Rural England at the beginning of the 20th century seemed peaceful enough although anyone who was perceived as "different" certainly faced problems from suspicious villagers. And that especially applied to racial minorities.
When Shapurji Edalji married Charlotte Stoneham and became a vicar in the parish of Great Wyrley in South Staffordshire, he and his wife quickly learned how intolerant their fellow villagers could be. While Reverend Edalji was of Parsi descent (he had been born in Mumbai, India and converted to the Anglican faith), he was also a clergyman and local parishioners resented someone of "heathen" background becoming a spiritual counselor to white Englishmen. Although life was peaceful enough for the Edaljis, things became very different in 1888 when they began receiving a series of vicious, anonymous letters. Local police were of no use since the lead investigator concluded, against all evidence, that the Edaljis' son George was responsible.
As the eldest of three children born to the Edaljis, George Edalji made for a very unlikely culprit. He was only twelve when the letters started coming and already a model student. Although these letters eventually stopped (and later linked to a disgruntled servant of the Edaljis), they resumed again in 1892 and were more vicious than ever. Other letters were sent to clergy across the country over Reverend Edalji's forged signature. By then, George Edalji was sixteen years old and an excellent student but the police viewed him as their prime suspect and nothing that George's parents could say changed their minds. The letter-writing continued until 1895 when the chief constable of Staffordshire stated quite firmly that "I may say at once that I will not believe any protestations of innocence your son may make".
Again, the letters stopped and George Edalji went on to become a solicitor with what seemed to be an excellent career in law ahead of him. By 1903 when the letters began again, he had won awards from the Birmingham Law Society and had already written a book on law for travelers on the railways.
In 1903 however, Great Wyrley was terrorized by a series of brutal attacks on sheep, horses, and cows that began at a local meadow. In the attacks, still known as the Great Wiley Outrages, the animals were gruesomely slashed and, on several occasions, left to bleed to death. Anonymous letters were sent to various people in the area, one of them threatened that the same thing would start happening to the local village girls. When some of the letters named George Edalji as a member of the gang responsible for the attacks, the Edalji house was placed under police observation. The fact that some of the slashings occurfed while Edalji's home was being watched didn't deter the police from arresting him following an eighth attack involving a pit-pony.
Police and prosecutors were convinced that they had their man and the investigation was biased from the very beginning. Edalji's coat was confiscated and stored along with samples of horsehide cut from the slashed pony Despite the contaminated evidence, the presence of horsehairs on the coat was entered as evidence against him. As well, when Edalji proved to have an alibi for the night that the eighth slashing had occurred, prosecutors adjusted their estimates of when the attack had taken place to get around the alibi. As for his motive in committing the attacks, the local media reported talk of Edalji's "heathen" background and hinted that the attacks had been meant as pagan sacrifices. The fact that another animal was mutilated while he was still awaiting trial didn't prevent George Edalji from being convicted and sentenced to seven years in prison.
Since no appeals process existed in the United Kingdom at the time, George Edalji had no option but to serve his sentence. After protests and a petition with 10,000 signatures, he was released after serving only three years in prison on the grounds that the sentence had been too harsh but his life was thoroughly ruined. Not only was he considered guilty in the eyes of the law, but he had lost his right to work as a solicitor. In an effort to clear his name, George Edjalji's father wrote a pamphlet describing his son's ordeal and George Edalji then wrote his own version of events which was published the following year. Seeking further publicity for his case, Edalji included the newspaper clipping in a letter to the man whom he felt to be his best hope for getting justice: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
Already famous for his Sherlock Holmes stories, Doyle received George Edalli's letter at an especially dark time in his own life. His wife had died some time earlier and Doyle, feeling rather lost, welcomed the chance to help George Edalji get justice. Even before meeting Edjali directly, Doyle did a comprehensive analysis of the evidence used to convict him and found numerous glaring flaws including the lack of any true physical evidence. The failure of police to find more than two spots of blood on George Edjali's clothing, despite his supposedly having slashed a pony across the belly, seemed a key error. Conan Doyle also discovered that the handwriting analysis expert whose testimony established that Edalji had written the anonymous letters had been proven wrong in another major case.
Once he satisfied himself that Edjali was innocent, Doyle arranged for a meeting where he discovered the final piece of evidence to prove his case. A trained oculist, Conan Doyle realized at once that George Edjali suffered from severe myopia and astigmatism, which he hadn't even realized before meeting with him. The eye condition would have made it impossible for George Edjali to carry out the pony attack in almost total darkness in the way that the police had insisted he had done.
With the facts in hand, Doyle took the story to the Daily Telegraph in London to be published on January 11 and January 12, 1907. To ensure maximum coverage of his review of the case, Doyle waived all copyrights so that newspapers across the country could run it as well. Although there was nothing new about the facts that he had unearthed, the very name of Arthur Conan Doyle was enough to attract interest. Sherlock Holmes was still a popular fictional character worldwide and Doyle didn't hesitate to use Holmes' reputation as a detective in a good cause. The newspaper headline read "SHERLOCK HOLMES IS HAVING ONE MORE "LAST ADVENTURE" AND THIS TIME IN REAL LIFE". The story generated enough public outrage to force the British Home Office to appoint a three-man Committee of Enquiry to review George Edalji's conviction.
Although the Committee was meant to be unbiased, the Home Office made the bizarre decision to include a cousin of the Chief Constable who had arrested Edalji as one of its members. In the Committee's review of the evidence, they concluded that Edalji was innocent of the mutilation of the pony but concluded that he had written the letters. The fact that Edalji had no conceivable motive seemed irrelevant. In their final report, the Committee concluded that "Assuming him to be an innocent man, he has to some extent brought his troubles on himself". By refusing to exonerate Edalji completely, the Home Office was free to refuse compensation for the years he had spent in prison although he was (grudgingly) granted a pardon. The adverse publicity from Edjali's wrongful conviction led to the creation of the U.K.'s Court of Criminal Appeal in 1907.
Doyle would continue to denounce the Committee's decision for decades afterwards and declared it to be "a blot upon the record of English justice". While the Law Society showed their support for Edalji by reinstating him as a solicitor, he was never compensated for his prison term. As for the animal slashings, there were three in Great Wyrley while Edalji was in prison and another one in 1907 although he had not returned to live in Great Wyrley after his release.
A further series of anonymous letters (the early ones which had been signed by the self-styled "Captain of the Wyrley Gang") appeared on and off until 1934. While a Midlands resident would later confess to sending the letters in 1934, the animal slashings were never solved. Doyle continue to campaign for George Edalji's complete exoneration until his death in 1930. George Edalji only returned to Wyrley twice after his release but he continued his law practice in London until his own death in 1953.
As one of the most blatant examples of racial injustice in U.K. history, the George Edalji case has inspired numerous fiction and non-fiction books and continues to intrigue historians and journalists. One book that has come out recently is by Roger Oldfield. Entitled Outrage: The Edalji Five and the Shadow of Sherlock Holmes (Vanguard Press), the book provides an up-to-date overview of the Edalji case as well as a critique of Julian Barnes’s much-discussed novel on the case, Arthur and George (see www.outrage-rogeroldfield.co.uk).
There have certainly been other examples of wrongful conviction since Edjali's time but the lingering legacy of this case continues to show how easily personal biases on the part of police and prosecutors can lead to gross miscarriages of justice.
*hat tip to Roger Oldfield for his suggested revisions.
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