Oscar Slater's Appeal From Gaol
Oscar Slater's Appeal From Gaol is an article published in The People on 1 february 1925.
The article reports that Oscar Slater, still imprisoned after more than fifteen years, secretly smuggled an appeal from Peterhead Convict Prison to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, thanking him for past efforts and begging him to renew the fight for his release. It also presents Conan Doyle's forceful view that Slater was innocent, wrongly convicted on weak and contradictory evidence during a wave of public hysteria, and unjustly kept in prison beyond the usual term for such a sentence.
Oscar Slater's Appeal From Gaol
Oscar Slater as he was when convicted of murder sixteen years ago.
How Message was Smuggled out in Convict's Mouth.
NO RELEASE: CRY TO CONAN DOYLE.
A last message of appeal sent by Oscar Slater, doubtful murderer of times, to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who championed the cause of his innocence sixteen years ago.
Slater has served sixteen years' penal servitude, being reprieved after 20,000 persons had urged in a petition that the evidence was sufficient to convict him.
His message to the famous criminologist was smuggled out of Peterhead Convict Prison a few days ago in a most remarkable way. A released convict bore it out concealed in his mouth.
When convicts are due for release, it is a custom for their fellows to give them a "send off" — usually a concert, with farewell cheers and handshakes.
So, a few months ago, a group of prisoners in Peterhead Gaol, Aberdeen shire, waited upon the Governor for permission to give a farewell concert for one of the longest-served then in the place, Oscar Slater, who was seat, in 1900, to penal servitude for life for the murder of a maiden lady, Miss Marion Gilchrist, at Glasgow.
No intimation had been given to Slater that he was to be freed. But he had served 15 years — and it is most unusual for a man to be kept in captivity for a longer term than that, even if he is a reprieved murderer.
Slater? No, was the reply, there was no sign of release for Slater.
The man, grey now and bald, remains at Peterhead, still presenting his innocence to fellow-convicts, and still the subject of argument in the world outside.
There is in Peterhead, as in all penal settlements to-day, a debating class, which the highest class of prisoner is allowed to join.
A few days ago Slater handed a small object to one of his fellows at a debate. The latter was due for release — any day, then, he might be going.
- The tiny object was the size of a peanut. It was of paper — glased paper, containing further paper within.
- Slater asked the man going out to take this pellet out with him.
- "Take it to Conan Doyle," said Slater. "If you are caught with it, I will bear the blame. I can't suffer more than I have."
A day or two later the convict in possession of the pellet was told to prepare himself for release.
He was stripped naked. His clothes were searched. Warders ran their hands over him to ascertain that he was carrying away nothing forbidden.
He was passed, and released.
In the train for Aberdeen he took quietly from his mouth the pellet entrusted to him. No one was watching, so he examined it.
The glased paper forming the outside surface was not damaged. The moisture of his mouth had not penetrated to the inside.
Within was a small sheet of the thinnest tissue paper, not larger than eight inches by six.
Upon it was written the smallest lettering imaginable. The convict, from now and in a commonplace railway compartment, could only see that it was addressed to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
He knew Conan Doyle as the creator of Sherlock Holmes, but he did not know that years before Conan Doyle had written a pamphlet proving to the satisfaction of many sound people that Slater's conviction was a manifest miscarriage of justice.
"The case," he had written, "... originated in a false clue and was supported by most untrustworthy evidence."
The man in the train did not even know where Sir Arthur Conan Doyle lived.
So he trained on to London, and there he wrote a letter, addressed merely in these words:—
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, London.
The Post Office found Sir Arthur swiftly. He was, as it chanced, only just back from abroad , but within two days the ex-convict received a reply from the author's flat near Victoria.
At the meeting the smuggled actes of writing was examined under a microscope.
Slater made no despairing appeal, but in thanking Sir Arthur for all his efforts in the past he betrayed the new hopelessness of mind that had come to him on learning that no release was coming at the normal period of fifteen years.
If anything could be done, he said, he knew Sir Arthur would do it. Meanwhile, the knowledge of "Sherlock Holmes's" efforts to secure justice for him had helped him to endure his long punishment.
- Slater seems to have cared nothing for any additional penalties that might be inflicted upon him for endeavouring to smuggle a letter out of gaol.
"Do all you can! Get it out! Get everyone interested you can!" he enjoined his friend as they parted.
"Never mind what happens to me — it's my innocence that matters."
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is addressing himself once more to the Secretary for Scotland on Slater's behalf.
The victim was an old lady who collected jewellery. She was found dying in her Glasgow flat, and two persons saw a strange man leaving. A passer-by also saw a hurrying man.
The descriptions given by these three witnesses, and by twelve other persons who had seen a loitering stranger, varied widely.
The police heard later that a German Jew of disreputable habits had pawned a diamond brooch similar to one missing from the flat. He had left for America, but was arrested in New York.
He — Oscar Slater — consented to return for trial. It was shown that the pawned brooch was his own, but he was found guilty on the evidence.
However unsavoury Slater's record may have been, independent examiners of the evidence declared that there was nothing to link him with the actual crime.
Slater's case was greatly damaged in the eyes of many people by the fact that he did not go into the witness-box to give evidence on his own behalf. This, as the Conan Doyle pamphlet said, should very properly be taken as a sign of weakness.
In the memorial for reprieve, the prisoner's solicitor said that Slater was all along anxious to give evidence himself, but was advised not to.
Conan Doyle's View
"Cry of One Rotting in a Pit."
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle writer to the Editor of "The People" as follows:— "Sir, — I have heard a cry for help which has moved me. It is like the voice of one who is rotting in some terrible pit, and who utters helpless screams in the hope that come passer-by hear him.
"The voice is that of the man Oscar Slater, and the pit is Peterhead Convict Prison, in which he, an innocent man, has been lying for over fifteen years.
"For he is an innocent man. I proclaimed my conviction upon that point not very long after his condemnation, and all fresh evidence and reflection have confirmed my belief.
"I do not understand how any man can read the story of the trial with attention and come to any other conclusion. Sir Herbert Stephen declared that there was not even a prima facie case against him, and I believe every English jurist would say the same, but he was condemned during one of those waves of hysterical passion when the public in blind indignation at some crime must have a victim.
"As it was, the jury of fifteen condemned him by a vote of nine to six and would certainly not have condemned him at all if the extra evidence which came out before the Commission had been available.
"I have said that he has been in over fifteen years. There is much virtue in that 'over,' for fifteen years is the usual time of release in life sentences in Scotland, if the prisoner has behaved himself well. Why, then, has poor Slater overstayed his time?
"I hope that the present Secretary for Scotland will probe deeply into this matter, brushing aside all formal official excuses. — Yours faithfully.
ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE."
