The Murder of Marion Gilchrist: Sherlock Holmes to the Rescue

 

Miss Marion Gilchrist was battered to death in her apartment in Glasgow on 21 December 1908. Miss Gilchrist was eighty-two and what used to be called ‘a maiden lady’. She was looked after by a servant called Helen Lambie and the violent murder happened during the very short time when Helen was out buying a newspaper. Helen was out for as little as ten minutes, yet in that time an assailant managed to get into Miss Gilchrist’s apartment, beat her to death and make off with a small diamond brooch. One peculiarity of this case is that the police discovered that only the one small diamond brooch was stolen, when Marion Gilchrist had a large collection of jewellery.

The family in the apartment underneath Miss Gilchrist’s, the Adams family, heard noises, unusual noises, and Arthur Adams went upstairs to investigate. It had sounded like three knocks on the ceiling. Miss Gilchrist was an old lady and was perhaps in difficulties of some kind, possibly having a stroke or a heart attack or possibly she had fallen over and broken her leg; maybe she was signalling for help. When Mr Adams reached Miss Gilchrist’s door he rang the bell. There was no answer, though he could hear noises inside the apartment. He went downstairs again, but was urged by his sisters to check that Miss Gilchrist really was all right. He went back upstairs and was standing in front of the door when Miss Lambie arrived back from her errand. It was at this moment that they both saw a man down in the hallway of the building. This was a semi-public area, so it did not strike either of them as unusual: perhaps another tenant or a visitor. There was no reason to connect this person with Miss Gilchrist.

Mr Adams told Miss Lambie what he had heard and the two of them went into the apartment. Together they found Miss Gilchrist; she was lying near the fireplace with her head brutally smashed in.

Oscar Slater, the man who emerged as the chief police suspect, had been living in Glasgow for about six weeks with his French girlfriend. He claimed to be a diamond cutter. Whether he was or not, the police – and others – thought he was a ‘bad lot’. This assessment of Slater was based mainly on the lowest of prejudices; Oscar Slater was German, he was Jewish and he had a French mistress – a triple condemnation. But it must be admitted that he was also running an illegal gambling operation.

The day after the murder, Mary Barrowman, a girl of fourteen, told the police that at about the time when the murder had been committed she had bumped into a man hurrying out of the Gilchrist address. Mary described this man as tall, young and wearing a fawn cloak and a round hat. This description was evidently of a different man from the one Mr Adams and Miss Lambie saw. They described their man as ‘about five feet six inches, wearing a light grey overcoat and a black cap’.

The police found out that Oscar Slater tried to sell a pawn-ticket for a diamond brooch just four days after the murder, and assumed that this brooch must be Miss Gilchrist’s brooch. Even more suspicious was the fact that Slater and his girlfriend had then sailed for the United States on board the Lusitania, and Slater had used an assumed name for the passenger list. The police had been under a great deal of public pressure to find the villain who had committed this murder. Within five days they had their man, or at least a man. They cabled the police in the United States to take Slater into custody and then showed a picture of Slater to the three witnesses. The two girls, Helen Lambie and Mary Barrowman, obligingly identified Slater as the man they saw immediately after the murder; Mr Adams did not. It was the two girls who were sent off to the United States, on a free return trip, for the extradition proceedings. The expenses-paid trip to the United States for the girls looks suspiciously like a bribe.

Slater turned out to be very accommodating. He was willing to return to Scotland to answer the accusation. He knew he was innocent, could prove it and was positive that this ‘misunderstanding’ could be cleared up relatively easily. He could not know that the authorities were already determined to pin the murder on him and would stoop to any depth to secure his conviction. He could not know how close he would come to being hanged.

The initial British court hearing was in the Edinburgh High Court on 3 May 1909, over four months after the murder. The police had by this time decided not only that Slater had committed the murder, but that he had committed it with a small hammer that he owned. They had also mustered a dozen witnesses who claimed to have seen Slater near Miss Gilchrist’s apartment on the day of the murder. This was hardly significant as Oscar Slater and Marion Gilchrist lived only four blocks apart.

This evaporation of the evidence against Oscar Slater is another of the hallmarks of his case, especially in view of the apparent determination of the authorities to get a conviction. That Slater should have been seen a number of times on the streets of Glasgow two hundred yards from his own home could hardly be presented as significant evidence tying him to the murder, at least not in any trial that was fair. The pawn ticket turned out to be even weaker evidence against him. The defence lawyer was able to show that the pawn ticket belonged to a brooch pawned several weeks before the murder, so it could not possibly have been the one stolen from Marion Gilchrist. Similarly, the voyage to North America had been booked six weeks before the murder; it was very far from being a moonlight flit.

Slater said in court that he had been at home with his girlfriend and her servant at the time when the murder was committed. This alibi was simply swept aside. The Lord Advocate, Alexander Ure, decided that Slater must be hanged. The jury was not so sure. It was not a unanimous verdict, but a majority found him guilty. Oscar Slater was sentenced to be hanged on 27 May 1909.

There was widespread public disquiet about the verdict, and about the evident determination of the authorities to pin the murder on Slater. A petition for clemency was launched immediately, raising 20,000 signatures. Two days before the execution was due to take place, the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment, with hard labour. Slater escaped the gallows. He had his life, but he still had to endure a cruel and unjust sentence. Naturally he wanted to prove his innocence and get out of prison. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had read about the Oscar Slater case some years later in the book Notable Scottish Trials and had been struck then by the fact that Slater had been convicted on suspicion based on no more than prejudice; it had been based on no solid evidence whatever. Doyle did not approve of Slater as a person. He thought him a reprobate, but he was sure he had not committed the murder for which he was convicted.

It proved a long, slow process and many people felt that even if he had not committed the murder he probably had something to do with it. He was an unpleasant person and he was generally regarded as immoral. Doyle took his time. He spent three years thoroughly researching the case and in 1912 produced a book called The Case of Oscar Slater. It went through all the evidence raised against Slater at his trial and showed, detail by detail, how it simply could not be made to prove Oscar Slater’s guilt.

The matter of the assumed name, for instance, was less suspicious than it was made to appear in court for the simple reason that Slater was travelling with his mistress. Slater was trying to avoid being detected by his wife, not evading the police. Slater had indeed possessed a small hammer as mentioned in the trial, but it was far too small to have inflicted the wounds on Miss Gilchrist’s head. Doyle said that a forensic investigator at the crime scene had declared that a large chair, which was found dripping with blood after the crime, seemed by far the likeliest murder weapon. The matter of Miss Gilchrist opening the door and letting someone she knew into her apartment strongly suggested that the murderer was well known to her in some capacity or other. Oscar Slater and Marion Gilchrist did not know one another at all. Everything pointed away from Oscar Slater as the murderer.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s book raised a storm of indignation against the injustice that had been done against Slater. Now many people were ready to demand either a pardon or a retrial. But the authorities were adamant that nothing was going to be changed. Even Doyle’s book made no difference as far as they were concerned. Then, much later, in 1925, William Gordon was released from Peterhead Prison; unknown to the authorities, Gordon was carrying a desperate message written on greaseproof paper, hidden under his tongue. The desperate message was Oscar Slater’s cry for help to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Slater hoped to reactivate his old ally and enlist his help in getting justice for him.

Doyle was moved by this desperate plea and tried once again to help Slater. He fired off a fusillade of letters. But there was no new evidence that Doyle or Slater knew of. They were no further forward.

But even after this long period, it was possible for new information to emerge. In 1927 a new book about the case came out, The Truth About Oscar Slater, written by William Park, a Glasgow journalist. Park decided, just as Doyle had done, that Miss Gilchrist had known her murderer and went on to speculate that Miss Gilchrist had had a disagreement with the man about a document that she possessed. Park inferred this from the fact that Miss Gilchrist’s documents had been disturbed and rummaged through, presumably by the murderer. During the argument she was pushed and hit her head. Her attacker then had to decide. He could leave Marion Gilchrist to recover and then probably have him charged with assault – or he could make sure she did not recover, in other words kill her. He decided to kill. The laws of libel made William Park hesitate and stop short of naming the killer, but he clearly believed that this was a family squabble, and that it was Miss Gilchrist’s nephew who had murdered her.

The book was a sensation. The newspapers were full of the story and it was then that significant new information – or information long withheld – started to come out. A grocer called MacBrayne confirmed Slater’s alibi; he had actually seen Slater on his own doorstep at the time of the murder, when he had said he was at home. Mary Barrowman and Helen Lambie were traced. Now they were ready to admit that they had been bribed and coached by the police to make a false identification. One cannot help wondering how many innocent people, over the centuries, have been sent to their deaths or to long prison sentences by bribed perjurers like these two women.

The official records show that several police officers perjured themselves, deliberately lying in order to make the case against Slater stick. One police officer stood out as a man of integrity throughout, and that was Detective Lieutenant John Trench. He said he didn’t believe Helen Lambie’s identification. Trench’s persistence led to a closed (ie secret) enquiry into the police conduct of the case in 1914. The enquiry merely protected the existing state of affairs by announcing that there were ‘no grounds for recommending that the conviction be overturned.’

Trench had been concerned about the Slater case for several years. Dismissed by the Chief Constable and hung out to dry by the Secretary of State, he could see no way forward – other than to go public. He consulted a lawyer, David Cook, and a journalist, William Park. Before he went further, Trench wanted to protect himself against further reprisals and approached Dr Devon, who was one of the Prison Commissioners. Devon was impressed by the evidence and wrote to McKinnon Wood on Trench’s behalf. Wood replied on 13 February that he would give Trench’s written statement his ‘best consideration’ – weasel words that meant nothing.

For stepping out of line, he was victimized by fellow officers and suspended from the force on 14 July 1914. The specific reason given for his suspension was that he had, without the express permission of his Chief Constable, communicated with persons outside the police force information he had acquired in the course of his duty. On 14 September, Glasgow magistrates found Trench guilty as charged and he was dismissed from the police force. Trench thought he had acted properly in passing information to the Secretary of State for Scotland, McKinnon Wood, and accordingly wrote to him to say that he saw ‘your invitation to send the information and your acceptance thereof as ample protection against any breach of discipline.’ McKinnon did not reply.

War broke out and (the now elderly) Trench joined up as a drill instructor. He was preparing to leave with his regiment for the Dardanelles when he was arrested on a charge of handling stolen property. The lawyer David Cook was arrested simultaneously on the same charge. Clearly the vendetta and the corruption were continuing. Trench and Cook were acquitted in August. The judge directed the jury, ‘There is no justification at all which would enable you to return a verdict of guilty.’ The episode nevertheless did frighten Trench and Cook into making no further comment about the Oscar Slater case. Trench died at the age of fifty in 1919 and Cook died two years afterwards. Neither of them really recovered psychologically from their betrayal by the police force.

But as the trickle of new information, especially about the Barrowman and Lambie evidence, was published in the newspapers it became impossible for the authorities to keep Slater in prison any longer. On 8 November 1927, the Secretary of State for Scotland issued a statement: ‘Oscar Slater has now completed more than eighteen and a half years of his life sentence, and I have felt justified in deciding to authorize his release on licence as soon as suitable arrangements can be made.’ A few days later, Oscar Slater was released, though not pardoned.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle despaired at the sheer wickedness of the Scottish authorities who refused to admit that they had been wrong. But he also despaired of Slater. It says much about Conan Doyle’s probity that he was prepared to put himself to considerable trouble and expense to help a man he really disliked intensely. Because Slater was released but not pardoned, his case had to be reopened and re-tried if he was to be exonerated. It would be only then that Slater could apply for compensation for the eighteen years of wrongful imprisonment.

Conan Doyle and others gave money so that Slater could pay the legal fees. In the end, Slater was cleared of all the charges brought against him and awarded £6,000 in compensation. Conan Doyle naturally assumed Slater would pay back his supporters for the legal fees they had given him, which is what the honourable Sir Arthur would have done in the same circumstances. But Slater was embittered by his time in prison, and resented the fact that he had been put in a position where he had been forced to buy a re-trial; he should not have been asked to pay anything. He regarded the £6,000 as his. Conan Doyle was a wealthy man and did not really need to have back the £1,000 he had put into Slater’s fund, but he was shocked that Slater was not prepared to pay him back. Slater was not an honourable man. Conan Doyle wrote to Slater, ‘You seem to have taken leave of your senses. If you are indeed responsible for your actions, then you are the most ungrateful as well as the most foolish person whom I have ever known.’

When Oscar Slater died in 1949, the newspaper notice read, ‘Oscar Slater Dead at 78, Reprieved Murderer, Friend of A. Conan Doyle’. Conan Doyle and many other people had gone to a lot of trouble to prove that Slater was not a reprieved murderer. They had gone to a lot of trouble to prove that he was not a murderer at all. It is doubtful whether Conan Doyle ever thought of Slater as a friend, either. But then, not everything we read in the newspapers is true.

Oscar Slater certainly did not kill Marion Gilchrist, but somebody did. Who was the real murderer? Nobody knows who killed Miss Gilchrist. It remains a great unsolved crime, though several theories have been floated. There are some significant pieces of evidence that point to the possible motive and the curious ‘coincidence’ of Helen Lambie’s popping out to buy a newspaper just when the murderer was about to call.

Marion Gilchrist was well off. She had collected jewellery for years. By the time she was murdered she had a collection worth £3,000 then, and probably worth £60,000 in today’s money. To build this collection, she often bought from shady backstreet dealers. It may possibly have been one of these who attacked her. Helen Lambie also revealed that she was expected to make herself scarce whenever one of these less than legitimate dealers was due to call. Was there rather more than coincidence to Helen Lambie’s absence from the building at the time of the murder? Had she been asked to make herself scarce by Miss Gilchrist so that she could have a confidential conversation with a caller she was expecting? Or was she asked to make herself scarce for the murderer himself? Either way, it seems likely that Helen Lambie knew more about the situation than she ever revealed.

The murderer was also able to let himself in with his own door key, or was let in by Miss Gilchrist; either way, he must have been well known to the old lady, probably a regular dealer, a friend, or a relative who hoped to inherit. Maybe the theft of the brooch was meant to put the police off the scent and make them think the motive was robbery, when the real motive was something else, such as inheritance. And that brings us back to William Park’s intriguing theory about the unnamed nephew.