and Shrabani BASU
The curious case of a Parsee lawyer proved far from elementary for the celebrated author, says
In the spring of 2015, I found myself being politely, but firmly, asked to leave Bonhams auction house in London. It doesn’t happen every day, and I do not have the manner or personality of an anarchist. I had just overstayed my welcome and taken far too many notes. The auctioneers did not approve. The letters I had lost myself in were by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. They were to the chief of Staffordshire police, Captain George A Anson. They dealt with the infamous George Edalji case.
As an author, I have always enjoyed uncovering the forgotten stories of history, particularly those that link Britain and India during the days of the Raj. In 2017 my book Victoria and Abdul, about Queen Victoria’s relationship with a young Indian attendant, was made into a film starring Judi Dench and Ali Fazal.
George Edalji had been on my to-do list even before I wrote that book. In 1907, he became a sensation, when Conan Doyle rose to his defence. It was fascinating for me that the only case investigated personally by Conan Doyle was that of an Indian. I put the project on hold in 2005 when Julian Barnes published a novel based on the case, Arthur & George, but the story continued to grip me and when I heard about the forthcoming sale of previously unseen documents at Bonhams, which included not just the letters from Conan Doyle but police files on the case, I took it as a sign.
Here, finally, was the chance
I’d been waiting for to tell the real history of the case. And what I discovered cast proceedings in an entirely new light. Conan Doyle, it transpired, was nowhere near as smart as his fictional creation, Sherlock Holmes. He was, in fact, led a merry dance by a corrupt police chief – Captain Anson – who completely outfoxed him.
Few today would know the name of George Edalji. The 28-year-old lived in the small mining village of Great Wyrley in Staffordshire. His father, Shapurji Edalji, was a Parsee from India who had converted to Christianity and, in 1876, had become the vicar of Great Wyrley, the first South Asian vicar of a parish in England. His mother, Charlotte, was English. George lived an uneventful life. Every day he caught the train to his office in Birmingham, where he worked as a solicitor.
Then, in 1903, Great Wyrley was gripped by terror. Someone was mutilating horses and cows and leaving them to die. The killer came and went in the dark and the police were unable to catch him. As fear gripped the village, the rumours started circulating. They pointed to the only Indian family in the village and in particular at the dark-skinned, slightly awkward and lonely figure of George. Anonymous letters started circulating, naming him as the “Wyrley Ripper”. Six months into the killings, George was arrested, tried and sentenced to seven years in prison. He said he had never touched a horse in his life.
Three years later George was released on parole. But the conviction hung over him and he was not allowed to practise as a lawyer. In desperation, he wrote to the only person he thought could clear his name – Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes, the most famous detective in the world.
Conan Doyle was intrigued. Why would the son of a vicar, a practising solicitor, want to mutilate cattle? Within days he arranged to meet George at the Grand Hotel in Charing Cross. Conan Doyle was late. As he entered the lobby, he instantly recognised George, the only Indian in the room. George was reading the newspaper, holding it unnaturally close to his face. Conan Doyle waited a moment observing him, taking in every detail of the man accused of such a brutal crime. And then, like his fictional detective, he made a deduction: there was no way someone with such poor eyesight could have crossed the fields on a dark stormy night and slashed cattle. George must be innocent.
From that moment, the young man had an ally in Conan Doyle. The writer threw himself into the case, travelling
to the scene of the crimes in Great Wyrley, interviewing the family and local villagers and reconstructing the story. He learnt that the Edalji family had been persecuted long before the livestock slayings. They had been the subject of anonymous letters, hate mail and abuse since George had been a schoolboy of 12. It convinced him that there asian was a link between the old letters and the new spate of letters and killings.
His last meeting was with the very person who was responsible for the incarceration of George, the chief constable of Staffordshire police, the aristocratic, Harrow-educated son of the Earl of Lichfield, Captain George A Anson. It was clear to him that Anson did not care for the “Hindoo vicar” of Great Wyrley or his “half-caste” son.
Conan Doyle was ready to go to print. In two detailed articles serialised in
The Daily Telegraph in January 1907, he rose to George’s defence, pointing out all the flaws in the trial and accusing the police of prejudice and cover-up. For the first time, he revealed details that had not been brought up at the trial – that George suffered from severe myopia and that he and his family had been subjected to racist abuse for decades. He compared it to the Dreyfus affair in France, which had revealed anti-semitic attitudes in the French police and society, declaring: “The parallel is extraordinary… You have a Parsee instead of a Jew.” It was his Émile Zola “J’accuse” moment. Published on both sides of the Atlantic, it caused a sensation. Fellow writers like JM Barrie and George Bernard Shaw showered Conan Doyle with praise for standing up against a miscarriage of justice.
A rattled Home Office, under Herbert Gladstone, set up a committee to look into the case. The committee cleared George of mutilating animals and gave him a free pardon, but there was a sting in the tail – they held George responsible for writing the anonymous letters (they claimed the handwriting matched George’s handwriting) and refused to give him any compensation. It incensed Conan Doyle who, not unreasonably, pointed out it was absurd to suggest George would write anonymous letters to incriminate himself and that the police’s handwriting expert had made a mistake in an earlier case. He would now focus on finding the killer and take his fight to the head of the Staffordshire police.
To me, Anson was a key player in the case. It was the police records left behind by him that had prompted my visit to Bonhams. Luckily for me, the auctioned papers were bought by Portsmouth Library and I could soon make an appointment to see them. There, in Conan Doyle’s neat handwriting, were letters to Anson from different locations, from his home in Undershaw, to hotels in Europe. He even wrote while on his honeymoon in 1907, showing his obsession with the case. They showed his increasing exasperation with Anson, who continually ignored him.
Anson’s notes revealed startling details: the chief constable had actually set out false trails for Conan Doyle so he could discredit the writer – fake clues and an elaborate hoax with a villager to draw Conan Doyle into a trap. As Conan Doyle spent months working meticulously to uncover the author of the anonymous letters which incriminated George, Anson watched in delight as he walked down the wrong path.
When the unsuspecting Conan Doyle concluded his investigations and named his suspect, Anson triumphantly revealed his tricks to the Home Office and proved him wrong. Desperate to upstage Conan Doyle, Anson repeatedly told the Home Office that Conan Doyle was incapable of investigating a real case and dismissed him as a “fool”.
The police files also disclose that Anson had sent an anonymous letter to George Edalji to allegedly “trap him” before his arrest. When the prosecution lawyer discovered this, they did not let Anson come to the witness box. The jury would have turned, if it was revealed that the police themselves were planting anonymous letters. Conan Doyle remained unaware that Anson, too, had written an anonymous letter.
Ultimately, Conan Doyle’s best efforts could not win compensation for George. The Home Office remained a wall he could not breach. “The sad fact is that the officialdom in England stands solid together, and that when you are forced to attack it, you need not expect justice,” he wrote in his memoirs.
It wasn’t all in vain, however. Thanks to Conan Doyle, George Edalji was readmitted to the Solicitors Roll and allowed to practise again. His case led to the Criminal Appeals Act of 1907, which, for the first time, provided a convicted person with the ability to seek an appeal through the courts. It is probably the biggest legacy of George Edalji, though few today know his name. In 1912, he said: “The police should get rid of the notion that anyone whose name they are unable to spell or pronounce is a foreigner, or that foreigners are most likely to commit such ferocious crimes.” His words seem relevant even today.
Conan Doyle was led a merry dance by a corrupt police chief called Captain Anson