerable correspondence with Captain Anson. I find myself placed in a difficult position as regards these letters, for while the first was marked “Confidential,” the others have no reserve. One naturally supposes that when a public official writes upon a public matter to a perfect stranger, the contents are for the public. No doubt one might also add, that when an English gentleman makes most damaging assertions about other people he is prepared to confront these people, and to make good his words. Yet the letters are so courteous to me personally that it makes it exceedingly difficult for me to use them for the purpose of illustrating my thesis — viz., the strong opinion which Captain Anson had formed against the Edalji family. One curious example of this is that during fifteen years that the vicarage has been a centre of debate, the chief constable has never once visited the spot or taken counsel personally with the inmates. For three years George Edalji endured the privations of Lewes and of Portland. At the end of that time the indefatigable Mr. Yelverton woke the case up again, and Truth had an excellent series of articles demonstrating the impossibility of the man’s guilt Then the case took a new turn, as irregular and illogical as those which had preceded it At the end of his third year, out of seven, the young man, though in good health, was suddenly released without a pardon. Evidently the authorities were shaken, and compromised with their consciences in this fashion. But this cannot be final. The man is guilty, or he is not If he is he deserves every day of his seven years. If he is not then we must have apology, pardon, and restitution. There can obviously be no middle ground between these extremes. And what else is needed besides this tardy justice to George Edalji? I should say that several points suggest themselves for the consideration of any small committee. One is the reorganisation of the Staffordshire Constabulary from end to end; a second is an inquiry into any irregularity of procedure at Quarter Sessions; the third and most important is a stringent inquiry as to who is the responsible man at the Home Office, and what is the punishment for his delinquency, when in this case, as in that of Beck, justice has to wait for years upon the threshold, and none will raise the latch. Until each and all of these questions is settled a dark stain will remain upon the administrative annals of this country. I have every sympathy for those who deprecate public agitations of this kind on the ground that they weaken the power of the forces which make for law and order, by shaking the confidence of the public. No doubt they do so. But every effort has been made in this case to avoid this deplorable necessity. Repeated applications for justice under both Administrations have met with the usual official commonplaces, or have been referred back to those who are obviously interested parties. Amid the complexity of life and the limitations of intelligence any man may do an injustice, but how is it possible to go on again and again reiterating the same one? If the continuation of the outrages, the continuation of the anonymous letters, the discredit cast upon Gurrin as an expert, the confession of a culprit that he had done a similar outrage, and finally the exposition of Edalji’s blindness, do not present new fact to modify a jury’s conclusion, what possible new fact would do so? But the door is shut in our faces. Now we turn to the last tribunal of all, a tribunal which never errs when the facts are fairly laid before them, and we ask the public of Great Britain whether this tiling is to go on. Arthur Conan Doyle Undershaw, Hindhead January, 1907.
CASE OF GEORGE EDALJI: LETTER FROM SIR A. CONAN DOYLE FACSIMILE DOCUMENTS — No. 1 Some six weeks ago a correspondent in the Midlands wrote to me to the effect that the police, when driven out of the position that George Edalji committed the crime for which he was sentenced to seven years’ penal servitude, would endeavour to defend a second line — namely, that he had written the anonymous letters, and was therefore responsible for the mistake to which he fell a victim. The insight or the information of the writer has seemed to be correct, and this is, indeed, the defence which has been set up, with such success that it has prevented the injured man from receiving that compensation which is his due. In this article I ask your permission to examine this contention, and I hope I shall satisfy your readers, or enable them to satisfy themselves, that the supposition is against all reason or probability, and that a fresh injustice and scandal will arise if it should retard the fullest possible amends being made to this most shamefully-treated man. During an investigation of this case, which has now extended over five months, I have examined a very large number of documents, and tested a long series of real and alleged facts. During all that time I have kept my mind open, but I can unreservedly say that in the whole research I have never come across any considerations which would make it, I will not say probable, but in any way credible, that George Edalji had anything to do, either directly or indirectly, with the outrages or with the anonymous letters. As the latter question seems to be at the bottom of the ungenerous decision not to give Edalji compensation, I will, with your permission, place some of the documents before your readers, so that they may form their own opinion as to how far the contention that Edalji wrote them can be sustained. First, I will take the mere question of the handwriting of the letters, and secondly, I will take the internal evidence of their contents. The exhibits, which I will call 1 and 2, are specimens of Edalji’s ordinary writing, which is remarkably consistent in the many samples which I have observed. He says, and 1 believe with truth, that he has little power of varying his script. No proof has ever been adduced that he has such power. The specimens here given may be open to the objection that they arc four years later than the time of the outrages, but Edalji was twenty-seven years of age then, and is now thirty-one, and no marked development of writing is likely to occur in the interval. I give two separate specimens that the consistency of their peculiarities may be observed: I now, for purposes of comparison, give two samples of those letters in 1903 which Mr. Gurrin, the expert who was at fault in the Reck case, declared to be, to the best of his belief, in the writing of George Edalji. To the ruin of the young man he persuaded the jury to adopt his view, and now the committee chosen by the Home Office has endorsed the opinion of the jury, with the result that compensation has been withheld. Exhibits 3 and 4 give specimens of the anonymous letters of 1903. Now, on comparing the two specimens of Edalji with the two anonymous letters, the first general observation, before going into any details, is that the former is the writing of an educated man, and that the latter is certainly not so. A forger may imitate certain details in writing. A curious fashion of forming a letter is within the powers of even a clumsy imitator. Rut character is more difficult, and more subtle. Compare the real Edalji writing with the addressed envelope of three, or with the postscript of four, and ask yourself whether they do not belong to an entirely different class. Apart from the question of educated as against uneducated writing, the most superficial observer of character, as expressed in writing, would say that one and two were open and free, while three and four were cramped and mean. Yet Mr. Gurrin, the jury, and the Home Office Committee contend that they are the same, and a man’s career has been ruined on the resemblance. Now let us examine the details. There are one or two points of resemblance which are sufficiently close to make me believe that it is not entirely coincidence, and that there may have been some conscious, though very imperfect imitation, of Edalji’s writing. One of these is a very small twirl made occasionally in finishing a letter. It is visible in the c in the fourth line from the bottom of exhibit two, and in the c of the word “clothes” fifth line from the bottom of three. A close inspection might detect it in several letters of both exhibits, and I am told that it was more common in Edalji’s writing of that date. Another resemblance is the long upward stroke in beginning such words as “kindly” in two, and “known” four lines from the bottom of three. This formation, however, is not unusual. Lastly, there is the r, which might occasionally almost be an e, as in “return” in two, and in “sharp” in three. These peculiarities, especially the last, are so marked that they are, one would imagine, the first points which anyone disguising his hand would suppress, and anyone imitating would reproduce. But now consider the points of difference. See the peculiar huddling of the letters together appearing in such words as “brought,” “sharper,” and “would,” in 3, or in “don’t” “write,” and “known,” in 4. Where is there any trace of this in Edalji’s own writing ? Compare the rounded “g” of the whether they do not belong to an entirely different class. Apart from the question of educated as against uneducated writing, the most superficial observer of character, as expressed in writing, would say that one and two were open and free, while three and four were cramped and mean. Yet Mr. Gurrin, the jury, and the Home Office Committee contend that they are the same, and a man’s career has been ruined on the resemblance. Now let us examine the details. There are one or two points of resemblance which are sufficiently close to make me believe that it is not entirely coincidence, and that there may have been some conscious, though very imperfect imitation, of Edalji’s writing. One of these is a very small twirl made occasionally in finishing a letter. It is visible in the c in the fourth line from the bottom of exhibit two, and in the c of the word “clothes” fifth line from the bottom of three. A close inspection might detect it in several letters of both exhibits, and I am told that it was more common in Edalji’s writing of that date. Another resemblance is the long upward stroke in beginning such words as “kindly” in two, and “known” four lines from the bottom of three. This formation, however, is not unusual. Lastly, there is the r, which might occasionally almost be an e, as in “return” in two, and in “sharp” in three. These peculiarities, especially the last, are so marked that they are, one would imagine, the first points which anyone disguising his hand would suppress, and anyone imitating would reproduce. But now consider the points of difference. See the peculiar huddling of the letters together appearing in such words as “brought,” “sharper,” and “would,” in 3, or in “don’t,” “write,” and “known,” in 4. Where is there any trace of this in Edalji’s own writing ? Compare the rounded “g” of the anonymous letters with the straight “g” of Edalji. Compare the filled “r” of Edalji as seen in “Dear Sir Arthur,” with the final “r” of “matter” and “your” in 3, or of “paper” and “nor” in the postscript of 4. Finally, take a very delicate test, beyond the power of observation of a clumsy forger. If you take the letter “u” in Edalji’s letters you will find that he has a very curious and consistent habit of dropping the second curve of the “u” to a lower level than the first one. There is hardly an exception. But the anonymous writer, in three cases out of four, has the second curve as high as, or higher than, the first. Can any impartial and fair-minded man, examining these exhibits, declare that there is such an undoubted resemblance that a man’s career might be staked upon it, or that the public is exonerated by it from making reparation for an admitted wrong ? So much for the actual writing. The matter becomes perfectly grotesque when we examine the internal evidence of the letters. In the first place, they are written for the evident purpose of exciting the suspicions of the police against two persons — the one being Edalji himself, and the other being young Greatorex, whose name was forged at the end of them. Why should Edalji, an eminently sane young lawyer, with a promising career before him, write to the police accusing himself of a crime of which he was really innocent? The committee speak of a spirit of impish mischief. What evidence of such a spirit has ever been shown in the life of this shy, retiring man? Such an action would appear to me to be inconsistent with sanity, and yet Edalji has always been eminently sane. What possible evidence is there to support so incredible a supposition? And suppose such a thing were true, how then would the introduction of young Greatorex be explained? Young Greatorex and Edalji were practically strangers. They had at most met without conversation when chance threw ‘them into the same railway carriage on the Walsall line. There was no connection between them, no cause of quarrel, no possible reason why Edalji should involve Greatorex in a terrible suspicion, and then voluntarily come to share his danger. The whole supposition is monstrous. But it all becomes clear when we regard the letters as the work of a third person, who was the enemy both of Edalji and of Greatorex, and who hoped by this device to bring down both his birds with one stone. That Edalji had enemies, who had brought ingenious mystifications in letter writing to a fine point is shown by the persecution to which he and his family were subjected from 1892 to 1895. One has only to show that one of those persecutors had also reason to wish evil to young Greatorex, and then it needs no fancifed theories of people writing scurrilous letters about themselves to make the whole situation perfectly credible and clear. A priori, then, the likelihood of the letters being by Edalji is so slight that nothing but the most marked resemblance in the script could for a moment justify such a supposition. How far such an overpowering resemblance exists the reader can now judge for himself. But apart from the inherent improbability of such a theory, look at all the other points which should have laughed it out of court. Edalji was a well-educated young man, brought up in a clerical atmosphere, with no record of coarse speech or evil life. From his school days at Rugeley, where his headmaster gave him the highest character, until the time when he won the best prizes within his reach at the Legal College of Birmingham, there is nothing against his conduct or his language. Yet these letters are written by a foul-mouthed boor, a blackguard who has a smattering of education, but neither grammar nor decency. They do not as the Committee have said, actually prove that the writer was the man who did the outrages, but they at least show that he had a cruel and bloodthirsty mind, which loved to dwell upon revolting details. “I caught each under the belly, but they did not spurt much blood.” “We will do twenty wenches like the horses.” “He pulls the hook smart across ‘em and out the entrails fly.” This is the writing of a hardened ruffian. Where in Edalji’s studious life has he ever given the slightest indications of such a nature? His whole career and the testimony of all who have known him cry out against such a supposition. Finally, there are certain allusions in the letters which are altogether outside Edalji’s possible knowledge. In one of them some seven or eight people are mentioned, all of whom live in a group two stations down the line from Wyrley, and entirely removed from Edalji’s very limited circle. They were a group immediately surrounding young Greatorex, and they were put in with a view to substantiating the pretence that he was the writer, for the entanglement of Greatorex was evidently the plotter’s chief aim, and the ruin of Edalji was a mere by-product in the operation. One of the people mentioned was the village dressmaker, a second the doctor, a third the butcher, all in the neighbourhood of Greatorex and out of the ken of Edalji. In his attempt to entangle Greatorex the writer actually gave himself away, as it is clear to any intelligence above that of a prejudiced official that he must be one of the very limited number of people who was himself acquainted with this particular group. There is one other peculiarity in the first Greatorex letter which cannot fail to arrest attention. It is the reiterated allusions to the sea. Edalji had no connection with the sea, and there was no reason why he should write of it. But in this one letter there ore three or four references to it. How is this to be accounted for? When one considers that there had been a former persecution, that this had ended abruptly at the beginning of 1896, that peace had reigned for six years, and that now a new series of letters is commenced by someone whose mind is running upon the sea, one would like to make inquiry as to the possibility of some sailor having returned to the neighbourhood. Should such a man exist, as is likely enough upon a crowded countryside, the fact alone would be of small weight, but, at least, it might be worth an investigator’s while to trace the matter further and see if any other points of contact could be established. I have now dealt with the so-called “Greatorex” letters, and have enabled the reader to judge for himself as to how far the script is identical with that of Edalji. I have also shown that the a-priori reasoning and the internal evidence are absolutely opposed to the idea that the young lawyer wrote them. I am suppressing nothing in order to make a case, for I cannot find any single point in the letters which can be used as an argument that Edalji did write them. It is amazing to me that three men of position like Sir Albert de Rutzen, Sir Arthur Wilson, and the Hon. Mr. Wharton should express themselves as being in agreement with the senseless opinion of the Stafford jury. What possible facts can they allege to support such a contention? Where is the evidence of this “impish spirit” which they have themselves conjured up? It has added three more names to that long line of policemen, officials, and politicians who owe a very abject apology to this ill-used man. Until this apology is offered and reparation made no mutual daubings of complimentary white-wash will ever get them clean. There are many other documents connected with this case which I should wish to discuss and reproduce in a later article. I should be glad, therefore, if your readers would retain the present specimens for future comparison.
WHO WROTE THE LETTERS? — No. 2 In my last, article I laid before the reader copies of the actual writings of George Edalji, together with specimens of the anonymous letters of 1903, so that each might form his own opinion as to the degree of resemblance in the script. I also showed by the internal evidence of the letters themselves how grotesque is the theory that they were from the pen of the young lawyer, and how mean the refusal to compensate him for his unjust punishment by pretending that he had contributed to his own ruin. I will now lay some further documents before the public in order to illustrate the peculiar nature of the long persecution to which the Edalji family has been subjected, and to prove the fact that the anonymous letters now received by Edalji and by his friends come from the same hand which wrote some of the letters in the series of 1892-95. If anyone conceives the wild theory that Edalji has been persecuting himself during all these years, I will undertake to show that such a supposition cannot be fitted into the facts. I admit that no one can put a limit to the strange aberrations of human nature, and that it is possible to conceive of a man otherwise sane who had some kink in his brain which compelled him from time to time to write abusive and scurrilous documents to himself and to his people. In this case, however, it is not only possible to show that Edalji did not write the letters, but also to draw some fairly reliable inferences as to the people who did. This, I venture to do in the hope that some remark of mine may possibly prove suggestive to good citizens upon the spot, and help them to find some of the missing links in this long and tangled chain of events. Those who have interested themselves in the case will remember that the main persecution of the Edalji family began in the year 1892, and lasted until the beginning of 1896. During that time hundreds of letters of an extraordinary nature were sent to them; hoaxes of the most ingenious description were played upon them; bogus advertisements of an offensive character were put in their names into the papers; objects were thrown into the vicarage grounds, and many other pranks played upon them. Any one of these might be described as trivial, but the continued, ingenious persecution, lasting over three years, became cruelty of a most diabolical kind, under which the minds of the victims might well have broken down. To the lasting disgrace of the Staffordshire police this man-baiting was allowed to continue for this long period without any serious effort upon their part to shield the unfortunate family from their brutal tormentors. Their complaints were unheeded, or else it was hinted to them, exactly as it is now said to the son, that their sufferings were in some way due to themselves. It is a story which any unofficial Englishman must read with shame and indignation. I have carefully examined a considerable number of the letters and postcards written by the conspirators, and I have been able to come to some definite conclusions about them. In the first place, there appear to have been three of them, two adults and a boy. I must admit that the writings of the two adults are so fluid, and run so frequently into the same characteristics, that I am prepared to find that they both came from one individual. Such a supposition is possible, but I think that it is very improbable. I seem to trace three lines of thought and character, as well as three peculiarities of script. We will take it, then, that there is adult writing and that there is boy writing, the adult writing being separable into two. Of the boy, it may be definitely stated that he could not have been less than twelve or more than sixteen. I find no exact evidence as to the age of the others, save that the mischief which characterises the whole proceeding, and the fact that they could devote so very much time and attention to it — some of the letters are of great length — would seem to indicate that they were still youths, and that they had no settled occupation. It is fairly certain that they must have lived within a radius of a mile or two of the vicarage, since many of the missives were left by hand. Let us now consider what relation these three plotters bore to each other. Had there been a cramming establishment, or any other centre where mischievous young men could congregate, I should say that very likely they were no relations, but mere partners in a cruel practical joke. I have been unable to find, however, that anything of the sort exists in that neighbourhood. Yet these three individuals, the two young adults and the boy, undoubtedly lived under the same roof. Their epistles are continually on the same paper, and in the same envelopes. In some cases the rude scrawl of the boy comes in upon the very page which is taken up by the educated writing of the adult A sheet may exhibit on one side an elaborate forgery of the signatures of the Edaljis, the Brookes, or some other neighbouring family, while on the other is a rude drawing (rude in every sense), which could only have been done by a lad. The adults appeared to pride themselves upon forgers’, and the results, so far as I have been able to test them, show that they had remarkable powers in that direction. “Do you think that we could not imitate your kid’s writing?” they say exultantly in one of the 1892 letters. They most certainly could — and did. What are we to say, then, of three youths, all living under one roof, and engaged over several years in long succession of heartless practical jokes. It is possible that they were three clerks in an office, or three assistants in a business, but in such a case, how are we to account for the presence among them of a boy? On the whole, the balance of probability is greatly in favour of there being three relatives, brothers for choice, who are working together in the matter. The fact that the rude writing of the youngest developed at a later date some of the peculiarities of his elders, would seem to indicate a family habit In this way we have built up, as a rough working hypothesis, the idea of two young men and an exceedingly foul-mouthed boy, who are brothers or close relations, and fellow-conspirators in this persecution. Let us see now if an inspection of the letters can give us any information of the habits of these young blackguards. The first thing which is perfectly evident is the connection of the younger one with Walsall Grammar School. Walsall Grammar School is an excellent educational establishment, and a great boon to all the country round, but like every other school, it has an occasional black sheep, and it needs no far-fetched inference to make it certain that this youngster was among them. Let me explain here that it was not merely the Edalji family who were persecuted by scurrilous letters, but that several other families in the neighbourhood, notably the Brookes and the Wynnes, were troubled in the same fashion. Now, both the Brookes and the Wynnes had a son at that time at Walsall School, and the headmaster of Walsall was also a recipient of anonymous letters, written in the same rough boyish hand, so that the focus of trouble seems certainly to lie there. I may explain in passing that George Edalji was at Rugeley Grammar School, and had no connection whatever with Walsall. My point is, then, that the youngest of these three brothers, the ill-conditioned boy, had some connection with Walsall School. To illustrate it I append an exhibit, which, for purposes of future reference, I will call No. 1. Here the writer, dragging in as usual the butt, Edalji, whose very name he cannot at that time spell, utters the most scurrilous threats against the headmaster. This writing is, beyond all doubt, as will afterwards be demonstrated, the same as that of the younger conspirator. Here now we are getting at something tangible. The writer of 1 was a boy who entertained a malignant hatred of the headmaster of Walsall School. Why? It does not seem to be stretching the argument to suppose that it is a boy who has often felt the headmaster’s cane, or possibly has been expelled for his evil conduct Without over-elaborating the point it can at least be stated as a probability, indeed almost a certainty, that the boy brother was a scholar at Walsall (and a very backward unruly one) in the year 1892. The argument up to this point must certainly approximate to the truth. It is possible, therefore, that an examination of the records of Walsall (Grammar School at that date would give a starting point for an investigation. Not only can we say with some certainty that this young rascal was at Walsall, but there is a strong probability that one of the others was at the same school, though his age, as indicated by his writing, would show that he had either left before the older joined, or that he was in the higher when his younger brother was in the lower classes. He joins his young brother in writing anonymously to the Brookes and the Wynnes, showing a certain community of interest where school matters are concerned. His scholastic record must have been a very different one, for both his script and the contents of his letters show a very alert and ingenious mind. In one of his letters there is a long quotation from Milton. I believe that I am correct in stating that this particular book of Milton had been the school exercise some little time before. I repeat, therefore, that the balance of evidence is in favour of one at least of the elder brothers having been a senior scholar at Walsall at or about the time when his brother was a junior. This should narrow down the field of an inquiry. In this connection we must consider the incident of the Walsall Grammar School key. This key was discovered by the village constable on Dec. 12, 1892, upon the window-sill of the vicarage, and George Edalji, upon the unvarying principle of laying everything mysterious to his charge, was at once accused of having put it there, how he could have got it from the six-mile-off school, or what end could be served by so foolish a prank, was never explained. Yet it was over this incident that the chief constable wrote: “If the persons concerned in the removal of the key refuse to make any explanation of the subject, I must necessarily treat the matter as a theft. I may say at once, that I shall not pretend to believe any protestations of ignorance which your son may make about this key. My information on the subject does not come from the police.” When one takes this incident with the preceding evidence as to Walsall Grammar School being the focus of the mischief, is it not exceedingly probable that the key was brought over by the same mischievous scholars who wrote the letters, and that the chief constable’s information was conveyed in one of their ingenious epistles? There is, at least, nothing unnatural or far-fetched in such a supposition, while the suggestion that George Edalji would travel twelve miles in order to lay on his own father’s window-sill a key which nobody wanted is grotesque in its improbability. I only recall the incident at present as a corroboration of the theory which I am demonstrating, that the storm-centre at that time lay in Walsall School. I will now present specimens of the script of the two elders of the trio, with the proviso that it is within the bounds of possibility that the two may eventually prove to have been one. For the present, at least. I will differentiate them. One of them, who seems to me to be the elder, as his thought and expression are the more developed is the creature who writes extraordinary religious rant over the signature of “God-Satan.” There are remarkable qualities in these mad effusions, grim humour, wild imagination, and a maniacal turn of mind, which alternates between hysterical religion and outrageous blasphemy. It was no ordinary man who wrote the following characteristic effusion: “I must live partly in Heaven and partly in hell, so if that ever-accursed monster Satan tries to detain me in hell I will fight with him and throw myself into the gulf which is fixed between hell and Heaven, and then I shall be able to climb out of the gulf into Heaven. And moreover, if God tries to push me back into hell I will defy God and struggle with him, and if I cannot prevail I will hold on to God and fall with Him over the precipice of hell.” “If you wish to escape having your house blown up by dynamite you are to do this thus, namely, order the postman to take Mrs. M. ‘s body out of her grave and bring it to your house. You are then to break open her head, take out her brains, and boil them in a cauldron of port wine for three hours. Next you are to order Mr. — to come to your house, make him open his mouth and drink the contents of the cauldron whilst boiling. If you do this to my satisfaction I will ask God not to give you such a hot place in hell.” There are countless pages of this strange, pernicious stuff”, alternating with such lighter passages as this: You vindictive wretch I dare you to do to me whatever your vengeance prompts you, but spare, oh, spare, the honest police!” I append as a specimen of the script the page, which I shall number as 2, upon which the latter gem appears. The writing in all these effusions is fluent and easy, with every mark of an educated hand. I can find no evidence that any particular care has been taken to disguise it, but it is naturally unformed, and does not set rigidly into definite characteristics. From 1896 onwards this individual disappears entirely, and I was at some loss to form an opinion as to whether the mania was real or simulated. It bore every aspect of being real, but on the other hand it was difficult to conceive that such a person could so conceal his mental eccentricity as to escape general comment Some weeks ago, however, an incident occurred which convinced me that the man still lives, and that he is now a marked religious maniac. A newspaper containing some account of the Edalji affair had found its way to Long Beach, California, in the United States. A page of it was sent back to Mr. George Edalji, with religious and blasphemous comments scribbled in pencil all round the margins. The general character of this script the knowledge shown of the case, and the singular mental conditions, have all convinced me that whatever be his name, God-Satan is now to be found on the Pacific Coast and that he is an undoubted madman. So much for the elder of the three hypothetical individuals, he now drops out of the narrative, and we come to the second. This man writes a closer, smaller hand, with many of his senior’s peculiarities. There is no fancy and no madness in his productions. On the contrary, they are particularly practical. They are usually postcards of an allusive character, sent to someone at a distance, and signed with a forged name. At his ingenious bidding deluded tradesmen have brought huge consignments of goods to the vicarage, brother clergymen have hastened to Wyrley upon all sorts of urgent summonses, and editors have inserted the most monstrous advertisements as to the extraordinary needs of the vicar. The exhibit No. 3 gives a specimen of the script Of this man’s future I know nothing, and it may well prove, when the veil comes to be lifted, that he is simply another manifestation of the ingenuity of “God-Satan.” I will pursue the subject in a concluding letter.
THE “MARTIN MOLTON” LETTERS — No. 3. We now come to the third individual whom we have constructed, the foul-mouthed boy. He is far the more interesting and important of the three, for whereas the others drop out he carries on the persecution. As I will presently show, I have myself received a letter from him within the last few weeks, one of a considerable series which have been signed by various pseudonyms, but which I will call in future the Martin Molton letters, since that was the name which was attached to the first specimen. That Martin Molton, of 1907, and the bad boy of 1892 are the same individual is, as I will show, beyond all reasonable doubt. Let me pause here for one instant to consider the theory which I really believe still lingers at the Home Office, that the bad boy of 1892-95 was actually George Edalji reviling his own people, and writing furious letters to those who had never offended him. If the officials could only make good that proposition, when they could point to him also as being Martin Molton and all would be well. But to any unprejudiced mind, with no official theory to sustain, the thing is beyond argument. Look at the writing of 1 and also of 4. It is rude, coarse, and unformed to the last degree. Such as it is it appears unchanged in the persecuting letters up to the end of 1895. Now, at that date George Edalji was nineteen years of age, an excellent scholar”, who had finished his grammar school education, and had already started that course of legal study in Birmingham at which he was to win such distinction. Can anyone believe that he is responsible for this barbarous writing and more barbarous spelling and grammar. It is impossible to suppose such a thing, and by saying so we dispose for ever of the wild idea that Martin Molton was George Edalji, for whoever wrote the schoolboy scrawl of 1892-95 wrote the letters of 1907. Let me now make that point clear before I go any further. I present side by side two exhibits, which I call 4 and 5. 4 is a specimen of the bad boy’s writing, dating back to 1893. Alienists will be interested in the circular dots to the i’s, which are recognised as a symptom of lunacy. 5 is a short extract from a long abusive anonymous letter which reached me on April 17 of this year, posted on that date in the N. W. or Euston quarter of London. Compare the character of the writing. Compare the words “run” and the words “murder” in each. Compare the peculiar r’s shaped like x. Is there any reasonable man who can doubt that the thing is beyond coincidence, and that the same hand fashioned each? It may be fairly inferred, also, that the writer has been employed during the fourteen years which have elapsed in some trade which has not required much clerical work, as it is difficult to believe otherwise that he would not have developed his calligraphy. Having, as I hope, satisfied the reader that the young rascal of 1893 is the writer of the anonymous letter quoted above, I must complete my point by showing that the latter is also Martin Molton. The handwriting of all these 1907 letters is identical, save that in some cases the Greek e is used with an ordinary r, while in others the ordinary e is used with the peculiar r. I append an extract from my letter, 6, and one from the Martin Molton series, 7, which will, I hope, satisfy the reader that they are the same script, and that they are therefore both the handiwork of the bad boy of Walsall School. T may add that of the Martin Molton series five were posted in London and two in Birmingham. Now we have secured the two ends of our chain, and it only remains to examine those central links which are formed by the letters of 1903 — those letters which the committee, and also the jury, have most unreasonably ascribed to Edalji. I claim that I have shown these two ends to be from another hand, and if I can show that there is any correspondence or connection between them and the 1903 letters, then the latter also are from another hand. I have in my previous article shown, both by the script and by the internal evidence, that it is in the highest degree improbable that they could have been by Edalji. I now propose to show that it is, on die other hand, in the highest degree probable that they are by the same author as the others. Who that may be it is for those upon the spot to determine. First of all I reproduce part of the envelope of one of the Martin Molton letters (8), and I place below it the forged signature of Wilfred Greatorex in 1903. Let the reader look at the two capital Ws. Each is curiously fashioned, and yet there is an absolute similarity between them. Is this within the range of coincidence? I have shown that there is a history of forgery in the family from the beginning, and the actual writing is cleverly concealed, but every here and there, as in this conspicuous W, there is a glaring lapse. Even the same phrases recur in the different series of letters. I have one of the 1903 letters before me as I write, and I read in it, “None of the people think you a right sort,” addressed to George Edalji. Turn to exhibit 6, and you will find the same phrase applied to the same man in the letters of 1907. Is this also coincidence? See the continued ill will towards the Edaljis breaking out in 1893, 1903, and again in 1907. Is this also coincidence, and is the central mystification distinct from the first and the last? It is not for me to state who actually wrote the letters of 1903, but I claim that, while in my last article I proved that all the evidence is against them having been done by George Edalji, in the present I have shown that there are very sound reasons to believe that they are from the same hand as those of 1893 and of 1907. I have also given some indications by which that hand may be traced. Just one word at this point as to the object of all this elaborate mystification. Of that I have no doubt at all. The culprit is a lunatic, and his destination when his pranks have all been brought home to him should be, not a prison, but an asylum. The religious mania of the elder conspirator is the index of a family weakness which becomes a diabolically mischievous madness in the junior. He will be found, when exposed, to be a man of eccentric life and character, with periodical accessions of actual madness, during which he loses all prudence and control. Had the persecution been confined to the Edaljis, one might well have imagined that some secret reason could explain it, but it has broken out in so many directions, and been accompanied by such senseless deeds, that nothing but a disordered brain can be behind it Such a man is a danger to the community in which he lives, as no one can say what turn his destructive propensities may take. That he still lives in the Midlands, and possibly in the very district of the crimes, is made feasible by the postmarks of two of the Martin Molton letters. I trust that it will not be long before he is under medical supervision. I have purposely said nothing of the outrages diem selves, and confined my remarks to the letters, since these are the only things for which Edalji is now held responsible, and it is on account of that alleged responsibility that compensation is refused him. The writing of the letters does not appear to be a criminal offence, or at worst a minor one, so that if the assertion were true that Edalji wrote diem, the country would none the less owe him compensation for his three years of gaol. I trust, however, that I have convinced every impartial man that the balance of evidence is enormously against Edalji having had anything to do with the letters. Redress for one unjust accusation has been refused by the simple process of making a second equally unjust. Nowhere in the State document is there one word of sorrow or repentance for the blunder so tardily found out. All honest, manly admission and moderate redress would have been met in a conciliatory spirit, and the matter would have ended. As it is, the sore still runs. Fortunately, behind the mutual whitewashers and the ring of interested officials, there is always the great public to whom an injured man may appeal. Those who have followed my argument, and who agree with those conclusions, which seem to me to be inevitable, may well ask why all these documents and this reasoning have not been laid before the Committee and the Home Office. My answer is that they were so. I wish I could say with assurance that they were ever considered by the Committee. “Facts and printed matter” is their guarded description of what they have examined, and my documents could not be included in the latter. In their report there is not a word which leads me to think that my evidence was considered, and there are several passages — notably about Green, and about the eyesight — which make it difficult for me to believe that it was so. In the matter of the eyesight, the opinion of some unnamed prison doctor is endorsed, while there is no comment on the views of fifteen experts, some of them the first oculists in the country, which I sent in. As to the Home Office, I have shown them documents and demonstrated the points here set forth until I was weary. I was treated always with courtesy, but I was met also with a chilly want of sympathy. Instead of recognising that I had no possible object, save the ends of justice, and that it was their function in this country to see that justice was done, they took an obvious side in favour of impeached officialdom, and made me feel at every point that there was a hostile atmosphere around me. However, in spite of every obstacle, nine-tenths of the victory is won, and I have not a doubt that the fair-minded men of this country, apart from every consideration of persons or politics, will see that it is made complete by public apology and redress for a public wrong. ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE Undershaw, May 20 .
STATEMENT OF THE CASE AGAINST ROYDEN SHARP of Cannock, for the committing of those outrages upon Cattle from February to August, 1903, for which GEORGE EDALJI was condemned to Seven Years’ penal servitude at Stafford Assizes, November, 1903. At the time of the outrages, roughly July, 1903, Royden Sharp had a conversation alone with Mrs. Greatorex, who is the wife of Mr. W. A. Greatorex, Littleworth Farm, Hednesford, who was appointed Trustee at the time of the death of Peter Sharp, the father, in November, 1893. To this gentleman, Mr. Greatorex, I owe much assistance in working out the case. In the course of the conversation referred to above, Royden Sharp — after alluding to the outrages — went to a cupboard, and produced a horse lancet of unusual size. He showed this to Mrs. Greatorex, saying, “This is what they kill the cattle with.” Mrs. Greatorex was horrified, and told him to put it away, saving, “You don’t want me to think you are the man, do you?” The possession by Sharp of this unusual instrument of so huge a size is to be explained by the fact that he served for ten months of 1902 on board a cattle boat between Liverpool and America. No doubt he took this lancet when he left the boat. I suggest that the instrument is still in the house, and could be secured in case of an arrest. The fact that this was true, and that this actually was the instrument with which the crimes were committed is corroborated by the following considerations: — That the wounds in all the earlier outrages up to August 18th were of a peculiar character, which could not have been inflicted by any other weapon. In even case there was a shallow incision which had cut through the skin and muscles, but had not penetrated the gut. Had any knife been plunged in and drawn along it must almost certainly have cut the gut with its point. The blade in question is like this: It is very sharp, but could not penetrate further than superficially. The witnesses who could testify most clearly as to the nature of the wounds are Mr. Sambrook, a butcher, who has now removed from Wyrley to Sheffield, but can, I understand, be easily traced, and Mr. Forsyth, a veterinary surgeon, of Cannock. I know that Mr. Sambrook was struck by the peculiarity of the cuts. Royden Sharp was in all respects peculiarly fitted to have done these crimes, and there is, apart from this incident, much evidence both before the time of the crimes, during the time and after the time to cause him to be regarded with gravest suspicion. I will, for the moment, put on one side the persecution of the Edaljis (in which he was concerned with his elder brother Wallie in 1892-95) and confine the evidence entirely to that which bears upon the outrages and the anonymous letters of 1903. I will first trace his early career.
EVIDENCE OF HIS CHARACTER BEFORE THE CRIMES Royden Sharp was born in 1879. He very early showed marked criminal tendencies which took a destructive form. When he was 12 years of age he was found to have set a rick on fire at a Cannock Farm (Hatton’s Farm at West Cannock) and his father was forced to pay a considerable compensation. He was sent at the age of eleven to Walsall Grammar School, where his brother Wallie was an elder scholar at the time. His record at the school was as follows: this is an extract which I got from the school books through the courtesy of Mr. Mitchell, the present headmaster. Xmas, 1890. Lower 1. Order, 23rd out of 23. Very backward and weak. French and Latin not attempted. Easter, 1891. Lower 1. Order, 20th out of 20. Dull, homework neglected, begins to improve in Drawing. Midsummer, 1891. Lower 1. Order, 18th out of 18. Beginning to progress, caned for misbehaviour in class, tobacco chewing, prevarication, and nicknaming. Xmas, 1891. Lower 1. Order, 16th out of 16. Unsatisfactory, often untruthful Always complaining or being complained of Detected cheating, and frequently absent without leave. Drawing improved. Easter 1892. Form 1. Order, 8th out of o. Idle and mischievous, caned daily, wrote to father, falsified schoolfellows’ marks, and lied deliberately about it Caned 20 times this term. Midsummer, 1892. Played truant, forged letters and initials, removed by his father. It will thus be seen that forgery, which played a part in the anonymous letters of 1903 was familiar to him as a school boy. Apart from the forgery which the school records show to have been done by him, the disposition to brutal violence was very marked, and so was that of foisting upon others, often with considerable ingenuity, the misdeeds of his own doing. Out of the anonymous letters which are certainly from his hand at this school period 1892-95, I take the two following expressions: “I will cut your bowels out,” “I will open your belly,” showing curiously how his own thoughts were already turning. If he were left in a railway carriage he would turn up the cushion and slit it on the lower side, so as to let out the horse hair. This evidence is given by Mr. Wynne, painter, of “Clovelly,” Cheslyn Hay, who was at school with him. He adds the following anecdote illustrative of his destructiveness, of his bearing false witness, and of his writing vindictive anonymous letters, all of diem qualities which came out 10 years later in 1903. During the time that the Edalji family had been deluged with anonymous letters from 1892 to 1895 (which letters I have good reason to believe were from the Sharps), another family in the same village, the Brookes, were plagued in the same way, and in the same handwriting, especially the young son, Fred Brookes. I had failed to find any cause, save colour hatred, in the case of the Edaljis, so I hoped I might get something more definite in the case of young Brookes. This is Wynne’s story: — MR. WYNNE’S STATEMENT “R.S.,” known as “Speck,” was a small built youth with sharp features. Generally in a sailor’s suit, he was the worst scholar in the school for about three years, and remained at the bottom of the first form. He was very fond of chewing tobacco, and I think it was in the Summer holiday of 1892 that he set a rick on fire near Hednesford… One evening we were returning by the usual evening train. F. G. Brookes and myself got in the train when Speck came running into the same compartment straight to the end of the carriage, and put his head through the carriage window smashing it all to bits. We all made our way into another compartment In a day or two after Brookes and myself were charged by one of the railway officials of breaking the carriage window. We found out that Sharp had told of us. that it was us. not himself Then we sought the station master, and told him how it happened, and Sharp had to pay for it, and he was also caught cutting the straps of the window, and had to pay, I think, more than once; his father was asked to take him away from the school as they could not do any good with him. He was always into mischief and getting others into trouble. The next I heard was he was sent to sea “If my memory serves me right the first letters that I heard of were sent to Mr. W H. Brookes, some time after the railway carriage incident, in a large school handwriting, saying that “Your kid and Wynn’s kid have been spitting in an old woman’s face on Walsall station.” and requesting monies to be sent to Walsall Post Office. The second one was threatening to prosecute if the money was not sent. Thus the receipt of the anonymous letters by Brookes immediately followed a cause of feud between young Brookes and Royden Sharp. Having been expelled from school Roy den Sharp was apprenticed to a butcher, thus learning to use a knife upon W. A. Greatorex, of Littleworth Farm, became Royden’s Trustee. This gentleman is an excellent witness, and ready to help the ends of justice in any way. It was to his wife that the implied confession was made. For two years, 1894 and 1895, this gentleman had much trouble with the lad. Finally he sent him to sea. He went to sea from Liverpool on December 30di in the ship “General Roberts,” belonging to Lewis Davies & Co., 5, Fenwick Street Liverpool. He went as apprentice. From the time he left the letters, hoaxes, &c., which had kept the countryside in a turmoil, ceased completely, and were not renewed until his return in 1903. I may remark in passing that Edalji was at home all this time, and that this fact alone would, one would have thought, have awakened the suspicions of the police and shown them who was the author of the troubles. I am told, but have not verified the fact, that the last anonymous hoax on the Edaljis was an advertisement in a Blackpool paper, about the end of December, 1895 — Blackpool being the pleasure resort of Liverpool. Royden Sharp does not, so far as my enquiries go, appear to have acted badly aboard ship. He finished his apprenticeship in 1900, and afterwards gained a third Mate’s certificate. He came home late in 1901, but shortly after got a billet on board a cattle ship to America, where his natural brutality was probably not lessened, and where he, no doubt, got the huge horse lancet which Mrs. Greatorex can depose to having seen in his hand. The Wyrley outrages upon cattle were begun while Royden Sharp was at home, and he was in the district during the whole time of their continuance. Whoever committed the outrages must have been in a position to get into and out of his house at all hours of the night without being observed either by the police or by the other inmates of the house, if living miles away from him; but they belonged to the immediate group who surrounded the Sharp and Greatorex families. They lived two stations down the line from Edalji, whom everyone describes as a very retiring man who made no friends. How could he know these people? But they were put in by Sharp because they were the people whom Greatorex knew, and in putting diem in he really proved his own guilt, for he and his family were the only people who could know exactly the same circle. This piece of internal evidence alone must convince any independent and intelligent observer that Edalji could not have written these “Greatorex” letters, and that if Greatorex did not, which all admit to be true, then all the evidence points to the Sharps, who were accomplished forgers and mystifiers as already shown. Apart from the letters bearing upon the crimes, other anonymous letters of an obscene description were circulating in the district at this period. I have seen a letter from one who was present dated August 3rd, 1903, saying that a conference was held as to the authorship of these letters that day in the presence of Mr. Greatorex, now dead (no relation of the other), who was a local bank manager, and Inspector Campbell, now living at Cannock. The letter wound up, “I believe that Royden Sharp will be arrested before evening.” From this I infer that the local police had evidence of Sharp’s writing anonymous letters at this time. This evidence should be available at the trial, and should show that this was a habit of his. I believe that August 3rd did mark a cessation of letters for some time. There are many points of internal evidence in the letters (the so-called “Greatorex” letters) which point to Royden Sharp, apart from the fact that they appeared after his return to the district, and that they deal with a number of people well known to him (and unknown to Edalji). In all the 1892-95 letters there is, so far as I have seen, no mention of the sea. In the very first of the “Greatorex” letters in 1903 there are two or three allusions to the sea, most natural for anyone who had just left it. He advises in his letter that some boy be sent to sea as an apprentice which was, as I have shown, Royden Sharp’s own experience. The writer uses the curious expression that a hook did the crimes. The instrument which Sharp showed to Mrs. Greatorex has a hooky appearance, and could be carried shut in the pocket, as the writer asserts that the “Hook” actually was. A sharp hook in the ordinary sense of a hook could not be so carried without cutting the cloth. The writer says that he feels inclined to put his head on the rails where the train runs from Hednesford to Cannock. This is the actual stretch of rail near the Sharp’s [sic] house (and is some distance from Wyrley where Edalji lives). In June, 1903, a letter (still preserved) was received with the Rugeley post mark, signed “A Lover of Justice,” and addressed to George Edalji. It was asking him to leave the district for a time, so as to be away when the next crime was done, as otherwise he would be in danger of being taken for it. The writer of this letter I identify as being the same as the former anonymous letters of 1895; which I also identify as having been done by Wallie Sharp. There would be no difficulty in getting expert evidence as to the hands being the same. Wallie Sharp was acting as apprentice to an electrical engineer at the time, and was much in the small neighbouring towns of which Rugeley is one. It is to be observed that in the letter in question occurs the phrase “you are not a right sort.” This phrase occurs also in one of the Greatorex letters. This points to Wallie’s complicity in the Greatorex letters, or his brother’s phrase may have lingered in his mind. It could hardly be coincidence that the same phrase could occur in both letters. Wallie Sharp died in South Africa in November, 1906. I now come to what I look upon as a very important piece of evidence, indeed, I think it is conclusive as regards the anonymous letters. Some time after Edalji’s arrest there began a series of anonymous letters, signed “G. H. Darby,” the writer claiming to be Captain of the Wyrley Gang. These letters — many of which I have seen — are all in the same writing and, though very roughly done, contain some of the characteristics of Royden Sharp’s writing, especially an r made like x and sometimes so exaggerated as to be almost x which occurs from boyhood in Royden Sharp’s writing. About November, 1903, some of these letters arrived from Rotherham, near Sheffield. The police, I think, had some, and others were received by a local paper, the Wolverhampton Star. The writer was evidently a Cannock man, and I should think few Cannock men would at any time visit Rotherham. Now, I have found the porter, whose name is A. Beenham, Drayman, near Baptist Chapel, Cannock Road, Chadsrnoor, near Cannock, who in November carried Royden Sharp’s box to the station, and observed that it was addressed to Rotherham. The Darby letters said that the Captain would return before Xmas, and I believe Sharp actually did so. This seems to me perfectly conclusive, as regards the identity of Royden Shaq) with G. H. Darby, and the latter boasted that he was the author of the outrages. Another significant fact is as follows: — On September 29th, 1903, there was an anonymous notice that “it was decided to ‘slice up’ ten wenches between November 1st and 20th and 10 after Xmas,” repeating a threat which had already been uttered in the second “Greatonex” letter. The date s are curious in view of the fact that Royden Sharp would be away as already shown from November to Xmas The announcement caused much terror in the district, which was increased by the following incident — A woman and little girl (Mrs. Jarius Handley, Great Wyrley, is [the] woman’s name) were coming from Wyrley station one evening, soon after, where they had been buying some papers for sale. They met two men in the road. One of them caught the girl by the throat, and held in his hand something that gleamed. They both screamed, on which the man ran away, crying to his comrade who had gone on: “All right, Jack, I am coming. I suggest that this man was Royden Sharp, and that his companion was Jack Hart, a dissolute butcher, of the neighbourhood, and a friend of Sharp’s. The little girl declared to her mother that she had been stopped once before by the same young man, and proceeded to give a minute description of him. She said that he had a round face, no moustache, about 5ft. Sin. in height, a dark suit, and a shiny peaked cap, which was exactly Royden Sharp’s sailor-like costume. I suggest that after Sharp’s arrest this girl be allowed an opportunity of identifying him. I am informed that from the time that his description got about Sharp gave up wearing this style of dress. There was another of the series of anonymous letters which came from London, and was said by the writer to have been written in a Lockhart’s coffee-house there. It was dated “ 19th” (month can be found by further search ) and the writer said he had gone up to London from Birmingham that day. On enquiry Mr. Beaumont, of Wolverhampton Road, Cannock, — who has assisted me much — discovered that Royden Sharp had actually left Cannock for Birmingham upon the morning of that same day — 19th. Mr. Hunt, the local station master, was his informant I will now recapitulate in condensed form the statement which has been here set out at length. Royden Sharp can be shown to have been the culprit: 1. Because of his showing the weapon to Mrs. Greatorex. 2. Because the wounds could only be produced by such an instrument as he showed. 3. Because only such an instrument fits in with the description in the letters. 4. Because being a butcher and a man from a cattle ship he was able to do such crimes which would be very hard for any ordinary man. 5. Because in many points of the anonymous letters there is internal evidence pointing to Royden Sharp. 6. Because he had a proved record of writing anonymous letters, of forgery, of diabolical mischief, and of bearing false witness, all of which qualities came out here. 7. Because he went to Rotherham at the time when letters bearing on the crimes came from Rotherham. 8. Because he is correctly described by a girl, who saw a man endeavouring to carry out, or pretend to carry out, the threats in the letters. 9. Because the actual handwriting in many of the letters bears a resemblance to Royden Sharp’s own old writing. It is impossible now to get any specimen of his actual writing, as he is most guarded in writing anything. Why should he be if he is innocent? 10. I am informed (but have not yet verified the fact) that in one of the anonymous letters occurs the phrase, “I am as Sharp as Sharp can be.” This seems to me to be in itself a complete case, and if I — a stranger in the district — have been able to collect it, I cannot doubt that fresh local evidence would come out after his arrest. He appears to have taken very little pains to hide his proceedings, and how there could have been at any time any difficulty in pointing him out as the criminal is to me an extraordinary thing. If further evidence were needed in order to assure a conviction, there are two men who could certainly supply it. These men are: — Harry Green, formerly of Wyrley Farm, Wyrley, now in South Africa. The other is Jack Hart, Butcher, Bridgtown, near Cannock. Either of these men, if properly handled, would certainly turn King’s evidence. They both undoubtedly knew all about Sharp. Others who know something, but possibly not enough, as they were only on the edge of the affair, are Fred Brookes (formerly of Wyrley, now in Manchester), Thomas, and Grinsell, all of the local Yeomanry. It seems to me that Sharp did no more outrages with his own hands after the arrest of Edalji in August The next outrage was admittedly done by Harry Green, who can be shown, when in doubt as to what he should do, to have sent a note to someone else, which note was answered from London in a letter written on telegram forms, now to be seen in the Home Office. This answer was, I believe from the writing, from Royden Sharp. It is worth noting on the evidence of Mr. Arrowsmith, of the Cannock Star Tea Company, who has done most excellent work on this case, that Green accepted all Arrowsmith’s remarks good-humouredly, but on the latter saying “Sharp should be where Edalji now is,” he at once became very angry. The November outrage was done upon Stanley’s horses by Jack Hart, the butcher, acting in collusion with Sharp. This makes really a separate case. If it should be found possible to get Mrs. Sharp in the box, she would depose as she has told Mrs. Greatorex, that Royden Sharp is strangely affected by the new moon, and that on such occasions she had to closely watch him. At such times he seems to be a maniac, and Mr. Greatorex has himself heard him laughing like one. In this connection it is to be observed that the first four outrages occurred on February 2, April 2, May 3, and June 6, which in each case immediately follows the date of the new moon. The point of a connection between the outrages and the moon is referred to in one of the “Greatorex” letters, so it was present in the mind of the writer. I cannot end this statement without acknowledging how much I owe to the unselfish exertions of Mr. Greatorex, of Littleworth Farm, Mr. Arrowsmith, of the Star Tea Company, Cannock, and Mr. Beaumont, of Wolverhampton Road, Cannock, without whose help I should have been powerless. (Signed) Arthur Conan Doyle. Undershaw, Hindhead
THE CASE OF MR. OSCAR SLATER SPECIAL INVESTIGATION BY SIR A. CONAN DOYLE Due to the success of the Sherlock Holmes stories, many people wrote letters to Conan Doyle over the years, asking him for help with real life crimes. The two most famous examples were George Edalji and Oliver Slater. Conan Doyle’s involvement in both these cases led to the establishment of the Court of Criminal Appeal in both England and Scotland. In 1908 a wealthy 82-year-old woman named Marion Gilchrist, was bludgeoned to death at her home in Glasgow. Her body was discovered by a downstairs neighbour and a maid. Oscar Slater, a petty criminal known to police as an illegal gambling-den operator had been staying in Glasgow for only 6 weeks, near the Gilchrist residence, before he boarded an ocean liner for New York. When he found out he had been accused of Gilchrist’s murder Slater returned to Glasgow to clear his name. However, his trial, characterized by Conan Doyle as a great injustice, left Slater imprisoned for nearly two decades on sketchy evidence. Conan Doyle believed the actual murderer was a member of the victim’s family and known to the police. However because of that person’s political and social connections a cover-up was necessary and Slater became the perfect scapegoat for the crime.
THE CASE OF MR. GEORGE EDALJI SPECIAL INVESTIGATION BY SIR A. CONAN DOYLE The first sight which I ever had of Mr. George Edalji was enough in itself to convince me both of the extreme improbability of his being guilty of the crime for which he was condemned, and to suggest some at least of the reasons which had led to his being suspected. He had come to my hotel by appointment, but I had been delayed, and he was passing the time by reading the paper. I recognised my man by his dark face, so I stood and observed him. He held the paper close to his eyes and rather sideways, proving not only a high degree of myopia, but marked astigmatism. The idea of such a man scouring fields at night and assaulting cattle while avoiding the watching police was ludicrous to anyone who can imagine what the world looks like to eyes with myopia of eight dioptres — the exact value of Mr. Edalji’s myopia according to Mr. Kenneth Scott of Manchester-square. But such a condition, so hopelessly bad that no glasses availed in the open air, gave the sufferer a vacant, bulge-eyed, staring appearance, which, when taken with his dark skin, must assuredly have made him seem a very queer man to the eyes of an English village, and therefore to be naturally associated with any queer event There, in a single physical defect, lay the moral certainty of his innocence, and the reason why he should become the scapegoat Before seeing him I had read the considerable literature which had been sent to me about his case. After seeing him I read still more, saw or wrote to everyone who could in any way throw light upon the matter, and finally visited Wyrley and had a useful day’s work upon the spot. The upshot of my whole research has been to introduce me to a chain of circumstances which seem so extraordinary that they are far beyond the invention of the writer of fiction. At all times in my inquiries I have kept before my mind the supreme necessity of following truth rather than any preconceived theory, and I was always prepared to examine any point against the accused with as much care as if it made for his innocence, but I have felt at last that it was an in suit to my intelligence to hold out any longer against the certainty that there had been an inconceivable miscarriage of justice. Let me now tell the strange story from the beginning. I hope that the effect of my narrative will be to raise such a wave of feeling in this country as will make some public reconsideration of his case inevitable, for I am convinced that such reconsideration can only end in his complete acquittal and to his restoration to the ranks of that honourable profession from which he has been most unjustly removed. The story begins as far back as the year 1874, when the Rev. S. Edalji, a Church of England clergyman of Parsee origin, was married to Miss C. Stoneham. An uncle of the bride, as I understand it, held the gift of the living of Great Wyrley, which was a parish, half agricultural and half mining, about six miles from Walsall, in Staffordshire. Through this uncle’s influence Mr. Edalji became vicar of Great Wyrley, a cure which he has now held for thirty-one years, living a blameless life in the sight of all men. Placed in the exceedingly difficult position of a coloured clergyman in an English parish, he seems to have conducted himself with dignity and discretion. The only time that I can ever find that any local feeling was raised against him was during elections, for he was a strong Liberal in politics, and had been known to lend the church school-room for meetings. Some bitterness was aroused among the baser local politicians by this action. There were three surviving children from this union — George, who was born in 1876, Horace in 1879, and Maud in 1882. Of these Horace received a Government post, and was absent at the time when the long persecution to which the family had been subjected culminated in the tragedy which overwhelmed his brother. In the year 1888, George Edalji being at that time twelve years of age, a number of threatening anonymous letters were received at the vicarage. The aid of the police was called in, and an arrest was made. This was of the servant-maid at the vicarage, one Elizabeth Foster, who was accused, among other things, of writing up ribald sentences about her employers on outhouses and buildings. She was tried at Cannock in 1889, but her solicitor pleaded that it was all a foolish joke, and she was bound over to keep the peace. An attempt has been made since to contend that she was not guilty, but I take it that no barrister could make such an admission without his client’s consent. She and her friends were animated afterwards by bitter feelings of revenge; and there is good reason to believe that in this incident of 1888 is to be found the seed which led to the trouble of 1893-95 and the subsequent trouble of 1903. The 1892-95 letters openly championed Elizabeth Foster; the 1903 ones had no direct allusion to her, but a scurrilous postcard on Aug. 4 contained the words, “Why not go on with your old game of writing things on walls?” this being the very offence Elizabeth Foster was charged with. The reader must remember that in 1888 George Edalji was a schoolboy of twelve, and that the letters received at that date were in a formed handwriting, which could not possibly have been his. In 1892 the second singular outbreak of anonymous letters began, some of which were published in the Staffordshire papers at the time by Mr. Edalji, in the hope that their style or contents might discover the writer. Many were directed to the vicarage, but many others were sent to different people in the vicinity, so malevolent and so ingenious that it seemed as if a very demon of mischief were endeavouring to set the parish by the ears. They were posted at Walsall, Cannock, and various other towns, but bore internal evidence of a common origin, and were all tainted with the Elizabeth Foster incident. They lasted for three years, and as they were accompanied by a long series of most ingenious and elaborate hoaxes, it is really wonderful that they did not accomplish their proclaimed purpose, which was to drive their victim off his head. On examination of such of these letters as I have been able to see their prevailing characteristics are: 1. A malignant diabolical hatred of the whole Edalji family, the 16-17-18-year-old George coming in for his fair share of the gross abuse. This hatred is insane in its intensity, and yet is so coldly resolute that three years of constant persecution caused no mitigation. Here are extracts to illustrate the point “I swear by God that I will murder George Edalji soon. The only tiling I care about in this world is revenge, revenge, revenge, sweet revenge, I long for, then I shall be happy in hell.” “Every day, every hour, my hatred is growing against George Edalji.” “Do you think, you Pharisee, that because you are a parson God will absolve you from your iniquities?” “May the Lord strike me dead if I don’t murder George Edalji.” ‘Tour damned wife.” “Your horrid little girl.” “I will descend into the infernal regions showering curses upon you all.” Such are few of the phrases in which maniacal hatred of the Edalji family is shown. 2. The second characteristic of the letters is a frantic admiration, real or feigned, for the local police. There was a Sergeant Upton on duty in Cannock, who is eulogised in this way: “Ha, ha, hurrah for Upton! Good old Upton! Blessed Upton. Good old Upton! Upton is blessed! Dear old Upton! Stand up, stand up for Upton, Ye soldiers of the Cross. Lift high your Royal banner, It must not suffer loss.” “The following in this district we love truly — the police of Cannock in general.” Again: “I love Upton. I love him better than life, because for my sake he lost promotion.” 3. The third characteristic of these letters, besides hatred of Edalji and eulogy of the police, is real or simulated religious mania, taking the form, in some portions of the same letter, that the writer claims to be God, and in others that he is eternally lost in hell. So consistent is this that it is hard to doubt that there was a real streak of madness in the writer. 4. A fourth remarkable characteristic of the letters is the intimacy of the writer with the names and affairs of the people in the district. As many as twenty names will sometimes be given, most of them with opprobrious epithets attached. No one can read them and doubt that the writer lived in the immediate neighbourhood, and was intimately acquainted with the people of whom he spoke. One would imagine that under these circumstances there would be little difficulty in tracing the letters to their source, but, as a matter of fact, the handwriting was never recognised, nor was the culprit discovered. The opinion was strongly held, however, by those who were most concerned, that there was a connection with the former incident, and that the letters were done by some male ally or allies of the discharged maid. Whilst these letters had been circulating the life of the Edaljis had, as I have already said, been made miserable by a series of most ingenious and daring hoaxes, many of which might have seemed comic had it not been for the tragedy of such a persecution. In all sorts of papers the curious wants of the Rev. S. Edalji, of Great Wyrley, broke out by letter and by advertisement Forgery caused no qualms to the hidden conspirator. Mr. Edalji became in these effusions an enterprising matrimonial agent, with a number of ladies, their charms and fortunes most realistically catalogued, whom he was ready to dispose of to any eligible bachelor. His house was advertised to be let for the most extraordinary purposes. His servant-girl was summoned over to Wolverhampton to view the dead body of a non-existent sister supposed to be King at a public-house. Trades people brought cartloads of unordered goods to the vicarage. An unfortunate parson from Norwich flew across to Great Wyrley on the urgent summons of the Rev. Shapurji Edalji, only to find himself the victim of a forgery. Finally, to the confusion of anyone who imagines that the youth George Edalji was annoying himself and playing heartless tricks upon his own people, there came a forged apology in the public Press, beginning with the words: “We, the undersigned, G.E.T. Edalji and Fredk. Brookes, both residing in the parish of Great Wyrley, do hereby declare that we were the sole authors and writers of certain offensive and anonymous letters received by various persons during the last twelve months.” The apology then goes on to express regret for utterances against the favourite protégé of the unknown, Upton, the sergeant of police at Cannock, and also against Elizabeth Foster. This pretended apology was, of course, at once disowned by the Edaljis, and must, I think, convince any reasonable man, if there were already any room for doubt, that the Edaljis were not persecuting themselves in this maddening fashion. Before leaving this subject of the anonymous letters of 1893, which breathe revenge against the Edalji family, I should like to quote and strongly emphasise two expressions which have a lurid meaning when taken with the actual outcome of the future. On March 17, 1893, this real or pretended maniac says in a letter to the father: “Before the end of this year your kid will be either in the graveyard or disgraced for life.” Later, in the same letter, he says: “Do you think that when we want we cannot copy your kid’s writing?” Within ten years of the receipt of that letter the “kid”, or George Edalji, had indeed been disgraced for life, and anonymous letters which imitated his handwriting had played a part in his downfall. It is difficult after this to doubt that the schemer of 1893 was identical with the writer of the letters in 1903. Among the many hoaxes and annoyances practised during these years was the continual laying of objects within the vicarage grounds and on the window-sills, or under the doors, done with such audacity that the culprit was more than once nearly caught in the act. There was one of these incidents which I must allude to at some length, for though it was trivial in itself, it has considerable importance as forming a link between the outrages of 1893 and of 1903, and also because it shows for the first time the very strong suspicion which Captain the Honourable G. A. Anson, Chief Constable of Staffordshire — influenced no doubt by those reports of his subordinates, which he may or may not have too readily believed — has shown towards George Edalji. Personally I have met with nothing but frankness and courtesy from Captain the Hon. G. A. Anson during the course of my investigation, and if in the search after truth I have to criticise any word or action of his, I can assure him that it is with regret and only in pursuit of what seems to me to be a clear duty. On Dec. 12, 1892, at the very beginning of the series of hoaxes, a large key was discovered lying upon the vicarage doorstep. This key was handed to the police, and was discovered in a few days to be a key which had been taken from Walsall Grammar School. The reason why I say that this incident has an important bearing upon the connection between the outrages of 1893 and those of 1903 is that the very first letter in the latter series proclaimed the writer to be a scholar at Walsall Grammar School. Granting that. he could no longer be a scholar there if he were concerned in the hoaxes of 1893, it is still an argument that the same motive power lay behind each, since we find Walsall Grammar School obtruding itself in each case. The incident of the key was brought before the chief constable of the county, who seems at once to have concluded that young George Edalji was the culprit George Edalji was not a scholar at the Walsall School, having been brought up at Rugeley, and there does not appear to have been the slightest reason to suppose that he had procured a key from this six miles distant school and laid it on his own doorstep. However, here is a queer-looking boy, and here are queer doings, and here is a zealous constable, the very Upton whose praises were later to be so enthusiastically voiced by the writer of the letters. Some report was made, and the chief constable believed it. He took the course of writing in his own hand, over his own name, in an attempt to bluff the boy into a confession. Under date Jan. 23, 1893, he says to the father, in a letter which now lies before me: “Will you please ask your son George from whom the key was obtained which was found on your doorstep on Dec. 12? The key was stolen, but if it can be shown that the whole thing was due to some idle freak or practical joke, I should not be inclined to allow any police proceedings to be taken in regard to it. If, however, the persons concerned in the removal of the key refuse to make any explanation of the subject, I must necessarily treat the matter in all seriousness as a theft. I may say at once that I shall not pretend to believe any protestations of ignorance which your son may make about this key. My information on the subject does not come from the police.” Considering the diabolical ingenuity of the hoaxer, it would seem probable that the information came directly or indirectly from him. In any case, it seems to have been false, or, at least, incapable of proof, as is shown by the fact that after these threats from the chief constable no action was taken. But the point to be noted is that as early as 1893, when Edalji was only seventeen, we have the police force of Staffordshire, through the mouth of their chief, making charges against him, and declaring in advance that they will not believe any protestation of innocence. Two years later, on July 25, 1895, the chief constable goes even further. Still writing to the father he says: “I did not tell Mr. Pry that I know the name of the offender” (the writer of the letters and author of the hoaxes), “though I told him that I had my suspicions. I prefer to keep my suspicions to myself until I am able to prove them, and I trust to be able to obtain a dose of penal servitude for the offender; as although great care has apparently been exercised to avoid, as far as possible, anything which would constitute any serious offence in law, the person who writes the letters has overreached himself in two or three instances, in such a manner as to render him liable to the most serious punishment. I have no doubt that the offender will be detected.” Now, it must be admitted that this is a rather sinister letter. It follows after eighteen months upon the previous one in which he accuses George Edalji by name. The letter was drawn from him by the father’s complaint of gossip in the neighbourhood, and the allusion to the skill of the offender in keeping within the law has a special meaning, in view of the fact that young Edalji was already a law student. Without mentioning a name, he assures Edalji’s father that the culprit may get a dose of penal servitude. No doubt the chief constable honestly meant every word he said, and thought that he had excellent reasons for his conclusions; but the point is that if the Staffordshire police took this attitude towards young Edalji in 1895, what chance of impartiality had he in 1903, when a culprit was wanted for an entirely new set of crimes? It is evident that their minds were steeped in prejudice against him, and that they were in the mood to view his actions in the darkest light At the end of 1895 this persecution ceased. Letters and hoaxes were suddenly switched off. From that date till 1903 peace reigned in Wyrley. But George Edalji was resident at the vicarage all the time. Had he been the culprit there was no reason for change. But in 1903 the troubles broke out in a far more dangerous form than ever. It was on Feb. 2, 1903, that the first serious outrage occurred at Wyrley. On that date a valuable horse belonging to Mr. Joseph Holmes was found to have been ripped up during the night Two months later, on April 2, a cob belonging to Mr. Thomas was treated in a similar fashion; and a month after that a cow of Mrs. Bungay’s was killed in the same way. Within a fortnight a horse of Mr. Badger’s was terribly mutilated, and on the same day some sheep were killed. On June 6 two cows suffered the same fate, and three weeks later two valuable horses belonging to the Quinton Colliery Company were also destroyed. Next in order in this monstrous series of barbarities was the killing of a pony at Great Wyrley Colliery, for which George Edalji was arrested and convicted. His disappearance from the scene made no difference at all to the sequence of outrages, for on Sept. 21, betwixt his arrest and his trial, another horse was disembowelled, and, as if expressly to confute the views of those who might say that this outrage was committed by confederates in order to affect the trial, the most diabolical deed of all was committed, after Edalji’s conviction upon Nov. 3, when a horse and mare were found mutilated in the same field, an additional touch of horror being added by the discovery of a newly-born foal some little distance from the mare. Three months later, on Feb. 8, 1904, another horse was found to be injured, and finally, on March 24, two sheep and a lamb were found mutilated, and a rough miner named Farrington was convicted, upon entirely circumstantial evidence, and condemned to three years. Now here the results of the police are absolutely illogical and incompatible. Their theory was that of a moon-lighting gang. Edalji is condemned as one member of it, Farrington as another. But no possible connection can be proved or was ever suggested between Edalji and Farrington; the one a rude, illiterate miner, the other the son of the vicar and a rising professional man; the one a loafer at public-houses, the other a total abstainer. It is certainly suggestive, presuming that Farrington did do the deed for which he was convicted, that he was employed at the Wyrley Colliery, and may have had to pass in going to his work that very pony which Edalji was supposed to have injured. It is also, it must be admitted, suggestive that while Edalji’s imprisonment had no effect upon the outrages, Farrington’s was at once followed by their complete cessation. How monstrous, then, to contend, as the Home Office has done, that no new facts have arisen to justify a revision of Edalji’s case. At the same time, I do not mean to imply Farrington’s guilt, of which I have grave doubts, but merely that, as compared with Edalji, a strong case could be made out against him. Now let me, before examining the outrage of Aug. 17, 1903, which proved so fatal to Edalji, give some account of the fresh epidemic of letters which broke out in the district. They were synchronous with the actual outrages, and there were details in them which made it possible, though by no means certain, that they were written by someone who was actually concerned in the crimes. It cannot be said that there is absolute proof that the letters of 1903 were by the same hand as those of 1895, but there are points about their phrasing, about their audacity and violence of language, finally, about the attentions which they bestow upon the Edalji family, which seem to point to a common origin. Only in this case the Rev. Edalji escapes, and it is the son — the same son who has been menaced in the first series with disgrace for life — who receives some of the communications, and is referred to in the others. I may say that this series of letters present various handwritings, all of which differ from the 1895 letters, but as the original persecutor was fond of boasting that he could change his handwriting, and even that he could imitate that of George Edalji, the variance need not be taken too seriously. And now for the letters. They were signed by various names, but the more important purported to come from a young schoolboy, named Greatorex. This youth denied all knowledge of them, and was actually away in the Isle of Man when some of them were written, as well as on Aug. 17, the date of the Wyrley outrage. It is a curious fact that this youth, in going up to Walsall every day to school, travelled with a certain number of schoolfellows upon the same errand, and that the names of some of these schoolfellows do find their way into these letters. In the same carriage travelled young Edalji upon some few occasions. “I have known accused by sight for three or four years,” said Greatorex at the trial, “he has travelled in the same compartment with me and my schoolmates, going to Walsall. This has not occurred many times during the last twelve months — about a dozen times, in fact.” Now, at first sight, one would think this was a point for the police, as on the presumption that Edalji wrote these anonymous letters it would account for the familiarity with these youths displayed in them. But since Edalji always went to business by the 7.30 train in the morning, and the boys took the same train every day, to find himself in their company twelve times in one year was really rather more seldom than one would expect. He drifted into their compartment as into any other, and he seems to have been in their company but not of it Yet the anonymous writer knew that group of boys well, and the police, by proving that George Edalji might have known them, seemed to make a distinct point against him. The “Greatorex” letters to the police are all to the effect that the writer is a member of the gang for maiming cattie, that George Edalji is another member, and that he (Greatorex) is prepared to give away the gang if certain conditions are complied with. “I have got a dare-devil face and can run well, and when they formed that gang at Wyrley they got me to join. I knew all about horses and beasts and how to catch them best… they said they would do me in if I funked it, so I did, and caught them both King down at ten minutes to three, and they roused up; and then I caught each under the belly, but they didn’t spurt much blood, and one ran away, but the other fell… Now 111 tell you who are in the gang, but you can’t prove it without me. There is one named from Wyrley, and a porter who they call , and he’s had to stay away, and there’s Edalji, the lawyer … Now I have not told you who is at the back of them all, and 1 shan’t unless you promise to do nothing at me. It is not true we always do it when the moon is young, and the one Edalji killed on April 11 was full moon.” (It is worth mentioning here that there was no outrage at all within a week of that date.) “I’ve never been locked up yet, and I don’t think any of the others have, except the Captain, so I guess they’ll get off light.” I would draw attention in passing to the artistic touch of “ten minutes to three.” This is realism overdone, as no mutilator on a dark night could readily consult his watch nor care to remember the exact hour to a minute. But it corresponds closely to the remarkable power of imaginative detail — a rather rare gift — shown in the hoaxes of 1893-95. In the next letter, also to the police, the unknown refers to his previous communication, but is a good deal more truculent and abusive than before. “There will be merry times at Wyrley in November,” he says, “when they start on little girls, for they will do twenty wenches like the horses before next March. Don’t think you are likely to catch them cutting the beasts; they go too quiet, and lie low for hours, till your men have gone”… Mr. Edalji, him they said was locked up, is going to Brum on Sunday night to see the Captain, near Northfield, about how it’s to be carried on with so many detectives about, and I believe they are going to do some cows in the daytime instead of at night … I think they are going to kill beasts nearer here soon, and I know Cross Keys Farm and West Cannock Farm are the two first on the list… You bloated blackguard, I will shoot you with father’s gun through your thick head if you come in my way or go sneaking to any of my pals.” This letter was addressed, like the last, to: The Sergeant, Police Station, Hednesford, Staffordshire. bearing a Walsall post mark of July 10, 1903. Edalji is openly accused of the crimes in the letters, and yet the police put forward the theory that he himself wrote them, and founded upon the last sentence of them, which I have quoted, that second charge, which sounded so formidable in his indictment, viz., of threatening to murder Sergeant Robinson. A few days previously a second police officer, Mr. Rowley, of Bridgtown, had received another letter, evidently from the same hand. Here the detail as to the method of the crime is more realistic than ever, though no accusations against others are made. I quote this letter in extenso: “Sir — A party whose initials you’ll guess will be bringing a new hook home by the train from Walsall on Wednesday night, an he will have it in his special long pocket under his coat, an if you or your pals can get his coat pulled aside a bit you’ll get sight of it, as it’s an inch and half longer than the one he threw out of sight when he heard someone a slopin it after him this morning. He will come by that after five or six, or if he don’t come home tomorrow he is sure on Thursday, an you have made a mistake not keeping all the plain clothes men at hand. You sent them away too soon. Why, just think, he did it close where two of them were hiding only a few days gone by. But, sir, he has got eagle eyes, and his ears is as sharp as a razor, and he is as fleet of foot as a fox, and as noiseless, and he crawls on all fours up to the poor beasts, an fondles them a bit, and then he pulls the hook smart across ‘em, and out their entrails fly, before they guess they are hurt. You want 100 detectives to run him in red-handed, because he is so fly, and knows every nook and corner. You know who it is, and I can prove it; but until £100 reward is offered for a conviction, I shan’t split no more.” There is, it must be admitted, striking realism in dais account also, but a hook — unless it were a billhook or horticultural hook — could not under any circumstances have inflicted the injuries. It seems absurd enough that these letters incriminating himself in such violent terms should be attributed to young Edalji, but the climax is reached when a most offensive postcard, handed in at Edalji’s own business office, is also sworn to by the expert employed by the police as being in Edalji’s own writing. His vile effusion, which cannot be reproduced in full, accuses Edalji of guilty relations with a certain lady, ending up with the words, “Rather go back to your old game of writing anonymous letters and killing cows and writing on walls.” Now this postcard was posted at Wolverhampton upon Aug. 4, 1903. As luck would have it, Edalji and his sister had gone upon an excursion to Aberystwyth that day, and were absent from very early morning till late at night Here is the declaration of the station official upon the point: “On the night of 4th of August, 1903, and early morning of the 5th I was on duty at Rugely Town Station, and spoke to Mr. George Edalji and his sister, who were in the train on their return from Aberystwyth. William Bullock, Porter-Signalman, Rugeley Town Station.” The station-master at Wyrley has made a similar declaration. It is certain, then, that this postcard could not have been by him, even had the insulting contents not made the supposition absurd. And yet it is included in that list of anonymous letters which the police maintained, and the expert declared, to be in Edalji’s own handwriting. If this incident is not enough in itself to break down the whole case, so far as the authorship of the letters goes, then I ask, what in this world would be sufficient to demonstrate its absurdity? Before leaving this postcard, let me say that it was advanced for the prosecution that if a card were posted at certain country boxes to be found within two and a half miles of Wyrley they would not be cleared till evening, and so would have the Wolverhampton mark of next day. Thus the card might have been posted in one of these out-of-the-way boxes on the 3rd, and yet bear the mark of the 4th. This, however, will not do. The card has the Wolverhampton mark of the evening of the 4th, and was actually delivered in Birmingham on the morning of the 5th. Even granting that one day was Bank Holiday, you cannot stretch the dislocation of the postal service to the point that what was posted on the 3rd took two days to go twenty miles. Now, during these six months, while Edalji was receiving these scurrilous letters, and while the police were receiving others accusing the young lawyer, you will naturally ask why did he not take some steps himself to prove his innocence and to find out the writer? He did, as a matter of fact, everything in his power. He offered a reward of £25 in die public Press — a reward, according to the police theory, for his own apprehension. He showed the police the letters which he received, and he took a keen interest in the capture of the criminals, making the very sensible suggestion that bloodhounds should be used. It seems hardly conceivable that the prejudice of the police had risen to such a point that both these facts were alleged as suspicious circumstances against him, as though he were endeavouring to worm himself into their confidence, and so find out what measures they were taking for the capture of the offender. I am quite prepared to find that in these dialogues the quick-witted youth showed some impatience at their constant blunders, and that the result was to increase the very great malevolence with which they appear to have regarded him, ever since their chief declared, in 1895, “I shall not pretend to believe any protestations of ignorance which your son may make.” And now, having dealt with the letters of 1903, let me, before I proceed to the particular outrage for which Edalji was arrested and convicted, say a few words as to the personality of this unfortunate young man, who was, according to the police theory, an active member, if not the leading spirit, of a gang of village ruffians. Anyone more absurdly constructed to play the role could not be imagined. In the first place, he is a total abstainer, which in itself hardly seems to commend him to such a gang. He does not smoke. He is very shy and nervous. He is a most distinguished student, having won the highest legal prizes within his reach, and written, at his early age, a handbook of railway law. Finally, he is as blind as the proverbial bat, but the bat has the advantage of finding its way in the dark, which would be very difficult for him. To find a pony in a dark field, or, indeed, to find the field itself, unless it were easily approached, would be a hard task, while to avoid a lurking watcher would be absolutely impossible. I have myself practised as an oculist, but I can never remember correcting so high a degree of astigmatic myopia as that which afflicts Mr. Edalji. “Like all myopics, Mr. Edalji,” says an expert, “must find it at all times difficult to see clearly any objects more than a few inches off, and in dusk it would be practically impossible for him to find his way about any place with which he was not perfectly familiar.” Fearing lest it might be thought that he was feigning blindness, I asked Mr. Kenneth Scott, of Manchester-square, to paralyse the accommodation by atropine, and then to take the result by means which were independent of the patient. Here is his report: Right eye — 8.75 Drop Spher. — 1.75 Drop cylind axis 90°. Left eye — 8.25 Drop Spher. “I am prepared to testify as to the accuracy of the above under oath,” says Mr. Kenneth Scott. As to what such figures mean, I will bring it home to the uninitiated by saying that a glass made up to that prescription would cause the normal healthy eye to see the world as Edalji’s eyes always see it. I am prepared to have such a glass made up, and if any defender of the police will put it on at night, and will make his way over the route the accused is alleged to have taken inside of an hour, I will admit that what seems to me absolutely impossible could be done. I may add that this blindness is a permanent structural condition, the same in 1903 as in 1906. I appeal to the practising oculists of this country, and I ask whether there is one of them who would not admit that such a condition of the eyes would make such a performance practically impossible, and that the circumstance must add enormously to a defence which is already overwhelmingly strong. And yet this all-important point was never made at the trial. It is this studious youth who touches neither alcohol nor tobacco, and is so blind that he gropes his way in the dusk, who is the dangerous barbarian who scours the country at night, ripping up horses. Is it not perfectly clear, looking at his strange, swarthy face and bulging eyes, that it is not the village ruffian, but rather the unfortunate village scapegoat, who stands before you? I have brought the narrative down to the Aug. 17 outrage. At this period twenty constables and detectives had been brought into the district, and several, acting, I presume, upon orders from higher quarters, watched the vicarage at night. On Aug. 17 Edalji, following his own account, returned from his day’s work at Birmingham — he had started in practice there as a lawyer — and reached his home about 6.30. He transacted some business, put on a blue serge coat, and then walked down to the bootmaker’s in the village, where he arrived about 8.35, according to the independent evidence of John Hands, the tradesman in question. His supper would not be ready before 9.30, and until that hour he took a walk round, being seen by various people. His household depose to his return before supper-time, and their testimony is confirmed by the statement of Walter Whitehouse, who saw the accused enter the vicarage at 9.25. After supper Edalji retired to bed in the same room as his father, the pair having shared an apartment for seventeen years. The old vicar was a light sleeper, his son was within a few feet of him, the whole house was locked up, and the outside was watched by constables, who saw no one leave it. To show how close the inspection was, I may quote the words of Sergeant Robinson, who said, “I saw four men observing it when I was there … I could see the front door and side door. I should say no one could get out on the side I was watching without my seeing.” This was before the night of the outrage, but it is inconceivable that if there was so close a watch then, there was none on the 17th. By the police evidence there were no less than twenty men scattered about waiting for the offender. I may add at this point some surprise has been expressed that the vicar should sleep in the same room as his son with the door locked. They slept thus, and had done for many years, so that the daughter, whose health was precarious, might sleep with the mother, and the service of the house, there being only the one maid, should be minimised. Absurd emphasis has been placed by the police upon the door being locked at night I can only suppose that the innuendo is that the vicar locked the door to keep his son from roving. Do we not all know that it is the commonest thing for nervous people to lock their doors whether alone or not, and Mr. Edalji has been in the habit of doing so all his long life. I have evidence that Mr. Edalji always locked his door before he slept with his son, and that he has continued to lock his door after his son left him. If, then — to revert to the evidence — it is possible for a person in this world to establish an alibi, it was successfully established by Edalji that night from 9.30 onwards. Granting the perfectly absurd supposition that the old vicar connived at his son slipping out at night and ripping up cattle, you have still the outside police to deal with. On no possible supposition can George Edalji have gone out after 9.30. And yet upon that night a pony had been destroyed at the Great Wyrley Colliery. Sergeant Parsons gave evidence that he saw the pony, apparently all right, at eleven o’clock at night It was very dark, but he was not far off it. It was a wild night, with rain coining in squalls. The rain began about twelve, and cleared about dawn, being very heavy at times. On the 18th, at 6.20, a lad, named Henry Garrett, going to his work at the colliery, observed that the pony was injured. “It had a cut on the side,” he said. “The blood was trickling from the wound. It was dropping pretty quickly.” The alarm was at once given. Constables appeared upon the scene. By half-past eight Mr. Lewis, a veterinary surgeon, was on the spot. “The wound,” he deposed, “was quite fresh, and could not have been done further than six hours from the time he saw it.” The least learned of laymen might be sure that if the pony was standing bleeding freely at six it could not have been so all night, as the drain must have exhausted it. And here, on the top of this obvious consideration, is the opinion of the surgeon, that the injury was inflicted within six hours. Where George Edalji was during those six hours has already been shown beyond all possible question or dispute. So already the whole bottom has dropped out of the case; but, none the less, the indefatigable police went on with their pre-arranged campaign. That it was pre-arranged is evident, since it was not on account of evidence, but in search of evidence, that the constables raided the vicarage. The young lawyer had already started for his day’s work in Birmingham. The startled parents were ordered to produce all the young man’s clothing. The mother was asked for his dagger, but could produce nothing more formidable than a botany spud. A hunt was made for weapons, and a set of razors belonging to the vicar were seized. Some were said to be wet — a not uncommon condition for razors in the morning. Dark spots were perceived upon the back of one, but they proved upon chemical examination to be rust stains. Twelve men quartered the small garden, but nothing was found. The clothes, however, were a more serious matter. One coat was seized by the police and declared to be damp. This is vigorously denied by the vicar, who handled the coat before it was removed. Damp is, of course, a relative term, and all garments may give some feeling of dampness after a rainy night, when the whole atmosphere is humid; but if the condition had been caused by being out in the wild weather which prevailed that night, it is certain that the coat would have been not damp, but sopping wet The coat, however, was not one which Edalji used outside, and the evidence of Mr. Hands was called to show that he had not worn it the night before. It was an old house-coat, so stained and worn that it is not likely that an ambitious young professional man would, even in the lamplight, walk in the streets and show himself to his neighbours in such a garment But it was these very stains which naturally attracted the attention of the police. There were some whitish stains — surely these must be the saliva of the unfortunate animal. They were duly tested, and proved to be starch stains, probably from fish sauce or bread and milk. But there was something still more ominous upon this unhappy coat. There were, according to Inspector Campbell, “dark red or brown stains, right cuff much more stained than the left. There were other stains on each sleeve, further up, reddish brown or white. The coat was damp … There are other spots and stains upon it.” Now the police try to make two points here: that the coat was damp, and that there were stains which might have been the traces of the crime upon it. Each point is good in itself; but, unfortunately, they are incompatible and mutually destructive. If the coat were damp, and if those marks were blood-stains contracted during the night, then those stains were damp also, and the inspector had only to touch them and then to raise his crimson finger in the air to silence all criticism. Rut since he could not do so it is clear that the stains were not fresh. They fell twelve hours later into the capable hands of the police surgeon, and the sanguinary smears conjured up by tire evidence of the constable diminished with absurd swiftness until they became “two stains in the centre of the right cuff, each about the size of a threepenny bit” This was declared by Dr. Butter to be mammalian blood, He found no more blood at all. How these small stains came there it is difficult to trace — as difficult as to trace a stain which I see now upon the sleeve of my own house-jacket as I look down. A splash from the gravy of underdone meat might well produce it At any rate, it may most safely be said that the most adept operator who ever lived would not rip up a horse with a razor upon a dark night and have only two threepenny-bit spots of blood to show for it The idea is beyond argument. But now, having exhausted the white stains and the dark stains, we come to the most damning portion of the whole indictment though a careful consideration may change one’s view as to who it is who is damned by it. The police claimed that they discovered horse-hairs upon the coat. “On the sleeve,” says Inspector Campbell, “I found brownish hairs, which look like horse-hairs, There are some on now.” Now, let us listen to the very clear statement of the vicar upon the subject I transcribe it in full: “On Aug. 18, 1903, they called at the vicarage at about eight o’clock in the morning, and in compliance with their request Mrs. Edalji showed them a number of garments belonging to her son, George Edalji. As soon as they saw the old coat they began to examine it, and Inspector Campbell put his finger upon one place and said that there was a hair there. Mrs. Edalji told him that it was not a hair, but a thread, and Miss Edalji, who was present then, remarked that it looked like a ‘roving.’ This was all that Inspector Campbell had said to them about the hair before I came down. When I saw him he told me that he had found horse-hairs upon the coat. The coat was then spread out upon the desk in the study. I asked him to point out the place where the hairs were to be seen. He pointed out a lower part of the coat, and said, There’s a horse-hair there.’ I examined the place and said, There is no hair here at all.’ Some further conversation followed, and then suddenly he put his finger upon another place on the coat nearer to where I was standing, and, drawing two straight lines with his finger, he said, ‘Look here, Mr. Edalji, there’s horse-hair here.’ I looked at the place for a moment, and in order to have more light upon it, I took up the coat with both my hands and drew nearer to the window, and after carefully examining it I said to him, ‘There is, to be sure, no hair here, it is a clear surface.’ He then said that he wanted to take the coat with him, and I said, ‘You can take the coat. I am satisfied there is no horse-hair upon it.’ “Now I have said it over and over again, and I say it here once more, that there was absolutely no horse-hair upon the coat. If there had been any I could not have failed to see it, and both Mrs. Edalji and Miss Edalji looked at the coat at the same time, and saw no hair of any sort upon it.” Incidentally it may be mentioned in connection with this statement, in which Miss Edalji entirely concurs, that we have the evidence of Miss Foxley, formerly of Newnham College, and then head mistress of the High School, that Miss Edalji was an exceedingly competent scientific observer. She adds, “Wilful misstatement on her part is as impossible in itself as it is inconsistent with her high principles and frank, straightforward character.” Now, here is a clear conflict of evidence between two groups of interested people — the constables on the one hand, eager to build up their case; the household on the other, eager to confute this terrible accusation. Let us suppose the two statements balance each other. But is it not evident that there was only one course open for the police now to establish their point and that if they did not avail themselves of it they put themselves out of court? Their obvious course was then and there to send for a referee — die police doctor, or any other doctor — and picking samples of the hair from the coat to have sealed diem in an envelope, calling the new-comer to witness when and where they had been obtained. Such a proceeding must silence all doubt But they did nothing of the kind. What they actually did was to carry off the coat upon which three reputable witnesses have sworn there were no hairs. The coat then disappears from view for twelve hours. In the meantime the pony has been put out of its pain, and a portion of its hide was cut off with the hairs attached, and also secured by the police. The coat had been taken at eight in t he morning. It was seen by Dr. Butter, the police surgeon, at nine in the evening. At that hour Dr. Butter picked twenty-nine undoubted obvious horse-hairs from its surface. The prosecution have here to break their way through two strong lines of defence, each within the other. On the one hand, if Edalji had done the crime the evening before, it was his blue serge coat, and not his house-coat, that he wore, as is shown by the independent evidence of Mr. Hands. In die second line of defence is the oath of the family that there were no hairs in the morning, which is strengthened by the failure of the police to demonstrate there and then a fact which could have been so easily and completely demonstrated. But now we are faced by the undoubted fact that the hairs were there, upon the cuffs and the left breast, by evening. Why was the coat not taken straight to the surgeon? Why was a piece of the animal’s hide sent for before the coat was shown to Dr. Butter? One need not fly to extreme conclusions. It is to be remembered that the mere carrying of hide and coat together may have caused the transference of hairs, or that the officers may themselves have gathered hairs on their clothes while examining the pony, and so unconsciously transferred them to the coat. But the fact that the hairs were found just on the cuffs and breast will still recur in the mind. It would be sad indeed to commit one injustice while trying to correct another, but when the inevitable inquiry comes this incident must form a salient point of it There is one test which occurs to one’s mind. Did the hairs all correspond with the type, colour, and texture of the hairs on the sample of hide? If they did, then they were beyond all question conveyed from that sample to the coat. The cut was down the belly, and the portion taken off was from the side of the cut. The under hair of a horse differs greatly from the longer, darker, harsher hair of the sides. A miscreant leaning against a horse would get the side hairs. If all the hairs on the coat were short belly hairs, then there is a suggestive fact for the inquiry. Dr. Butter must have compared their appearance. Since writing the above I have been able to get the words of Dr. Butter’s evidence. They are quoted: “Numerous hairs on the jacket, which were similar in colour, length, and structure to those on the piece of skin cut from the horse.” In that case I say, confidently — and all reflection must confirm it — that these hairs could not possibly be from the general body of the pony, but must have been transferred, no doubt unconsciously, from that particular piece of skin. With all desire to be charitable, the incident leaves a most unpleasant impression upon the mind. If one could for a moment conceive oneself performing this barbarity, one would not expect to find hairs upon one’s coat. There is no necessary connection at all. Anxious to avoid the gush of blood, one would imagine that one would hold off the animal with the flat of one hand and attack it with the other. To lean one’s coat against its side would be to bring one’s trousers and boots in danger of being soaked in blood. So much for the saliva stains, the blood stains, and the hairs. There remain the questions of the trousers and the boots. The trousers were said by the police to be damp, and stained with dark mud round the bottom. The boots were very wet The boots were the same ones which Edalji had admittedly used during his sixty-minutes’ walk upon the evening before. It was fine in the evening, but there had been heavy rain during the day, and puddles everywhere. Of course his boots were wet The trousers were not a pair used the evening before, according to the family. No attempt was made to show blood marks on boots or trousers, though Mr. Sewell, a well-known veterinary surgeon, deposed afterwards that in making such an incision a skilled operator would wear an apron to prevent his clothes from being soaked. It is an interesting point brought out by the evidence of some of the witnesses of the prosecution, that the mud at the place of outrage was yellow-red, a mixture of clay and sand, quite distinct from the road mud, which the police claim to have seen upon the trousers. And now we come to the farce of the footprints. The outrage had occurred just outside a large colliery, and hundreds of miners going to their work had swarmed along every approach, in order to see the pony. The soft, wet soil was trampled up by diem from six o’clock onwards; yet on four o’clock of that afternoon, eight hours after the seizure of the boots, we have Inspector Campbell endeavouring to trace a similarity in tracks. The particular boot was worn at the heel, a fairly common condition, and some tracks among the multitude were down at the heel, and why should not the one be caused by the other? No cast was taken of the tracks. They were not photographed. They were not cut out for purpose of expert comparison. So little were they valued by Inspector Campbell that he did not even mention them to the magistrates on the 19th. But in retrospect they grew more valuable, and they bulked large at the trial. Now, once again, the police are trying to make a point which in itself would help them, but which is incompatible with their other points. Their original theory was that the crime was done before 9.30. There was heavy rain on and off all night It is perfectly clear that any well-marked footsteps must have been left after the rain stopped, or when it had nearly stopped. Even granting that the earth was soft enough, as it was, to take footprints before then, this heavy rain would blur them to a point that would make identification by a worn-down heel absurd. What becomes then of all this elaborate business of the footmarks? Every point in this case simply crumbles to pieces as you touch it. How formidable it all sounds — wet razor, blood on razor, blood and saliva and hair on coat, wet boots, footmark corresponding to boot — and yet how absolutely futile it all is when examined. There is not one single item which will bear serious criticism. Let us pass, however, from these material clues to those more subtle ones which the bearing or remarks of the youth may have furnished. These will bear examination even less than the others. As he waited upon the platform for the 7.30 train an ex-constable, now an innkeeper, named Markhew, came up to him and asked him to stay, as Inspector Campbell wished to see him. At the same moment someone announced that a fresh outrage had been committed, upon which Markhew says that Edalji turned away and smiled. Now, it is perfectly clear that a guilty man would have been much alarmed by the news that the police wished to see him, and that he would have done anything but smile on hearing of the outrage. Edalji’s account is that Markhew said, “Can’t you give yourself a holiday for one day?” on which Edalji smiled. Which is the more probable version I leave to the reader. The incident was referred to by the prosecuting counsel as “the prisoner’s extraordinary conduct at the station.” He went to his office in Birmingham, and there, later in the day, he was arrested by the police. On the way to the station, after his arrest, this unfortunate youth made another deadly remark: “I am not surprised at this. I have been expecting it for some time.” It is not a very natural remark for a guilty man to make, if you come to think of it; but it is an extremely probable one from a man who believes that the police have a down on him, and who is aware that he has been accused by name in malignant anonymous letters. What else would he have said? Next day and the following Monday he was before the magistrates, where the police evidence, as already set forth, was given. The magisterial proceedings lasted till Sept 4, off and on, when a prima facie case was made out and the prisoner committed to the Staffordshire Quarter Sessions. How far a case of this importance should have been referred to any less tribunal than the assizes I leave to legal opinion. Again the criminal made a remark which rose up in judgment against him. “I won’t have bail,” said he to Police-constable Meredith, “and when the next horse is killed it will not be by me.” In commenting upon this, Mr. Disturnal, the prosecuting counsel, said, “In refusing bail the prisoner made use of a very significant observation, and it went to suggest that the prisoner knew perfectly well what he was about when he refused bail.” The inference here is that it was pre-arranged that a friend of Edalji’s would do a fresh crime, in order to clear him. Was ever a more unfair utterance! It was, “Heads I win, tails you lose!” If no crimes occur, then it is clear we have the villain under lock and key. If crimes do occur, then it is clear that he is deep in conspiracy with others. As a matter of fact both Edalji’s decision to remain in gaol and his remark were the most proper and natural things in the world. He believed that there was a strong conspiracy against him. In the face of the letters he had even’ reason to believe so. So long as he was in his cell he was safe, he thought from this conspiracy. Perhaps another crime would be committed, and in that case, he thought in the innocence of his heart that it would clear him. In his wildest dreams he could never have imagined that such a crime would be fitted in as a link in the chain against him. A crime was committed, and it occurred upon Sept 21, between Edalji’s committal and trial, whilst he lay in Stafford Gaol. The facts are these: Ham’ Green was the nineteen-year-old son of a farmer who lived somewhere between the vicarage and the scene of the outrage for which Edalji was convicted. He and Edalji knew each other slightly, as neighbours in the country must do, but how slight was their acquaintance may be shown by the fact that when, in the course of my inquiry, I asked Edalji what Green’s writing was like, he had to admit that he had never seen it. Consider the utter want of common ground between the two men, the purblind, studious teetotal young lawyer of twenty-seven, and the young Yeomanry trooper of nineteen, one of a set of boisterous young fellows, who made a centre of mirth and also of mischief at each annual training. Edalji entered no public-house, and was at work from early morning to late at night. Where was there room for that blood-brotherhood which would make the one man risk any danger and sacrifice his own horse for the sake of the other? Green’s charger was found disembowelled. It was not a very valuable animal. In one estimate it is placed at five pounds. Whether it was insured or not there is a conflict of evidence. For days there was scare and conjecture. Then, at the end of that time, it was known that Green had signed a confession which admitted that he had himself killed his own horse. That confession undoubtedly exists, but Green, having had a week or two to think things over, and having in the meantime got a ticket to South Africa, suddenly went back on his own confession, and declared, with much circumstantiality of detail, that he had not done it and that the confession had been bullied out of him by the police. One or other statement of Green’s must be a falsehood, and I have sufficient reason myself, in the shape of evidence which has been set before me, to form a very clear opinion what the actual facts of the case were. When a final clearing of the case arrives, and there is a renewed inquiry on the basis that Edalji is innocent, and that the actual perpetrators have never been punished, there are many facts which maybe laid before the authority who conducts it Meanwhile the task which lies immediately before me is not to show who did do the crime — though that I think, is by no means an insuperable problem — but that Edalji did not and could not have done them. I will leave young Green there, with his two contradictory statements, and I will confine myself to his relation with the case, whichever of the statements is true. And, first of all, here are the police who claim to hold his written confession. Then why did they not prosecute? It will not do to say that it is not a crime to kill your own horse. It is not a crime to shoot your own horse from humane motives, but it is at all times a crime, as the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals would very quickly show, to disembowel a horse on a dark night, be it fifty times your own. Here is an outrage of the same sort which has convulsed the countryside for so many months, it is brought home by his own confession to the offender, and yet the police refuse to prosecute, and connive at the man’s flight from the country. But why? If it was not that the prosecution of Green would bring out facts which would interfere with the successful prosecution of Edalji, then, again, I ask, why? Far be it from me to be unjust to the police, but again it is their own really extraordinary behaviour which drives one to seek for hypotheses. The Home Office says that all inquiry has been made in this case, and that everything has been investigated and the matter closed. That is the official answer I received only a fortnight ago. Then can the Home Office give any good reason why Green was not prosecuted? The point is a very vital one. Green was present at Edalji’s trial, was not called, and left afterwards for South Africa. He had been subpoenaed by the police, and that, no doubt, was what prevented the defence from calling him. Rut had they done so, and had he spoken in public as he has spoken in private, there would have been an end of all possibility, according to my information, of the great miscarriage which ensued. It may be noted before leaving this extraordinary incident that the reason given by Green in his confession was that the horse had to be killed, having been injured in the Yeomanry training, but nowhere has he ever said a word to suggest that he was acting in collusion with George Edalji. And now at last we come to the trial. Here, as at every point of this extraordinary case, there are irregularities which will be more fitly dealt with by a lawyer. Suffice it that though the case was of such importance that it is generally thought that it should not have been at Quarter Sessions at all, it was at the lesser of the courts which make up that tribunal that it was at last tried. In Court A a skilled lawyer presided. Sir Reginald Hardy, who conducted Court B, had no legal training. I have not a word to say against his desire to be impartial and fair, but here was a young man, accused of one of a series of crimes for which the whole county was longing to find someone who might be made an example of The jury would naturally have the same feelings as their fellow-citizens. Hence it was peculiarly necessary to have a cold legal mind to cool their ardour and keep diem on firm ground of fact, far from prejudice and emotion. Yet it was in the court of the layman that the case was tried. The ground over which the prosecution advanced is already familiar to the reader. We have the clothes which have now become “wet”. They were merely “damp” in the previous inquiry, and we have the word of the vicar that this dampness was imperceptible to him, coupled with the fact that any bloodstains would then have been liquid. We have the down-at-heel boot, which was fitted into impressions which must have been made after rain, whereas the whole police theory was that the crime was committed before the rain. We have the bloodstains which sank from smears into two threepenny-bit patches, and we have the hairs which made their appearance thirteen hours after the coat had been in the hands of the police, and after it had been associated with the strip of horse’s hide. Then came the letters. There was a strong probability that whoever wrote the letters knew something of the crimes. What matter that the letters actually accused Edalji himself and vilified him in all sorts of ways? What matter that one villainous postcard in the same writing as the others was posted at Wolverhampton when he was at Aberystwyth? What matter that in the original series of anonymous letters the writer had said, “Do you think we cannot imitate your kid’s writing?” None of these things weighed as compared with the expression of opinion by an expert that the letters were in George Edalji’s own writing. As the unfortunate prisoner listened to such an opinion he must have felt that he was in some nightmare dream. And who was the expert who expressed these views which weighed so heavily with the jury? It was Mr. Thomas Gurrin. And what is the record of Mr. Thomas Gurrin? His nemesis was soon to come. Within a year he had to present himself before the Beck Committee, and admit the terrible fact that through his evidence an innocent man had suffered prolonged incarceration. Does this fact alone not convince my readers that an entire reconsideration of the Edalji case is a most pressing public duty? There is absolutely the whole evidence — the coat-boot- razor business, the letter business, the so-called incriminating expressions which I have already analysed, and the one fact, which I admit did really deserve consideration, that a group of schoolboys with whom once a month young Edalji may have travelled were known also to the writer of the letters. That is all. I have shown what each link is worth. And on that evidence a young gentleman, distinguished already in an honourable profession, was torn from his family, suffered all the indignities of a convict, was immured for three of the best years of his life, was struck from the roll on which with such industry and self-denial he had written his name, and had every torture made ten-fold more bitter by the thought of the vicar at home, of his mother and of his sister, so peculiarly sensitive, from their position in the church, to the scoff and the derision of those around them. It is a tale which makes a man hot with indignation as he reads it One word as to the evidence of the family, upon which so much depends. It has been asserted that it was given in a peculiar way, which shook the confidence of the jury. I have had some experience of the Edaljis, and I can say with confidence that what seemed peculiar to the jury arose from extreme anxiety to speak the absolute, exact truth. An experienced barrister who knew them well remarked to me that they were the most precisely truthful people he had ever met—”bad witnesses,” he added, “as they are so conscientious that they lay undue stress upon any point of doubt” It must be admitted that the defence was not as strong as it might have been made, which does not seem to have been due to any shortcomings of the counsel so much as to a deficiency in the supply of information. The fact is that the consciousness of innocence was in this case a danger, as it caused some slackness in guarding every point So far as I can find, the whole story of the early persecutions of 1888 and of 1893-5 was not gone into, nor was their probable connection with that of 1903 pointed out The blindness of Edalji, a most vital fact was not supported by an array of evidence; indeed, I think that it was hardly mentioned at all. At all points one finds things which might have been better, but even granting that one cannot but feel the amazement which Sir George Lewis has voiced, when the jury brought in “Guilty,” and Sir Reginald Hardy sentenced the prisoner to seven years. Now, once again, let me state the double dilemma of the police, before I leave this portion of my statement Either Edalji did the crime before ten o’clock that night or after ten o’clock that night. The latter case must be laughed out of a commonsense court by the fact that his father, the vicar, spent the night within a few feet of him, that the small vicarage was bolted and barred, no one being heard to leave it and that the police watchers outside saw no one leave it If that does not establish an alibi, what could? On the other hand, supposing that he did it before ten, or rather before 9.30, the time of his return home. You have to face the supposition that after returning from a long day’s work in Birmingham he sallied out in a coat which he was only known to wear in the house, performed a commonplace mission at the boot-shop in the village, then, blind as he was, hurried off for three-quarters of a mile, through difficult tortuous ways, with fences to climb and railway fines to cross (I can answer for it, having myself trod every foot of it), to commit a ghastly and meaningless crime, entirely foreign to his studious and abstinent nature; that he then hurried back another three-quarters of a mile to the vicarage, arrived so composed and tidy as to attract no attention, and sat down quietly to the family supper, the whole expedition from first to last being under an hour. The mere statement of this alternative supposition seems grotesque enough, but on the top of the gross, inherent improbability you are up against the hard facts that the pony was bleeding freely in the morning, and could not have so bled all night, that the veterinary surgeon deposed that the wound could not possibly be more than six hours old, no other veterinary surgeon being called to contradict this statement, and that the footprints on which the police relied were worthless unless left after the rain, which began at twelve. Add to this that the pony was seen standing apparently all right by the police themselves at eleven o’clock, and the case then seems to me to be overpoweringly convincing. Take whichever supposition you like, and I say that it is demonstrably false, and an insult to commonsense, to suppose that George Edalji committed the crime for which, through the action of the Staffordshire police, the error of an expert, and the gross stupidity of a jury, he has been made to suffer so cruelly. I do not know that there is much to add, save a bare recital of the events which have occurred since then. After Edalji’s conviction the outrages continued unabated, and the epidemic of anonymous letters raged as ever. The November outrage upon Mr. Stanley’s horses was never traced, but there was some good local information as to the author of that crime, and a widespread conviction in the district, which may have been utterly unjust that the police were not too anxious to push the matter, as any conviction would certainly disturb the one which they had already obtained. This incident also, will furnish some evidence for the coming inquiry. Finally, in March, 1904, a man, named Farrington, was convicted for injuring some sheep. No attempt has ever been made to trace any connection between this man and Edalji. In the Green case not only was there no attempt to prove complicity between Green and Edalji, but I have evidence to show that the police had a most positive statement from Green that he had nothing to do with Edalji, obtained under circumstances which make it perfectly convincing. And yet, in face of this fact, Mr. Disturnal, the mouthpiece of the police at the trial, was permitted to say, referring to this outrage: “The letters which would be read would show that the writer of them was not acting alone, but in conjunction with some other people, and he put it to the jury, what was more likely than that, if there was a gang operating in the way suggested, one of its members would commit a similar outrage in order to create evidence for the defence?” Counsel, no doubt, spoke according to his instructions; but what are we to think of those from whom such instructions issued, since they had the clearest proof that there was no connection between Green and Edalji? Such incidents shake one’s confidence in British justice to the very foundations, for it is clear that the jury, already prejudiced by the nature of the crimes, were hoodwinked into giving their conviction. A few words as to the sequel. The friends of the prisoner, organised and headed by Mr. R. D. Yelverton (late Chief Justice of the Bahamas), to whose long, ceaseless, and unselfish exertions Edalji will owe so much when the hour of triumph comes, drew up a memorial to the Home Secretary, setting forth some of the facts as here recorded. This petition for reconsideration was signed by ten thousand people, including hundreds of lawyers and many KC.’s, and was reinforced by the strongest letters testifying to Edalji’s character from men who must have known him intimately, including Mr. Denning, his schoolmaster; Mr. Ludlow, the solicitor with whom he was for five years articled; the Honorary Secretary’ and Reader of the Birmingham Law Society, and many others. Now every man of the world will admit that the schoolmaster’s testimony is of very great importance, for any traits of cruelty will show themselves most clearly at that age. This is what Mr. Denning says: “During the five years your son George was here I have never known him commit any acts of cruelty or unkindness. I have always found him a thoroughly upright and well-principled youth, in whom I could place every confidence.” Grier, his school-mate, writes: “He was several years older than myself, but always treated me with great kindness. I never knew him cruel to any animal, and from what I knew of him then — for I came to know him well — I should say he was quite incapable of any act of cruelty.” How foolish the loose gossip and surmise of Stafford seem in the face of page after page of testimonials such as these. The memorial had no effect, and some inquiry should certainly be made as to how its fate was determined. It would be indeed a vicious circle if a police prosecution, when doubted, is referred back again to the police for report. I cannot imagine anything more absurd and unjust in an Oriental despotism than this. And yet any superficial independent investigation, or even a careful perusal of the memorial, must have convinced any reasonable human being. The friends of Edalji, headed by Mr. Yelverton, naturally demanded to see the dossier at the Home Office, but, as in the Beck case, the seekers after justice were denied access to the very documents which they needed in order to prove their case and confute their opponents. I have said it was as in the Beck case. I might well have gone to a more classic example, for in all its details this seems to me to form a kind of squalid Dreyfus case. The parallel is extraordinarily close. You have a Parsee, instead of a Jew, with a young and promising career blighted, in each case the degradation from a profession and the campaign for redress and restoration, in each case questions of forgery and handwriting arise, with Esterhazy in the one, and the anonymous writer in the other. Finally, I regret to say that in the one case you have a clique of French officials going from excess to excess in order to cover an initial mistake, and that in the other you have the Staffordshire police acting in the way I have described. And that brings me to what is the most painful part of my statement, and the one which I would be most glad to shirk were it possible for me to do so. No account of the case is complete which does not deal with the attitude taken up by Captain Anson, Chief Constable of Staffordshire, against this unhappy young man. It must, I suppose, have taken its root in those far-off days from 1892 to 1895, when Edalji was little more than a boy, and when Sergeant Upton, for reasons which make a tale by themselves, sent reports against him to his superior at Stafford. It was at that early date that Captain Anson delivered those two memorable dicta.- “You may tell your son at once that I will not believe any profession of ignorance,” and “I will endeavour to get the offender a dose of penal servitude.” Now, I have no doubt Captain Anson was quite honest in his dislike, and unconscious of his own prejudice. It would be folly to think otherwise. But men in his position have no right to yield to such feelings. They are too powerful, others are too weak, and the consequences are too terrible. As I trace the course of events this dislike of their chief s filtered down until it came to imbue the whole force, and when they had George Edalji they did not give him the most elementary justice, as is shown by the fact that they did not prosecute Green at a time when his prosecution would have endangered the case against Edalji. I do not know what subsequent reports prevented justice from being done at the Home Office — (there lies the wickedness of the concealed dossier) — but this I do know, that, instead of leaving the fallen man alone, every possible effort was made after the conviction to blacken his character, and that of his father, so as to frighten off anyone who might be inclined to investigate his case. When Mr. Yelverton first took it up, he had a letter over Captain Anson’s own signature, saying, under date Nov. 8, 1903: “It is right to tell you that you will find it a simple waste of time to attempt to prove that George Edalji could not, owing to his position and alleged good character, have been guilty of writing offensive and abominable letters. His father is as well aware as I am of his proclivities in the direction of anonymous writing, and several other people have personal knowledge on the same subject.” Now, both Edalji and his father declare on oath that the former never wrote an anonymous letter in his life, and on being applied to by Mr. Yelverton for the names of the “several other people” no answer was received. Consider that this letter was written immediately after the conviction, and that it was intended to nip in the bud the movement in the direction of mercy. It is certainly a little like kicking a man when he is down. Since I took up the case I have myself had a considerable correspondence with Captain Anson. I find myself placed in a difficult position as regards these letters, for while the first was marked “Confidential,” the others have no reserve. One naturally supposes that when a public official writes upon a public matter to a perfect stranger, the contents are for the public. No doubt one might also add, that when an English gentleman makes most damaging assertions about other people he is prepared to confront these people, and to make good his words. Yet the letters are so courteous to me personally that it makes it exceedingly difficult for me to use them for the purpose of illustrating my thesis — viz., the strong opinion which Captain Anson had formed against the Edalji family. One curious example of this is that during fifteen years that the vicarage has been a centre of debate, the chief constable has never once visited the spot or taken counsel personally with the inmates. For three years George Edalji endured the privations of Lewes and of Portland. At the end of that time the indefatigable Mr. Yelverton woke the case up again, and Truth had an excellent series of articles demonstrating the impossibility of the man’s guilt Then the case took a new turn, as irregular and illogical as those which had preceded it At the end of his third year, out of seven, the young man, though in good health, was suddenly released without a pardon. Evidently the authorities were shaken, and compromised with their consciences in this fashion. But this cannot be final. The man is guilty, or he is not If he is he deserves every day of his seven years. If he is not then we must have apology, pardon, and restitution. There can obviously be no middle ground between these extremes. And what else is needed besides this tardy justice to George Edalji? I should say that several points suggest themselves for the consideration of any small committee. One is the reorganisation of the Staffordshire Constabulary from end to end; a second is an inquiry into any irregularity of procedure at Quarter Sessions; the third and most important is a stringent inquiry as to who is the responsible man at the Home Office, and what is the punishment for his delinquency, when in this case, as in that of Beck, justice has to wait for years upon the threshold, and none will raise the latch. Until each and all of these questions is settled a dark stain will remain upon the administrative annals of this country. I have every sympathy for those who deprecate public agitations of this kind on the ground that they weaken the power of the forces which make for law and order, by shaking the confidence of the public. No doubt they do so. But every effort has been made in this case to avoid this deplorable necessity. Repeated applications for justice under both Administrations have met with the usual official commonplaces, or have been referred back to those who are obviously interested parties. Amid the complexity of life and the limitations of intelligence any man may do an injustice, but how is it possible to go on again and again reiterating the same one? If the continuation of the outrages, the continuation of the anonymous letters, the discredit cast upon Gurrin as an expert, the confession of a culprit that he had done a similar outrage, and finally the exposition of Edalji’s blindness, do not present new fact to modify a jury’s conclusion, what possible new fact would do so? But the door is shut in our faces. Now we turn to the last tribunal of all, a tribunal which never errs when the facts are fairly laid before them, and we ask the public of Great Britain whether this tiling is to go on. Arthur Conan Doyle Undershaw, Hindhead January, 1907.
CASE OF GEORGE EDALJI: LETTER FROM SIR A. CONAN DOYLE FACSIMILE DOCUMENTS — No. 1 Some six weeks ago a correspondent in the Midlands wrote to me to the effect that the police, when driven out of the position that George Edalji committed the crime for which he was sentenced to seven years’ penal servitude, would endeavour to defend a second line — namely, that he had written the anonymous letters, and was therefore responsible for the mistake to which he fell a victim. The insight or the information of the writer has seemed to be correct, and this is, indeed, the defence which has been set up, with such success that it has prevented the injured man from receiving that compensation which is his due. In this article I ask your permission to examine this contention, and I hope I shall satisfy your readers, or enable them to satisfy themselves, that the supposition is against all reason or probability, and that a fresh injustice and scandal will arise if it should retard the fullest possible amends being made to this most shamefully-treated man. During an investigation of this case, which has now extended over five months, I have examined a very large number of documents, and tested a long series of real and alleged facts. During all that time I have kept my mind open, but I can unreservedly say that in the whole research I have never come across any considerations which would make it, I will not say probable, but in any way credible, that George Edalji had anything to do, either directly or indirectly, with the outrages or with the anonymous letters. As the latter question seems to be at the bottom of the ungenerous decision not to give Edalji compensation, I will, with your permission, place some of the documents before your readers, so that they may form their own opinion as to how far the contention that Edalji wrote them can be sustained. First, I will take the mere question of the handwriting of the letters, and secondly, I will take the internal evidence of their contents. The exhibits, which I will call 1 and 2, are specimens of Edalji’s ordinary writing, which is remarkably consistent in the many samples which I have observed. He says, and 1 believe with truth, that he has little power of varying his script. No proof has ever been adduced that he has such power. The specimens here given may be open to the objection that they arc four years later than the time of the outrages, but Edalji was twenty-seven years of age then, and is now thirty-one, and no marked development of writing is likely to occur in the interval. I give two separate specimens that the consistency of their peculiarities may be observed: I now, for purposes of comparison, give two samples of those letters in 1903 which Mr. Gurrin, the expert who was at fault in the Reck case, declared to be, to the best of his belief, in the writing of George Edalji. To the ruin of the young man he persuaded the jury to adopt his view, and now the committee chosen by the Home Office has endorsed the opinion of the jury, with the result that compensation has been withheld. Exhibits 3 and 4 give specimens of the anonymous letters of 1903. Now, on comparing the two specimens of Edalji with the two anonymous letters, the first general observation, before going into any details, is that the former is the writing of an educated man, and that the latter is certainly not so. A forger may imitate certain details in writing. A curious fashion of forming a letter is within the powers of even a clumsy imitator. Rut character is more difficult, and more subtle. Compare the real Edalji writing with the addressed envelope of three, or with the postscript of four, and ask yourself whether they do not belong to an entirely different class. Apart from the question of educated as against uneducated writing, the most superficial observer of character, as expressed in writing, would say that one and two were open and free, while three and four were cramped and mean. Yet Mr. Gurrin, the jury, and the Home Office Committee contend that they are the same, and a man’s career has been ruined on the resemblance. Now let us examine the details. There are one or two points of resemblance which are sufficiently close to make me believe that it is not entirely coincidence, and that there may have been some conscious, though very imperfect imitation, of Edalji’s writing. One of these is a very small twirl made occasionally in finishing a letter. It is visible in the c in the fourth line from the bottom of exhibit two, and in the c of the word “clothes” fifth line from the bottom of three. A close inspection might detect it in several letters of both exhibits, and I am told that it was more common in Edalji’s writing of that date. Another resemblance is the long upward stroke in beginning such words as “kindly” in two, and “known” four lines from the bottom of three. This formation, however, is not unusual. Lastly, there is the r, which might occasionally almost be an e, as in “return” in two, and in “sharp” in three. These peculiarities, especially the last, are so marked that they are, one would imagine, the first points which anyone disguising his hand would suppress, and anyone imitating would reproduce. But now consider the points of difference. See the peculiar huddling of the letters together appearing in such words as “brought,” “sharper,” and “would,” in 3, or in “don’t” “write,” and “known,” in 4. Where is there any trace of this in Edalji’s own writing ? Compare the rounded “g” of the whether they do not belong to an entirely different class. Apart from the question of educated as against uneducated writing, the most superficial observer of character, as expressed in writing, would say that one and two were open and free, while three and four were cramped and mean. Yet Mr. Gurrin, the jury, and the Home Office Committee contend that they are the same, and a man’s career has been ruined on the resemblance. Now let us examine the details. There are one or two points of resemblance which are sufficiently close to make me believe that it is not entirely coincidence, and that there may have been some conscious, though very imperfect imitation, of Edalji’s writing. One of these is a very small twirl made occasionally in finishing a letter. It is visible in the c in the fourth line from the bottom of exhibit two, and in the c of the word “clothes” fifth line from the bottom of three. A close inspection might detect it in several letters of both exhibits, and I am told that it was more common in Edalji’s writing of that date. Another resemblance is the long upward stroke in beginning such words as “kindly” in two, and “known” four lines from the bottom of three. This formation, however, is not unusual. Lastly, there is the r, which might occasionally almost be an e, as in “return” in two, and in “sharp” in three. These peculiarities, especially the last, are so marked that they are, one would imagine, the first points which anyone disguising his hand would suppress, and anyone imitating would reproduce. But now consider the points of difference. See the peculiar huddling of the letters together appearing in such words as “brought,” “sharper,” and “would,” in 3, or in “don’t,” “write,” and “known,” in 4. Where is there any trace of this in Edalji’s own writing ? Compare the rounded “g” of the anonymous letters with the straight “g” of Edalji. Compare the filled “r” of Edalji as seen in “Dear Sir Arthur,” with the final “r” of “matter” and “your” in 3, or of “paper” and “nor” in the postscript of 4. Finally, take a very delicate test, beyond the power of observation of a clumsy forger. If you take the letter “u” in Edalji’s letters you will find that he has a very curious and consistent habit of dropping the second curve of the “u” to a lower level than the first one. There is hardly an exception. But the anonymous writer, in three cases out of four, has the second curve as high as, or higher than, the first. Can any impartial and fair-minded man, examining these exhibits, declare that there is such an undoubted resemblance that a man’s career might be staked upon it, or that the public is exonerated by it from making reparation for an admitted wrong ? So much for the actual writing. The matter becomes perfectly grotesque when we examine the internal evidence of the letters. In the first place, they are written for the evident purpose of exciting the suspicions of the police against two persons — the one being Edalji himself, and the other being young Greatorex, whose name was forged at the end of them. Why should Edalji, an eminently sane young lawyer, with a promising career before him, write to the police accusing himself of a crime of which he was really innocent? The committee speak of a spirit of impish mischief. What evidence of such a spirit has ever been shown in the life of this shy, retiring man? Such an action would appear to me to be inconsistent with sanity, and yet Edalji has always been eminently sane. What possible evidence is there to support so incredible a supposition? And suppose such a thing were true, how then would the introduction of young Greatorex be explained? Young Greatorex and Edalji were practically strangers. They had at most met without conversation when chance threw ‘them into the same railway carriage on the Walsall line. There was no connection between them, no cause of quarrel, no possible reason why Edalji should involve Greatorex in a terrible suspicion, and then voluntarily come to share his danger. The whole supposition is monstrous. But it all becomes clear when we regard the letters as the work of a third person, who was the enemy both of Edalji and of Greatorex, and who hoped by this device to bring down both his birds with one stone. That Edalji had enemies, who had brought ingenious mystifications in letter writing to a fine point is shown by the persecution to which he and his family were subjected from 1892 to 1895. One has only to show that one of those persecutors had also reason to wish evil to young Greatorex, and then it needs no fancifed theories of people writing scurrilous letters about themselves to make the whole situation perfectly credible and clear. A priori, then, the likelihood of the letters being by Edalji is so slight that nothing but the most marked resemblance in the script could for a moment justify such a supposition. How far such an overpowering resemblance exists the reader can now judge for himself. But apart from the inherent improbability of such a theory, look at all the other points which should have laughed it out of court. Edalji was a well-educated young man, brought up in a clerical atmosphere, with no record of coarse speech or evil life. From his school days at Rugeley, where his headmaster gave him the highest character, until the time when he won the best prizes within his reach at the Legal College of Birmingham, there is nothing against his conduct or his language. Yet these letters are written by a foul-mouthed boor, a blackguard who has a smattering of education, but neither grammar nor decency. They do not as the Committee have said, actually prove that the writer was the man who did the outrages, but they at least show that he had a cruel and bloodthirsty mind, which loved to dwell upon revolting details. “I caught each under the belly, but they did not spurt much blood.” “We will do twenty wenches like the horses.” “He pulls the hook smart across ‘em and out the entrails fly.” This is the writing of a hardened ruffian. Where in Edalji’s studious life has he ever given the slightest indications of such a nature? His whole career and the testimony of all who have known him cry out against such a supposition. Finally, there are certain allusions in the letters which are altogether outside Edalji’s possible knowledge. In one of them some seven or eight people are mentioned, all of whom live in a group two stations down the line from Wyrley, and entirely removed from Edalji’s very limited circle. They were a group immediately surrounding young Greatorex, and they were put in with a view to substantiating the pretence that he was the writer, for the entanglement of Greatorex was evidently the plotter’s chief aim, and the ruin of Edalji was a mere by-product in the operation. One of the people mentioned was the village dressmaker, a second the doctor, a third the butcher, all in the neighbourhood of Greatorex and out of the ken of Edalji. In his attempt to entangle Greatorex the writer actually gave himself away, as it is clear to any intelligence above that of a prejudiced official that he must be one of the very limited number of people who was himself acquainted with this particular group. There is one other peculiarity in the first Greatorex letter which cannot fail to arrest attention. It is the reiterated allusions to the sea. Edalji had no connection with the sea, and there was no reason why he should write of it. But in this one letter there ore three or four references to it. How is this to be accounted for? When one considers that there had been a former persecution, that this had ended abruptly at the beginning of 1896, that peace had reigned for six years, and that now a new series of letters is commenced by someone whose mind is running upon the sea, one would like to make inquiry as to the possibility of some sailor having returned to the neighbourhood. Should such a man exist, as is likely enough upon a crowded countryside, the fact alone would be of small weight, but, at least, it might be worth an investigator’s while to trace the matter further and see if any other points of contact could be established. I have now dealt with the so-called “Greatorex” letters, and have enabled the reader to judge for himself as to how far the script is identical with that of Edalji. I have also shown that the a-priori reasoning and the internal evidence are absolutely opposed to the idea that the young lawyer wrote them. I am suppressing nothing in order to make a case, for I cannot find any single point in the letters which can be used as an argument that Edalji did write them. It is amazing to me that three men of position like Sir Albert de Rutzen, Sir Arthur Wilson, and the Hon. Mr. Wharton should express themselves as being in agreement with the senseless opinion of the Stafford jury. What possible facts can they allege to support such a contention? Where is the evidence of this “impish spirit” which they have themselves conjured up? It has added three more names to that long line of policemen, officials, and politicians who owe a very abject apology to this ill-used man. Until this apology is offered and reparation made no mutual daubings of complimentary white-wash will ever get them clean. There are many other documents connected with this case which I should wish to discuss and reproduce in a later article. I should be glad, therefore, if your readers would retain the present specimens for future comparison.
WHO WROTE THE LETTERS? — No. 2 In my last, article I laid before the reader copies of the actual writings of George Edalji, together with specimens of the anonymous letters of 1903, so that each might form his own opinion as to the degree of resemblance in the script. I also showed by the internal evidence of the letters themselves how grotesque is the theory that they were from the pen of the young lawyer, and how mean the refusal to compensate him for his unjust punishment by pretending that he had contributed to his own ruin. I will now lay some further documents before the public in order to illustrate the peculiar nature of the long persecution to which the Edalji family has been subjected, and to prove the fact that the anonymous letters now received by Edalji and by his friends come from the same hand which wrote some of the letters in the series of 1892-95. If anyone conceives the wild theory that Edalji has been persecuting himself during all these years, I will undertake to show that such a supposition cannot be fitted into the facts. I admit that no one can put a limit to the strange aberrations of human nature, and that it is possible to conceive of a man otherwise sane who had some kink in his brain which compelled him from time to time to write abusive and scurrilous documents to himself and to his people. In this case, however, it is not only possible to show that Edalji did not write the letters, but also to draw some fairly reliable inferences as to the people who did. This, I venture to do in the hope that some remark of mine may possibly prove suggestive to good citizens upon the spot, and help them to find some of the missing links in this long and tangled chain of events. Those who have interested themselves in the case will remember that the main persecution of the Edalji family began in the year 1892, and lasted until the beginning of 1896. During that time hundreds of letters of an extraordinary nature were sent to them; hoaxes of the most ingenious description were played upon them; bogus advertisements of an offensive character were put in their names into the papers; objects were thrown into the vicarage grounds, and many other pranks played upon them. Any one of these might be described as trivial, but the continued, ingenious persecution, lasting over three years, became cruelty of a most diabolical kind, under which the minds of the victims might well have broken down. To the lasting disgrace of the Staffordshire police this man-baiting was allowed to continue for this long period without any serious effort upon their part to shield the unfortunate family from their brutal tormentors. Their complaints were unheeded, or else it was hinted to them, exactly as it is now said to the son, that their sufferings were in some way due to themselves. It is a story which any unofficial Englishman must read with shame and indignation. I have carefully examined a considerable number of the letters and postcards written by the conspirators, and I have been able to come to some definite conclusions about them. In the first place, there appear to have been three of them, two adults and a boy. I must admit that the writings of the two adults are so fluid, and run so frequently into the same characteristics, that I am prepared to find that they both came from one individual. Such a supposition is possible, but I think that it is very improbable. I seem to trace three lines of thought and character, as well as three peculiarities of script. We will take it, then, that there is adult writing and that there is boy writing, the adult writing being separable into two. Of the boy, it may be definitely stated that he could not have been less than twelve or more than sixteen. I find no exact evidence as to the age of the others, save that the mischief which characterises the whole proceeding, and the fact that they could devote so very much time and attention to it — some of the letters are of great length — would seem to indicate that they were still youths, and that they had no settled occupation. It is fairly certain that they must have lived within a radius of a mile or two of the vicarage, since many of the missives were left by hand. Let us now consider what relation these three plotters bore to each other. Had there been a cramming establishment, or any other centre where mischievous young men could congregate, I should say that very likely they were no relations, but mere partners in a cruel practical joke. I have been unable to find, however, that anything of the sort exists in that neighbourhood. Yet these three individuals, the two young adults and the boy, undoubtedly lived under the same roof. Their epistles are continually on the same paper, and in the same envelopes. In some cases the rude scrawl of the boy comes in upon the very page which is taken up by the educated writing of the adult A sheet may exhibit on one side an elaborate forgery of the signatures of the Edaljis, the Brookes, or some other neighbouring family, while on the other is a rude drawing (rude in every sense), which could only have been done by a lad. The adults appeared to pride themselves upon forgers’, and the results, so far as I have been able to test them, show that they had remarkable powers in that direction. “Do you think that we could not imitate your kid’s writing?” they say exultantly in one of the 1892 letters. They most certainly could — and did. What are we to say, then, of three youths, all living under one roof, and engaged over several years in long succession of heartless practical jokes. It is possible that they were three clerks in an office, or three assistants in a business, but in such a case, how are we to account for the presence among them of a boy? On the whole, the balance of probability is greatly in favour of there being three relatives, brothers for choice, who are working together in the matter. The fact that the rude writing of the youngest developed at a later date some of the peculiarities of his elders, would seem to indicate a family habit In this way we have built up, as a rough working hypothesis, the idea of two young men and an exceedingly foul-mouthed boy, who are brothers or close relations, and fellow-conspirators in this persecution. Let us see now if an inspection of the letters can give us any information of the habits of these young blackguards. The first thing which is perfectly evident is the connection of the younger one with Walsall Grammar School. Walsall Grammar School is an excellent educational establishment, and a great boon to all the country round, but like every other school, it has an occasional black sheep, and it needs no far-fetched inference to make it certain that this youngster was among them. Let me explain here that it was not merely the Edalji family who were persecuted by scurrilous letters, but that several other families in the neighbourhood, notably the Brookes and the Wynnes, were troubled in the same fashion. Now, both the Brookes and the Wynnes had a son at that time at Walsall School, and the headmaster of Walsall was also a recipient of anonymous letters, written in the same rough boyish hand, so that the focus of trouble seems certainly to lie there. I may explain in passing that George Edalji was at Rugeley Grammar School, and had no connection whatever with Walsall. My point is, then, that the youngest of these three brothers, the ill-conditioned boy, had some connection with Walsall School. To illustrate it I append an exhibit, which, for purposes of future reference, I will call No. 1. Here the writer, dragging in as usual the butt, Edalji, whose very name he cannot at that time spell, utters the most scurrilous threats against the headmaster. This writing is, beyond all doubt, as will afterwards be demonstrated, the same as that of the younger conspirator. Here now we are getting at something tangible. The writer of 1 was a boy who entertained a malignant hatred of the headmaster of Walsall School. Why? It does not seem to be stretching the argument to suppose that it is a boy who has often felt the headmaster’s cane, or possibly has been expelled for his evil conduct Without over-elaborating the point it can at least be stated as a probability, indeed almost a certainty, that the boy brother was a scholar at Walsall (and a very backward unruly one) in the year 1892. The argument up to this point must certainly approximate to the truth. It is possible, therefore, that an examination of the records of Walsall (Grammar School at that date would give a starting point for an investigation. Not only can we say with some certainty that this young rascal was at Walsall, but there is a strong probability that one of the others was at the same school, though his age, as indicated by his writing, would show that he had either left before the older joined, or that he was in the higher when his younger brother was in the lower classes. He joins his young brother in writing anonymously to the Brookes and the Wynnes, showing a certain community of interest where school matters are concerned. His scholastic record must have been a very different one, for both his script and the contents of his letters show a very alert and ingenious mind. In one of his letters there is a long quotation from Milton. I believe that I am correct in stating that this particular book of Milton had been the school exercise some little time before. I repeat, therefore, that the balance of evidence is in favour of one at least of the elder brothers having been a senior scholar at Walsall at or about the time when his brother was a junior. This should narrow down the field of an inquiry. In this connection we must consider the incident of the Walsall Grammar School key. This key was discovered by the village constable on Dec. 12, 1892, upon the window-sill of the vicarage, and George Edalji, upon the unvarying principle of laying everything mysterious to his charge, was at once accused of having put it there, how he could have got it from the six-mile-off school, or what end could be served by so foolish a prank, was never explained. Yet it was over this incident that the chief constable wrote: “If the persons concerned in the removal of the key refuse to make any explanation of the subject, I must necessarily treat the matter as a theft. I may say at once, that I shall not pretend to believe any protestations of ignorance which your son may make about this key. My information on the subject does not come from the police.” When one takes this incident with the preceding evidence as to Walsall Grammar School being the focus of the mischief, is it not exceedingly probable that the key was brought over by the same mischievous scholars who wrote the letters, and that the chief constable’s information was conveyed in one of their ingenious epistles? There is, at least, nothing unnatural or far-fetched in such a supposition, while the suggestion that George Edalji would travel twelve miles in order to lay on his own father’s window-sill a key which nobody wanted is grotesque in its improbability. I only recall the incident at present as a corroboration of the theory which I am demonstrating, that the storm-centre at that time lay in Walsall School. I will now present specimens of the script of the two elders of the trio, with the proviso that it is within the bounds of possibility that the two may eventually prove to have been one. For the present, at least. I will differentiate them. One of them, who seems to me to be the elder, as his thought and expression are the more developed is the creature who writes extraordinary religious rant over the signature of “God-Satan.” There are remarkable qualities in these mad effusions, grim humour, wild imagination, and a maniacal turn of mind, which alternates between hysterical religion and outrageous blasphemy. It was no ordinary man who wrote the following characteristic effusion: “I must live partly in Heaven and partly in hell, so if that ever-accursed monster Satan tries to detain me in hell I will fight with him and throw myself into the gulf which is fixed between hell and Heaven, and then I shall be able to climb out of the gulf into Heaven. And moreover, if God tries to push me back into hell I will defy God and struggle with him, and if I cannot prevail I will hold on to God and fall with Him over the precipice of hell.” “If you wish to escape having your house blown up by dynamite you are to do this thus, namely, order the postman to take Mrs. M. ‘s body out of her grave and bring it to your house. You are then to break open her head, take out her brains, and boil them in a cauldron of port wine for three hours. Next you are to order Mr. — to come to your house, make him open his mouth and drink the contents of the cauldron whilst boiling. If you do this to my satisfaction I will ask God not to give you such a hot place in hell.” There are countless pages of this strange, pernicious stuff”, alternating with such lighter passages as this: You vindictive wretch I dare you to do to me whatever your vengeance prompts you, but spare, oh, spare, the honest police!” I append as a specimen of the script the page, which I shall number as 2, upon which the latter gem appears. The writing in all these effusions is fluent and easy, with every mark of an educated hand. I can find no evidence that any particular care has been taken to disguise it, but it is naturally unformed, and does not set rigidly into definite characteristics. From 1896 onwards this individual disappears entirely, and I was at some loss to form an opinion as to whether the mania was real or simulated. It bore every aspect of being real, but on the other hand it was difficult to conceive that such a person could so conceal his mental eccentricity as to escape general comment Some weeks ago, however, an incident occurred which convinced me that the man still lives, and that he is now a marked religious maniac. A newspaper containing some account of the Edalji affair had found its way to Long Beach, California, in the United States. A page of it was sent back to Mr. George Edalji, with religious and blasphemous comments scribbled in pencil all round the margins. The general character of this script the knowledge shown of the case, and the singular mental conditions, have all convinced me that whatever be his name, God-Satan is now to be found on the Pacific Coast and that he is an undoubted madman. So much for the elder of the three hypothetical individuals, he now drops out of the narrative, and we come to the second. This man writes a closer, smaller hand, with many of his senior’s peculiarities. There is no fancy and no madness in his productions. On the contrary, they are particularly practical. They are usually postcards of an allusive character, sent to someone at a distance, and signed with a forged name. At his ingenious bidding deluded tradesmen have brought huge consignments of goods to the vicarage, brother clergymen have hastened to Wyrley upon all sorts of urgent summonses, and editors have inserted the most monstrous advertisements as to the extraordinary needs of the vicar. The exhibit No. 3 gives a specimen of the script Of this man’s future I know nothing, and it may well prove, when the veil comes to be lifted, that he is simply another manifestation of the ingenuity of “God-Satan.” I will pursue the subject in a concluding letter.
THE “MARTIN MOLTON” LETTERS — No. 3. We now come to the third individual whom we have constructed, the foul-mouthed boy. He is far the more interesting and important of the three, for whereas the others drop out he carries on the persecution. As I will presently show, I have myself received a letter from him within the last few weeks, one of a considerable series which have been signed by various pseudonyms, but which I will call in future the Martin Molton letters, since that was the name which was attached to the first specimen. That Martin Molton, of 1907, and the bad boy of 1892 are the same individual is, as I will show, beyond all reasonable doubt. Let me pause here for one instant to consider the theory which I really believe still lingers at the Home Office, that the bad boy of 1892-95 was actually George Edalji reviling his own people, and writing furious letters to those who had never offended him. If the officials could only make good that proposition, when they could point to him also as being Martin Molton and all would be well. But to any unprejudiced mind, with no official theory to sustain, the thing is beyond argument. Look at the writing of 1 and also of 4. It is rude, coarse, and unformed to the last degree. Such as it is it appears unchanged in the persecuting letters up to the end of 1895. Now, at that date George Edalji was nineteen years of age, an excellent scholar”, who had finished his grammar school education, and had already started that course of legal study in Birmingham at which he was to win such distinction. Can anyone believe that he is responsible for this barbarous writing and more barbarous spelling and grammar. It is impossible to suppose such a thing, and by saying so we dispose for ever of the wild idea that Martin Molton was George Edalji, for whoever wrote the schoolboy scrawl of 1892-95 wrote the letters of 1907. Let me now make that point clear before I go any further. I present side by side two exhibits, which I call 4 and 5. 4 is a specimen of the bad boy’s writing, dating back to 1893. Alienists will be interested in the circular dots to the i’s, which are recognised as a symptom of lunacy. 5 is a short extract from a long abusive anonymous letter which reached me on April 17 of this year, posted on that date in the N. W. or Euston quarter of London. Compare the character of the writing. Compare the words “run” and the words “murder” in each. Compare the peculiar r’s shaped like x. Is there any reasonable man who can doubt that the thing is beyond coincidence, and that the same hand fashioned each? It may be fairly inferred, also, that the writer has been employed during the fourteen years which have elapsed in some trade which has not required much clerical work, as it is difficult to believe otherwise that he would not have developed his calligraphy. Having, as I hope, satisfied the reader that the young rascal of 1893 is the writer of the anonymous letter quoted above, I must complete my point by showing that the latter is also Martin Molton. The handwriting of all these 1907 letters is identical, save that in some cases the Greek e is used with an ordinary r, while in others the ordinary e is used with the peculiar r. I append an extract from my letter, 6, and one from the Martin Molton series, 7, which will, I hope, satisfy the reader that they are the same script, and that they are therefore both the handiwork of the bad boy of Walsall School. T may add that of the Martin Molton series five were posted in London and two in Birmingham. Now we have secured the two ends of our chain, and it only remains to examine those central links which are formed by the letters of 1903 — those letters which the committee, and also the jury, have most unreasonably ascribed to Edalji. I claim that I have shown these two ends to be from another hand, and if I can show that there is any correspondence or connection between them and the 1903 letters, then the latter also are from another hand. I have in my previous article shown, both by the script and by the internal evidence, that it is in the highest degree improbable that they could have been by Edalji. I now propose to show that it is, on die other hand, in the highest degree probable that they are by the same author as the others. Who that may be it is for those upon the spot to determine. First of all I reproduce part of the envelope of one of the Martin Molton letters (8), and I place below it the forged signature of Wilfred Greatorex in 1903. Let the reader look at the two capital Ws. Each is curiously fashioned, and yet there is an absolute similarity between them. Is this within the range of coincidence? I have shown that there is a history of forgery in the family from the beginning, and the actual writing is cleverly concealed, but every here and there, as in this conspicuous W, there is a glaring lapse. Even the same phrases recur in the different series of letters. I have one of the 1903 letters before me as I write, and I read in it, “None of the people think you a right sort,” addressed to George Edalji. Turn to exhibit 6, and you will find the same phrase applied to the same man in the letters of 1907. Is this also coincidence? See the continued ill will towards the Edaljis breaking out in 1893, 1903, and again in 1907. Is this also coincidence, and is the central mystification distinct from the first and the last? It is not for me to state who actually wrote the letters of 1903, but I claim that, while in my last article I proved that all the evidence is against them having been done by George Edalji, in the present I have shown that there are very sound reasons to believe that they are from the same hand as those of 1893 and of 1907. I have also given some indications by which that hand may be traced. Just one word at this point as to the object of all this elaborate mystification. Of that I have no doubt at all. The culprit is a lunatic, and his destination when his pranks have all been brought home to him should be, not a prison, but an asylum. The religious mania of the elder conspirator is the index of a family weakness which becomes a diabolically mischievous madness in the junior. He will be found, when exposed, to be a man of eccentric life and character, with periodical accessions of actual madness, during which he loses all prudence and control. Had the persecution been confined to the Edaljis, one might well have imagined that some secret reason could explain it, but it has broken out in so many directions, and been accompanied by such senseless deeds, that nothing but a disordered brain can be behind it Such a man is a danger to the community in which he lives, as no one can say what turn his destructive propensities may take. That he still lives in the Midlands, and possibly in the very district of the crimes, is made feasible by the postmarks of two of the Martin Molton letters. I trust that it will not be long before he is under medical supervision. I have purposely said nothing of the outrages diem selves, and confined my remarks to the letters, since these are the only things for which Edalji is now held responsible, and it is on account of that alleged responsibility that compensation is refused him. The writing of the letters does not appear to be a criminal offence, or at worst a minor one, so that if the assertion were true that Edalji wrote diem, the country would none the less owe him compensation for his three years of gaol. I trust, however, that I have convinced every impartial man that the balance of evidence is enormously against Edalji having had anything to do with the letters. Redress for one unjust accusation has been refused by the simple process of making a second equally unjust. Nowhere in the State document is there one word of sorrow or repentance for the blunder so tardily found out. All honest, manly admission and moderate redress would have been met in a conciliatory spirit, and the matter would have ended. As it is, the sore still runs. Fortunately, behind the mutual whitewashers and the ring of interested officials, there is always the great public to whom an injured man may appeal. Those who have followed my argument, and who agree with those conclusions, which seem to me to be inevitable, may well ask why all these documents and this reasoning have not been laid before the Committee and the Home Office. My answer is that they were so. I wish I could say with assurance that they were ever considered by the Committee. “Facts and printed matter” is their guarded description of what they have examined, and my documents could not be included in the latter. In their report there is not a word which leads me to think that my evidence was considered, and there are several passages — notably about Green, and about the eyesight — which make it difficult for me to believe that it was so. In the matter of the eyesight, the opinion of some unnamed prison doctor is endorsed, while there is no comment on the views of fifteen experts, some of them the first oculists in the country, which I sent in. As to the Home Office, I have shown them documents and demonstrated the points here set forth until I was weary. I was treated always with courtesy, but I was met also with a chilly want of sympathy. Instead of recognising that I had no possible object, save the ends of justice, and that it was their function in this country to see that justice was done, they took an obvious side in favour of impeached officialdom, and made me feel at every point that there was a hostile atmosphere around me. However, in spite of every obstacle, nine-tenths of the victory is won, and I have not a doubt that the fair-minded men of this country, apart from every consideration of persons or politics, will see that it is made complete by public apology and redress for a public wrong. ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE Undershaw, May 20 .
STATEMENT OF THE CASE AGAINST ROYDEN SHARP of Cannock, for the committing of those outrages upon Cattle from February to August, 1903, for which GEORGE EDALJI was condemned to Seven Years’ penal servitude at Stafford Assizes, November, 1903. At the time of the outrages, roughly July, 1903, Royden Sharp had a conversation alone with Mrs. Greatorex, who is the wife of Mr. W. A. Greatorex, Littleworth Farm, Hednesford, who was appointed Trustee at the time of the death of Peter Sharp, the father, in November, 1893. To this gentleman, Mr. Greatorex, I owe much assistance in working out the case. In the course of the conversation referred to above, Royden Sharp — after alluding to the outrages — went to a cupboard, and produced a horse lancet of unusual size. He showed this to Mrs. Greatorex, saying, “This is what they kill the cattle with.” Mrs. Greatorex was horrified, and told him to put it away, saving, “You don’t want me to think you are the man, do you?” The possession by Sharp of this unusual instrument of so huge a size is to be explained by the fact that he served for ten months of 1902 on board a cattle boat between Liverpool and America. No doubt he took this lancet when he left the boat. I suggest that the instrument is still in the house, and could be secured in case of an arrest. The fact that this was true, and that this actually was the instrument with which the crimes were committed is corroborated by the following considerations: — That the wounds in all the earlier outrages up to August 18th were of a peculiar character, which could not have been inflicted by any other weapon. In even case there was a shallow incision which had cut through the skin and muscles, but had not penetrated the gut. Had any knife been plunged in and drawn along it must almost certainly have cut the gut with its point. The blade in question is like this: It is very sharp, but could not penetrate further than superficially. The witnesses who could testify most clearly as to the nature of the wounds are Mr. Sambrook, a butcher, who has now removed from Wyrley to Sheffield, but can, I understand, be easily traced, and Mr. Forsyth, a veterinary surgeon, of Cannock. I know that Mr. Sambrook was struck by the peculiarity of the cuts. Royden Sharp was in all respects peculiarly fitted to have done these crimes, and there is, apart from this incident, much evidence both before the time of the crimes, during the time and after the time to cause him to be regarded with gravest suspicion. I will, for the moment, put on one side the persecution of the Edaljis (in which he was concerned with his elder brother Wallie in 1892-95) and confine the evidence entirely to that which bears upon the outrages and the anonymous letters of 1903. I will first trace his early career.
EVIDENCE OF HIS CHARACTER BEFORE THE CRIMES Royden Sharp was born in 1879. He very early showed marked criminal tendencies which took a destructive form. When he was 12 years of age he was found to have set a rick on fire at a Cannock Farm (Hatton’s Farm at West Cannock) and his father was forced to pay a considerable compensation. He was sent at the age of eleven to Walsall Grammar School, where his brother Wallie was an elder scholar at the time. His record at the school was as follows: this is an extract which I got from the school books through the courtesy of Mr. Mitchell, the present headmaster. Xmas, 1890. Lower 1. Order, 23rd out of 23. Very backward and weak. French and Latin not attempted. Easter, 1891. Lower 1. Order, 20th out of 20. Dull, homework neglected, begins to improve in Drawing. Midsummer, 1891. Lower 1. Order, 18th out of 18. Beginning to progress, caned for misbehaviour in class, tobacco chewing, prevarication, and nicknaming. Xmas, 1891. Lower 1. Order, 16th out of 16. Unsatisfactory, often untruthful Always complaining or being complained of Detected cheating, and frequently absent without leave. Drawing improved. Easter 1892. Form 1. Order, 8th out of o. Idle and mischievous, caned daily, wrote to father, falsified schoolfellows’ marks, and lied deliberately about it Caned 20 times this term. Midsummer, 1892. Played truant, forged letters and initials, removed by his father. It will thus be seen that forgery, which played a part in the anonymous letters of 1903 was familiar to him as a school boy. Apart from the forgery which the school records show to have been done by him, the disposition to brutal violence was very marked, and so was that of foisting upon others, often with considerable ingenuity, the misdeeds of his own doing. Out of the anonymous letters which are certainly from his hand at this school period 1892-95, I take the two following expressions: “I will cut your bowels out,” “I will open your belly,” showing curiously how his own thoughts were already turning. If he were left in a railway carriage he would turn up the cushion and slit it on the lower side, so as to let out the horse hair. This evidence is given by Mr. Wynne, painter, of “Clovelly,” Cheslyn Hay, who was at school with him. He adds the following anecdote illustrative of his destructiveness, of his bearing false witness, and of his writing vindictive anonymous letters, all of diem qualities which came out 10 years later in 1903. During the time that the Edalji family had been deluged with anonymous letters from 1892 to 1895 (which letters I have good reason to believe were from the Sharps), another family in the same village, the Brookes, were plagued in the same way, and in the same handwriting, especially the young son, Fred Brookes. I had failed to find any cause, save colour hatred, in the case of the Edaljis, so I hoped I might get something more definite in the case of young Brookes. This is Wynne’s story: —
MR. WYNNE’S STATEMENT “R.S.,” known as “Speck,” was a small built youth with sharp features. Generally in a sailor’s suit, he was the worst scholar in the school for about three years, and remained at the bottom of the first form. He was very fond of chewing tobacco, and I think it was in the Summer holiday of 1892 that he set a rick on fire near Hednesford… One evening we were returning by the usual evening train. F. G. Brookes and myself got in the train when Speck came running into the same compartment straight to the end of the carriage, and put his head through the carriage window smashing it all to bits. We all made our way into another compartment In a day or two after Brookes and myself were charged by one of the railway officials of breaking the carriage window. We found out that Sharp had told of us. that it was us. not himself Then we sought the station master, and told him how it happened, and Sharp had to pay for it, and he was also caught cutting the straps of the window, and had to pay, I think, more than once; his father was asked to take him away from the school as they could not do any good with him. He was always into mischief and getting others into trouble. The next I heard was he was sent to sea “If my memory serves me right the first letters that I heard of were sent to Mr. W H. Brookes, some time after the railway carriage incident, in a large school handwriting, saying that “Your kid and Wynn’s kid have been spitting in an old woman’s face on Walsall station.” and requesting monies to be sent to Walsall Post Office. The second one was threatening to prosecute if the money was not sent. Thus the receipt of the anonymous letters by Brookes immediately followed a cause of feud between young Brookes and Royden Sharp. Having been expelled from school Roy den Sharp was apprenticed to a butcher, thus learning to use a knife upon W. A. Greatorex, of Littleworth Farm, became Royden’s Trustee. This gentleman is an excellent witness, and ready to help the ends of justice in any way. It was to his wife that the implied confession was made. For two years, 1894 and 1895, this gentleman had much trouble with the lad. Finally he sent him to sea. He went to sea from Liverpool on December 30di in the ship “General Roberts,” belonging to Lewis Davies & Co., 5, Fenwick Street Liverpool. He went as apprentice. From the time he left the letters, hoaxes, &c., which had kept the countryside in a turmoil, ceased completely, and were not renewed until his return in 1903. I may remark in passing that Edalji was at home all this time, and that this fact alone would, one would have thought, have awakened the suspicions of the police and shown them who was the author of the troubles. I am told, but have not verified the fact, that the last anonymous hoax on the Edaljis was an advertisement in a Blackpool paper, about the end of December, 1895 — Blackpool being the pleasure resort of Liverpool. Royden Sharp does not, so far as my enquiries go, appear to have acted badly aboard ship. He finished his apprenticeship in 1900, and afterwards gained a third Mate’s certificate. He came home late in 1901, but shortly after got a billet on board a cattle ship to America, where his natural brutality was probably not lessened, and where he, no doubt, got the huge horse lancet which Mrs. Greatorex can depose to having seen in his hand. The Wyrley outrages upon cattle were begun while Royden Sharp was at home, and he was in the district during the whole time of their continuance. Whoever committed the outrages must have been in a position to get into and out of his house at all hours of the night without being observed either by the police or by the other inmates of the house, if living miles away from him; but they belonged to the immediate group who surrounded the Sharp and Greatorex families. They lived two stations down the line from Edalji, whom everyone describes as a very retiring man who made no friends. How could he know these people? But they were put in by Sharp because they were the people whom Greatorex knew, and in putting diem in he really proved his own guilt, for he and his family were the only people who could know exactly the same circle. This piece of internal evidence alone must convince any independent and intelligent observer that Edalji could not have written these “Greatorex” letters, and that if Greatorex did not, which all admit to be true, then all the evidence points to the Sharps, who were accomplished forgers and mystifiers as already shown. Apart from the letters bearing upon the crimes, other anonymous letters of an obscene description were circulating in the district at this period. I have seen a letter from one who was present dated August 3rd, 1903, saying that a conference was held as to the authorship of these letters that day in the presence of Mr. Greatorex, now dead (no relation of the other), who was a local bank manager, and Inspector Campbell, now living at Cannock. The letter wound up, “I believe that Royden Sharp will be arrested before evening.” From this I infer that the local police had evidence of Sharp’s writing anonymous letters at this time. This evidence should be available at the trial, and should show that this was a habit of his. I believe that August 3rd did mark a cessation of letters for some time. There are many points of internal evidence in the letters (the so-called “Greatorex” letters) which point to Royden Sharp, apart from the fact that they appeared after his return to the district, and that they deal with a number of people well known to him (and unknown to Edalji). In all the 1892-95 letters there is, so far as I have seen, no mention of the sea. In the very first of the “Greatorex” letters in 1903 there are two or three allusions to the sea, most natural for anyone who had just left it. He advises in his letter that some boy be sent to sea as an apprentice which was, as I have shown, Royden Sharp’s own experience. The writer uses the curious expression that a hook did the crimes. The instrument which Sharp showed to Mrs. Greatorex has a hooky appearance, and could be carried shut in the pocket, as the writer asserts that the “Hook” actually was. A sharp hook in the ordinary sense of a hook could not be so carried without cutting the cloth. The writer says that he feels inclined to put his head on the rails where the train runs from Hednesford to Cannock. This is the actual stretch of rail near the Sharp’s [sic] house (and is some distance from Wyrley where Edalji lives). In June, 1903, a letter (still preserved) was received with the Rugeley post mark, signed “A Lover of Justice,” and addressed to George Edalji. It was asking him to leave the district for a time, so as to be away when the next crime was done, as otherwise he would be in danger of being taken for it. The writer of this letter I identify as being the same as the former anonymous letters of 1895; which I also identify as having been done by Wallie Sharp. There would be no difficulty in getting expert evidence as to the hands being the same. Wallie Sharp was acting as apprentice to an electrical engineer at the time, and was much in the small neighbouring towns of which Rugeley is one. It is to be observed that in the letter in question occurs the phrase “you are not a right sort.” This phrase occurs also in one of the Greatorex letters. This points to Wallie’s complicity in the Greatorex letters, or his brother’s phrase may have lingered in his mind. It could hardly be coincidence that the same phrase could occur in both letters. Wallie Sharp died in South Africa in November, 1906. I now come to what I look upon as a very important piece of evidence, indeed, I think it is conclusive as regards the anonymous letters. Some time after Edalji’s arrest there began a series of anonymous letters, signed “G. H. Darby,” the writer claiming to be Captain of the Wyrley Gang. These letters — many of which I have seen — are all in the same writing and, though very roughly done, contain some of the characteristics of Royden Sharp’s writing, especially an r made like x and sometimes so exaggerated as to be almost x which occurs from boyhood in Royden Sharp’s writing. About November, 1903, some of these letters arrived from Rotherham, near Sheffield. The police, I think, had some, and others were received by a local paper, the Wolverhampton Star. The writer was evidently a Cannock man, and I should think few Cannock men would at any time visit Rotherham. Now, I have found the porter, whose name is A. Beenham, Drayman, near Baptist Chapel, Cannock Road, Chadsrnoor, near Cannock, who in November carried Royden Sharp’s box to the station, and observed that it was addressed to Rotherham. The Darby letters said that the Captain would return before Xmas, and I believe Sharp actually did so. This seems to me perfectly conclusive, as regards the identity of Royden Shaq) with G. H. Darby, and the latter boasted that he was the author of the outrages. Another significant fact is as follows: — On September 29th, 1903, there was an anonymous notice that “it was decided to ‘slice up’ ten wenches between November 1st and 20th and 10 after Xmas,” repeating a threat which had already been uttered in the second “Greatonex” letter. The date s are curious in view of the fact that Royden Sharp would be away as already shown from November to Xmas The announcement caused much terror in the district, which was increased by the following incident — A woman and little girl (Mrs. Jarius Handley, Great Wyrley, is [the] woman’s name) were coming from Wyrley station one evening, soon after, where they had been buying some papers for sale. They met two men in the road. One of them caught the girl by the throat, and held in his hand something that gleamed. They both screamed, on which the man ran away, crying to his comrade who had gone on: “All right, Jack, I am coming. I suggest that this man was Royden Sharp, and that his companion was Jack Hart, a dissolute butcher, of the neighbourhood, and a friend of Sharp’s. The little girl declared to her mother that she had been stopped once before by the same young man, and proceeded to give a minute description of him. She said that he had a round face, no moustache, about 5ft. Sin. in height, a dark suit, and a shiny peaked cap, which was exactly Royden Sharp’s sailor-like costume. I suggest that after Sharp’s arrest this girl be allowed an opportunity of identifying him. I am informed that from the time that his description got about Sharp gave up wearing this style of dress. There was another of the series of anonymous letters which came from London, and was said by the writer to have been written in a Lockhart’s coffee-house there. It was dated “ 19th” (month can be found by further search ) and the writer said he had gone up to London from Birmingham that day. On enquiry Mr. Beaumont, of Wolverhampton Road, Cannock, — who has assisted me much — discovered that Royden Sharp had actually left Cannock for Birmingham upon the morning of that same day — 19th. Mr. Hunt, the local station master, was his informant I will now recapitulate in condensed form the statement which has been here set out at length. Royden Sharp can be shown to have been the culprit: 1. Because of his showing the weapon to Mrs. Greatorex. 2. Because the wounds could only be produced by such an instrument as he showed. 3. Because only such an instrument fits in with the description in the letters. 4. Because being a butcher and a man from a cattle ship he was able to do such crimes which would be very hard for any ordinary man. 5. Because in many points of the anonymous letters there is internal evidence pointing to Royden Sharp. 6. Because he had a proved record of writing anonymous letters, of forgery, of diabolical mischief, and of bearing false witness, all of which qualities came out here. 7. Because he went to Rotherham at the time when letters bearing on the crimes came from Rotherham. 8. Because he is correctly described by a girl, who saw a man endeavouring to carry out, or pretend to carry out, the threats in the letters. 9. Because the actual handwriting in many of the letters bears a resemblance to Royden Sharp’s own old writing. It is impossible now to get any specimen of his actual writing, as he is most guarded in writing anything. Why should he be if he is innocent? 10. I am informed (but have not yet verified the fact) that in one of the anonymous letters occurs the phrase, “I am as Sharp as Sharp can be.” This seems to me to be in itself a complete case, and if I — a stranger in the district — have been able to collect it, I cannot doubt that fresh local evidence would come out after his arrest. He appears to have taken very little pains to hide his proceedings, and how there could have been at any time any difficulty in pointing him out as the criminal is to me an extraordinary thing. If further evidence were needed in order to assure a conviction, there are two men who could certainly supply it. These men are: — Harry Green, formerly of Wyrley Farm, Wyrley, now in South Africa. The other is Jack Hart, Butcher, Bridgtown, near Cannock. Either of these men, if properly handled, would certainly turn King’s evidence. They both undoubtedly knew all about Sharp. Others who know something, but possibly not enough, as they were only on the edge of the affair, are Fred Brookes (formerly of Wyrley, now in Manchester), Thomas, and Grinsell, all of the local Yeomanry. It seems to me that Sharp did no more outrages with his own hands after the arrest of Edalji in August The next outrage was admittedly done by Harry Green, who can be shown, when in doubt as to what he should do, to have sent a note to someone else, which note was answered from London in a letter written on telegram forms, now to be seen in the Home Office. This answer was, I believe from the writing, from Royden Sharp. It is worth noting on the evidence of Mr. Arrowsmith, of the Cannock Star Tea Company, who has done most excellent work on this case, that Green accepted all Arrowsmith’s remarks good-humouredly, but on the latter saying “Sharp should be where Edalji now is,” he at once became very angry. The November outrage was done upon Stanley’s horses by Jack Hart, the butcher, acting in collusion with Sharp. This makes really a separate case. If it should be found possible to get Mrs. Sharp in the box, she would depose as she has told Mrs. Greatorex, that Royden Sharp is strangely affected by the new moon, and that on such occasions she had to closely watch him. At such times he seems to be a maniac, and Mr. Greatorex has himself heard him laughing like one. In this connection it is to be observed that the first four outrages occurred on February 2, April 2, May 3, and June 6, which in each case immediately follows the date of the new moon. The point of a connection between the outrages and the moon is referred to in one of the “Greatorex” letters, so it was present in the mind of the writer. I cannot end this statement without acknowledging how much I owe to the unselfish exertions of Mr. Greatorex, of Littleworth Farm, Mr. Arrowsmith, of the Star Tea Company, Cannock, and Mr. Beaumont, of Wolverhampton Road, Cannock, without whose help I should have been powerless. (Signed) Arthur Conan Doyle. Undershaw, Hindhead
THE CASE OF MR. OSCAR SLATER SPECIAL INVESTIGATION BY SIR A. CONAN DOYLE Due to the success of the Sherlock Holmes stories, many people wrote letters to Conan Doyle over the years, asking him for help with real life crimes. The two most famous examples were George Edalji and Oliver Slater. Conan Doyle’s involvement in both these cases led to the establishment of the Court of Criminal Appeal in both England and Scotland. In 1908 a wealthy 82-year-old woman named Marion Gilchrist, was bludgeoned to death at her home in Glasgow. Her body was discovered by a downstairs neighbour and a maid. Oscar Slater, a petty criminal known to police as an illegal gambling-den operator had been staying in Glasgow for only 6 weeks, near the Gilchrist residence, before he boarded an ocean liner for New York. When he found out he had been accused of Gilchrist’s murder Slater returned to Glasgow to clear his name. However, his trial, characterized by Conan Doyle as a great injustice, left Slater imprisoned for nearly two decades on sketchy evidence. Conan Doyle believed the actual murderer was a member of the victim’s family and known to the police. However because of that person’s political and social connections a cover-up was necessary and Slater became the perfect scapegoat for the crime.