Is Edalji Innocent?
Is Edalji Innocent? is an article published in the Weekly Dispatch on 13 january 1907.
Is Edalji Innocent?
"Sherlock Holmes" to Investigate Mysterious Crime.
There are many people who believe, rightly or wrongly, that George Edalji, the young solicitor who three years ago was convicted and sentenced upon a charge of mutilating animals at Great Wyrley, was the victim of a police blunder.
To-day he finds a stout champion in Sir Conan Doyle, who contributes to the "Daily Telegraph" the first of a series of articles on his hard case, and the public will watch with peculiar interest the creator of "Sherlock Holmes" as he handles the facts of a real mystery of crime.
As a doctor, Sir Conan Doyle adds to the evidence for Edalji's innocence an important document, the report of a skilled oculist upon the state of George Edalji's eyes.
The report shows that Edalji is a man of short and irregular sight, a man with a bat-like vision at noonday, and one who in the dusk must walk so all but blind.
This is the man who, if we may believe the police, would dash out to scour the country on dark winter nights in the rain, dodging like a Red Indian the scores of watchers who were up and about in search of the mutilator of beasts.
From Sir Conan Doyle, however, we may expect something more than the mere demonstration of Edalji's innocence.
He must call in "Sherlock Holmes" and the patient Watson and hunt us down the Great Wyrley malefactor. His reputation demands nothing less.
