The Strongest Argument in Favour of Edalji's Innocence
The Strongest Argument in Favour of Edalji's Innocence is an article published The Sketch on 23 january 1907.
The Strongest Argument in Favour of Edalji's Innocence
The Young lawyer's sight compared with that of the man with normal vision.
An interior as seen by a man with normal vision.
In his spirited defence of Mr. George Edalji, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle has made a great point of Edalji's extreme short-sightedness. In order to give those unskilled in such matters an idea of what this means, Mr. E. B. Meyrowitz, the well-known optician of 1A. Old Bond Street, W. has prepared for us the two illustrations given. One of them, as we have indicated, shows an interior as the man with normal sight would see it. The other shows the same interior as one with Edalji's vision would see it. Both illustrations depict Mr. Meyrowitz's premises. For the purpose of taking these photographs, the sensitised plates represented the retina, while the lens [by being adapted] was made to convey to the artificial retina, in the first case, a view as seen by the normal eye, and in the second, the same view as seen by the "Edalji eye."—
The same interior as seen by a man with vision equalling that of Edalji.
— Writing to the "Telegraph" the other day, the Rev. S. Edalji said: "I must also state here, as an absolutely undeniable fact, that although my son's eyes were weak and defective before his arrest and imprisonment, he never used any glasses." It is thus plain that if all Edalji could see of a shop in daylight is that shown in our second illustration, he would see practically nothing at night. In his defense, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote, among other things bearing on the same point:— "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."
