Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and the Case of George Edalji

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The amateur detective also shot holes in the prosecution’s most weighty piece of evidence–a handwriting analysis that identified George Edalji as the one who had written the many threatening letters. Conan Doyle learned that the ‘expert’ the police had commissioned was a man already infamous for sending an innocent defendant to jail with an analysis that had later proved to be erroneous.

After he had convinced himself beyond any doubt that George Edalji did not committed the crime, he arranged to meet the man in person. When he did, his first impression confirmed all his previous conclusions, for it immediately became apparent that Edalji suffered from a condition that Conan Doyle had not previously suspected. ‘I had been delayed,’ Conan Doyle recalled later, ‘and he was passing the time by reading the paper….He held the paper so 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.’ Edalji’s eyes not only gave Sir Arthur further proof of their owner’s innocence, they also provided a possible explanation why the police may have been predisposed to suspect him. His inability to focus his eyes gave him an odd distracted look that could easily be interpreted as sinister.

Conan Doyle submitted the complete results of his investigations to The Daily Telegraph on 9th January, 1907, with instructions to clearly label it as copyright free, so that other papers could pick up the story and spread the news. ‘Only an appeal to the public can put an end to a course of injustice and persecution which amount, as I hope that I shall show, to a national scandal’, Sir Arthur advised. The newspaper obliged, printing the entire 18,000-word summary in two parts.

With Edalji by this time freed from jail, another man may have felt that nothing further needed to be done, but Conan Doyle was outraged by the government’s refusal to acknowledge any fault or to pay Edalji any compensation for having his career and three years of his life taken from him through such a careless exercise of the criminal justice system. His report was as much an indictment of the police as a vindication of Edalji, charging the authorities with race prejudice, incompetence, and deliberate deceit.

Few of Sir Arthur’s more famous works of fiction could boast the impact on the British public achieved by his letter to the Telegraph. The common belief that an injustice had been perpetrated now became nearly universal, and demands for an investigation grew irresistible. Finally, the Home Secretary grudgingly decided to appoint a three-man board to review the case. Astoundingly, one of the three ‘unbiased’ men appointed to the committee was the second cousin of Captain Anson, the Chief Constable of Staffordshire, who had been the first one to jump to the conclusion of Edalji’s guilt.

In the meantime, Conan Doyle had turned his attention to an as-yet-unasked question: If Edalji was innocent, then who had committed the crime? Sir Arthur’s crusade on Edalji’s behalf clearly represented a threat to the mysterious slasher, and before long Conan Doyle received one of the threatening letters that had so long plagued the vicar of Wyrley. ‘Think of all the ghoulish murders that are committed,’ the note read. ‘Why then should you escape?’ The recipient treated the letter not so much as a warning as another piece of evidence, again turning to the Telegraph and the public for help. The 29th May edition contained another letter from Sir Arthur, stating: ‘Upon Monday, the 27th, I received a letter and a postcard, both unstamped, from the unknown correspondent whose writing runs right through the whole Edalji affair from 1892 onwards….A crease in both documents seems to show…that they may have been sent up under cover, or possibly in somebody’s pocket–a railway guard or other–and then posted. Should this be so one might hope to follow them back to the writer; and I hereby offer a reward of L20 to anyone who will enable me to say for certain whence they came.’

In the event, Detective Doyle found the crucial clue himself in a subsequent letter sent by the anonymous correspondent. The second missive contained a scathing remark about a former headmaster of the Walsall Grammar School in Staffordshire. Conan Doyle remembered that one of the letters sent to the senior Edalji had contained a similar reference, and that a stolen key from the school had once turned up on Edalji’s doorstep. Sir Arthur contacted the ex-schoolmaster and asked if he could think of anyone who had attended the school and might have reason to hold such an unfavourable opinion of him. The schoolmaster suggested a boy whom he had expelled years before for uncontrollable, destructive behavior.

Conan Doyle further learned that in the years since, the boy had become a butcher, and that a friend of his family remembered seeing him with a lancet at about the time of the animal mutilations. Once he was on the right track, Sir Arthur found many more coincidences that identified the butcher as the guilty party beyond any possible doubt.

Conan Doyle provided all this evidence to the three-man commission, which deliberated and then concluded that Edalji had not, in fact, killed the horse and should therefore be pardoned, but that he had ‘to some extent brought his troubles on himself’, so there would be no compensation. By this, the commission apparently referred to the threatening letters, which it still believed Edalji had written to his father.

Conan Doyle’s response, again in the form of a letter to the Telegraph, was predictable. ‘While the friends of Mr. George Edalji rejoice that his innocence has at last been admitted (though in the most grudging and ungracious fashion), they feel that their work is only half done so long as compensation is refused him. It is clearly stated in the report of the Committee that: ‘The police commenced and carried on their investigations, not for the purpose of finding out who was the guilty party, but for the purpose of finding evidence against Edalji, who they were already sure was the guilty man.’

‘The result has proved that he was not the guilty man, and this inversion of all sane methods upon the part of the police has given untold mental agony to himself and to his family, has caused him to undergo the ordeal of the double trial, three years of incarceration, and an extra year of police supervision. Apart from the misery which has been unjustly inflicted upon him, he has been unable to exercise his profession during that time, and has been put to many heavy expenses, which only the self-sacrifice of his relations has enabled him to meet. And now, though all these results have been brought about by the extraordinary conduct of the police, and the stupidity of a Court of Quarter Sessions, the unfortunate victim is told that no compensation will be made him.’

As to the implication, still, that George Edalji had written the many outrageous letters received by his father, Sir Arthur insisted ‘I will undertake in half an hour…to convince any reasonable and impartial man, that George Edalji did not write, and could not possibly have written, those letters. Of that I am absolutely certain, and there is no room for doubt whatever.’ Conan Doyle did just as he promised, not through his own efforts, but in a much more convincing manner by seeking out the opinion of Dr. Lindsey Johnson, a handwriting analyst who had helped to prove that the famous treasonable letter attributed to the Frenchman Alfred Dreyfus was a forgery. This internationally renowned expert confirmed Conan Doyle’s own assertion, providing many detailed specifics to substantiate his findings, and concluding his comparison of the anonymous letters with Edalji’s own handwriting with the words, ‘Further examples are unnecessary, as, look where you will, you will find no points in common between them.’ Lindsey was equally as adamant that the letters were, in fact, written by the butcher Sir Arthur had already identified.

All of this evidence, however, was of interest only to the news press. The Home Office replied simply that a decision had already been reached, and that was that. No action was ever taken against the man Sir Arthur had convincingly proven was responsible for both the threatening letters and the animal mutilations–as well as for stealing the key to the local grammar school. The Law Society, showing markedly better judgment than either the police or the government, permitted George Edalji to resume his legal practice, but Sir Arthur’s great investigative success ended on a bitter note. The government bureaucracy, he concluded in disgust, is motivated by ‘a determination to admit nothing which inculpates another official, and as to the idea of punishing another official for offenses which have caused misery to helpless victims, it never comes within their horizon.’

A later biographer of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle rendered an even harsher verdict: ‘Doyle thought that the Home Office was insane to ignore the evidence he had placed in their hands; but in expecting reason and justice from bureaucrats his own sanity was open to doubt.’ Certainly, it was not the kind of ending a Sherlock Holmes fan would have expected.

This article was written by Bruce Heydt and originally appeared in the June/July 1998 issue of British Heritage. For more great articles, subscribe to British Heritage magazine today!

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