"Sherlock Holmes" at Work
"Sherlock Holmes" at Work is an article published in the Weekly Dispatch on 25 august 1912.
"Sherlock Holmes" at Work
Sir Conan Doyle's Plea for Man Convicted of Murder.
IS SLATER INNOCENT?
A powerful plea for a new trial for Oscar Slater, the Glasgow murderer, is made by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in a sixpenny brochure just published, three and a half years after the crime. "Sherlock Holmes" has set himself to solve another problem, and it may be said that he has succeeded in reusing distinct doubts as to the justness of the verdict which sent the German jeweller to imprisonment for life. Sir Arthur does not indicate in what way the case can be reopened — their is no Court of Criminal Appeal in Scotland — but he regards it as "on the conscience of the authorities, and in the last resort of the community, that the verdict shall be reconsidered." Oscar Slater was condemned to death three and a half years ago for the murder of Marion Gilchrist, a rich octogenarian living in Queen's-terrace, Glasgow. The jury were not unanimous. Nine voted for guilty, five for non-proven, and one for not guilty — a disagreement which in England would have meant the ordering of a new trial. The decision created wide-spread astonishment at the time, and was immediately criticised strongly in the Scottish Press. A petition for reprieve was signed by 20,000 people, and the sentence was commuted to penal servitude for life.
A Strong Argument.
Now one of Sir Arthur's strongest points (which incidentally applies also to Stinie Morison) is: The reprieve of Slater, if those in authority were persuaded of his guilt, is indefensible — having regard to the savagery of the deed for which he is wearing out his life in a convict prison — and the official action would appear to be a tacit admission of the unsatisfactory nature of the testimony which fastened an atrocious crime upon him. In presenting the story of the crime Sir Arthur Doyle, like Edgar Allan Poe in his narration of "The murders in the Rue Morgue," gives a simple digest of the facts, and then proceeds to a careful analytical examination of the evidence. The convict Slater was arrested in an Atlantic liner at New York, a fortnight after the murder, and brought back for trial in Scotland. Sir Arthur severely criticises the method, adopted at the process of identification, and points out the glaring discrepancies in the descriptions given by the witnesses of the wanted man, the absence of proved motive, the apparent lack of knowledge on the part of Slater of the position in life and the conditions under which Miss Gilchrist resided, and the inability of the prosecution to find any trace connecting Slater with the death of the victim. The motive of the crime was robbery. Miss Gilchrist had a mania for collecting jewellery, and had in her flat brooches, rings, pendants, and other articles worth about £3,000. On December 21, 1908, about seven o'clock in the evening, while Helen Lambie, the servant who was Miss Gilchrist's only companion in the flat, was absent on an errand, a man entered the flat and struck Miss Gilchrist a blow with a blunt instrument that may have been a piece of wood, a jemmy, or a hammer. If the jewels were the murderer's object, he did not find them, for the only thing missing from the flat was a crescent diamond brooch worth £40 or £50. It was the fact that Slater had pawned a brooch similar in appearance and of about the same value that first caused suspicion to fall upon him.
Prisoner's Alibi.
When the police learnt that he resembled the published description, and that he had left Glasgow for New York in the assumed name of Otto Sands they looked to have a good case. But when the ticket for the brooch was found on Slater the bottom, as Sir Conan Doyle shows, fell out of it. The brooch was not Miss Gilchrist's. The voyage to America was not, further, the impulsive flight from justice which it was represented to be. There was not a scintilla of doubt possible that Slater had for many days contemplated relinquishing his flat and sailing across the Atlantic. He had spoken of it to his friends, he had been in negotiation with Cook's for a passage; the very servant girl, Schmalz by name, who opened the door to the detectives had been dismissed and was about to leave for London. He certainly booked berths for himself and the woman in the name of Otto Sands, but the explanation advanced that this was a subterfuge to deceive his wife if she endeavoured to trace him is reasonable in the circumstances. As to his movements on the fateful night, witnesses declared that he was in a billiard saloon until 6.40, and the woman Antoine and the servant Schmalz both swore that he dined at home at seven o'clock. In his luggage a hammer was discovered with which the Crown alleged the murder conceivably was committed. Expert witnesses for the prosecution said this implement had the appearance of having been scrubbed; for the defence witnesses averred there were no signs of scrubbing. Upon Slater's waterproof were stains with respect to which all the prosecution could decide was that they "resembled mammalian red blood corpuscles" which "appeared to have been subjected to the influences of water."
A Tactical Error."
Finally it has to be admitted that Slater's was an irregular life, that the morals of the woman with whom he lived were not above reproach, and that he was cognisant of the fact; but this in itself is not a proof of guilt, although the Lord Advocate declared "that the man in the dock is capable of having committed this dastardly outrage." There are those who think that it was a tactical error not to put the accused man in the box. In conclusion, reconstructing the crime, "Sherlock Holmes" shows that the criminal went straight to the spare room where the hoard was, must have known the flat, and probably let himself in with false keys. Only when one remembers of the Beck case, the Edalji case, and some of the tendencies which have crept into the modern conduct of trials does it seem credible that a man's life should have been placed in jeopardy on such evidence as this which Sir Conan Doyle so ably reviews.
