You could call it, literally, word of mouth. A friendly fellow-convict coming up for release from Peterhead smuggles a stub of indelible pencil to Oscar, who, in turn, contrives to obtain a little strip of transparent glazed paper from the prison’s book-binding shop. Tongue tip pressed to teeth, eyes screwed into tight focus, Oscar traces minusculely upon a scrap of tissue-paper a message. He covers the microscopically inscribed fragment with glazed paper, rolls it into a solid ball, coats it with glue filched from the joiner’s shop, then binds it with a second layer of glazed paper to make it into a saliva-proof pellet. This pellet is duly passed to the ticket-of-leave man. He carefully secretes it under his tongue, where it will remain undetected by warders who scrutinise everything before, finally, the great gates swing open for him.
True to his whispered promise, that nameless convict delivered the little ball of writing to Conan Doyle. It bore no fresh evidence, only a humble and desperate appeal for help. This was Oscar’s sixteenth year of imprisonment.1
Sir Arthur was not the man to allow so abject and ingeniously delivered a cry to go unanswered. The knightly sword flashed forth once more from its well-oiled scabbard, as it had done fully nine or ten years before, and with the mightier pen the old warrior addressed a frank missive to the Secretary for Scotland, no longer the implacable McKinnon Wood, but Sir John Gilmour.
The man has now served 15 years, which is, as I understand, the usual limit of a life sentence in Scotland when the prisoner behaves well. I would earnestly entreat your kind personal attention to this case, which is likely to live in the annals of criminology.
And in the following day’s Evening Standard (3 February 1925), as though by sympathetic magic, another knight, Sir Herbert Stephen, a distinguished jurist, rallied to Sir Arthur’s new-broken pennant:
He [Slater] was sentenced to death and has been punished ever since … upon evidence on which I suppose no bench of magistrates in England would make an order for the destruction of a terrier which was alleged to have bitten somebody.
There was, too, a third, and most important, lance-bearer hastening to the colours: William Park, a Glasgow journalist, than whose description by Peter Hunt2 as that ‘strange, self-tortured fanatic, whose avowed intent it was to disembowel the Glasgow police’ cannot be bettered. Never through all the long years had Park – Trench and Cook’s friend and co-agitator – abandoned the fray; but for lack of success hope had atrophied, and he had grown grizzled and bitter. Now he wrote to Conan Doyle.
Doyle had actually been acquainted with the fiery Mr Park since as long ago as 1918, and his respect for Park’s tenacity of purpose is unquestionable – although his description of Park as possessed of ‘tact and discretion’ is unquestionably questionable!
Park was a warm-hearted hothead. It was, however, because of Doyle’s faith in him and his unflagging encouragement that Park persisted, against all the odds, with the writing of his projected book on the case of Oscar Slater. Sadly, those odds included, as well as the bottle, his marriage. The latter, if not the former, he managed without too much difficulty to relinquish; the parting did not upset the equilibrium of Park’s obsession. The book, into which he poured all the very essence of himself, the fruit of laborious thought, heroic concentration, infinite and infinitesimal research, was to be the one solid achievement of his life; the beaverishly putting-together of the definitive querulous volume.
The great work was long in gestation, but by the end of 1926, with the help of his sister, Helen, with whom he was living at Mains House, Ballantrae, in a remote and beautiful sea-washed corner of Ayrshire, he had finished it. The book was to be lovingly accouched by Conan Doyle, who had vetted the manuscript carefully throughout the period of its composition. After a spell of acting as unpaid, unsuccessful literary agent, Doyle determined to publish the book himself, from the Psychic Bookshop which he had established at No. 2 Victoria Street, within the shadow of Westminster Abbey. Entitled The Truth About Oscar Slater, the book appeared on 27 July 1927.
One indisputable claim may be made on behalf of Mr Park: that he never permitted moderation to disfigure his prejudices. His book was one elongated polemic. But there can be no gainsaying that he delivered a series of masterstrokes in Slater’s defence, punching home point after unanswerable point in support of his innocence, and exposing foul ploy after foul ploy on the parts of those seeking to make obvious his guilt. Absolutely fearless. Absolutely – blinkeredly – honest. Indeed, part of the power of Park’s book stems from the very fact that it is prejudiced; just as the power of Ure’s speech came from the biased construction he put on matters vis-à-vis Slater. It is when Park abandons the defence side of the table and makes his way over to prosecute his unnamed – for reasons of defamation – suspect-elect that, in his determined placing of the blame elsewhere, soul and conscience betray him into a piece of very special pleading – persuasive, clever, but blind to the fact that it is, in its entirely different direction, every bit as prejudicially dishonest as Ure’s presentation. Park ends up doing to another – Dr Charteris – precisely what he is dedicated to condemning in those who attacked and abused Slater.
Soapbox orators must make sure that their soapboxes are sound. Several of Park’s planks were worm-eaten. The book contains sundry infelicities, repetitions, and such minor errors as calling Miss Birrell instead Miss Burrell, and stating that Lambie went out for a newspaper every evening. But there are also major blunders not to be easily excused in one so blastingly critical of the motes of others. Blithely he ignores – or is it fails to recognise? – that Lambie’s statement on the night of the murder that she would be unable to identify the man who passed so briskly out of the lobby chimes ill with his contention that she recognised him as Dr Charteris. Futilely, he alleges police subterfuge over the brooch clue and Allan McLean, ignoring the fact that McLean’s precognition, sworn on 31 December 1908, plainly says that ‘Mr Oscar’ fitted the description of the man in the newspapers. Gamely he persists in his denunciations, some justified, others without a shred of proof to sustain them, of all who seem in thought, word or deed to oppose what he believes, no, knows, to be right.
And the extraordinary thing is that the cumulative effect provides the illusion of being overwhelming, total truth. But start to break it down and, like a conjurer’s trick explained, the magic vanishes; which is not to detract from the overall importance of what Park had to say, and the way that he said it, but merely to underline that the gospel according to Park is not, nor should be, invested with the authority of holy writ.
Writing in the shadow of the coming event, the Glasgow Evening News of 25 July 1927, alerted its readers:
Controversy over the trial and conviction will be revived with the publication by Mr William Park of The Truth About Oscar Slater. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle has written a gripping introduction … Now, after nineteen years, Mr Park makes known the evidence of a party hitherto unknown in the case. She makes the claim that she was an eye-witness in West Princes Street at the precise moment when the assailant rushed from the stairway. The man, she is prepared to swear, was not Oscar Slater.
In the course of a trenchant appeal for a public inquiry Sir Arthur makes startling allegations against persons in high authority. Says Sir Arthur: Judge Guthrie is to blame because he did not bring out the points which would have thrown light on the truth. The Lord Advocate is to blame because his speech was a heated and unmeasured one, containing statements which were errors in fact. Witnesses were to blame who allowed their testimony to vary at different times and stages of the proceedings. Each successive Secretary of State for Scotland is to blame because he did not use his own independent mind to find out an obvious truth. Sheriff Millar is to blame for the conduct of the white-washing committee of 1914; but above all the Procurator-fiscal and the police, who had the conduct of the case, are those who bear the heaviest load.
It was the Glasgow force which was to receive the first fierce burst from Park’s unspiked guns – a commentary without inhibition upon the poor work done in preliminary investigation, their going off after the brooch and a burglar, their omitting to give sufficient attention to such important questions as mode of entrance, the nature of the fatal weapon and the significance of the searching of the private papers.
One must tread carefully, though, in Park’s enthusiastic footprints, for he takes certain imaginative liberties. For instance, in describing the stranger in the hall he writes of his ‘affecting a courteous and pleasant smile’. There is no evidence for this in either Adams’ or Lambie’s statements. But it goes to implant the vision of a suave and gentlemanly rather than a Bill Sikes-ish intruder, which coincides with Park’s private view as to the identity of the assailant. Dr Charteris.
Consider Lambie’s behaviour when she saw the man in the hall … and Park is off banging his personal drum again. Her ‘attitude of apathy and unconcern was incomprehensible, unless we assume that the appearance or knowledge of the man suggested to her mind the absence of sinister motive or evil design on his part’. Dr Charteris.
Park draws attention to a question asked of Lambie by Slater’s attorney in New York: ‘Who opened the door?’ Her answer: ‘Miss Gilchrist must have opened the door.’ Implication: the visitor was someone whom she knew. Dr Charteris.
Park is besotted with his suspicion of Dr Charteris.
Having dismissed the validity of the police’s so-called brooch clue, and the consequently unjustifiable cable to New York requesting that Slater be held on the evidence of the pawn-ticket, and having disposed of the rationality of the charging of Slater as a murderer on the demonstrably ludicrous grounds of his having absconded, Park moves on to what he stigmatises as the third and worst blunder; that of the alleged recognition of Slater as ‘the man’ by a heterogeny of eye-witnesses. He then proceeds to produce an eye-witness of his own.
He says:
One of the purposes of this publication is to make known the evidence of a party hitherto unheard of in the case who makes the claim that she was an eye-witness in West Princes Street on the night of the murder at the precise moment when the assailant rushed from the stairway at Miss Gilchrist’s flat and reached the street, a party covering in her observation the time and place claimed by the girl Barrowman. This witness, a woman who at the time in question was engaged as a Restaurateur in Glasgow … was prevented … from giving her evidence at the trial … It is her statement … that Oscar Slater positively was not that man.
Park goes on to say that the woman paid a visit to Mr Shaughnessy and made a statement.
At a later date Mr Shaughnessy handed the writer, in journalistic capacity, a copy of the statement … The writer has recently traced the witness and obtained from her confirmation of her original statement and repeated also an expression of her willingness to give evidence before any tribunal that may be set up.
It is, asserts Park, an assumption by the public that the evidence which emerges during the hearing of a great murder trial constitutes the sum total that has been ascertained. In the Slater case, however, we are sharply confronted with the displeasing fact that the evidence submitted to the Court covered only part of the actually known circumstances of the crime and the relation to it of the accused. There was much of material importance to the ascertainment of the truth that was rejected, while much in the hands of the police that was material to the safety of the prisoner was unknown to the defence.
Observes Park:
Considering the long distance we have travelled through a jungle of confusions and blunders, one would expect when one arrives at the trial in the highest criminal tribunal in Scotland there should at last be only firm, sure ground of fact undisturbed by the admission of error.
He proceeds then to a positively scarifying analysis and enumeration of the appalling catalogue of errors and misfortunate utterances perpetrated and emitted by both the Lord Advocate and the trial judge, concluding ‘We do not find in the case a single incident or circumstance in which the prisoner’s position was justly presented to the Court.’
The book caused an immediate sensation. The reception accorded by the reviewers was more or less uniformly favourable, indeed laudatory, and posterity would seem to have echoed that general acclamation. Nearly fifty years ago, Peter Hunt thought it
admirably lucid, clear enough for the most befuddled mind to follow. Page by page the Slater case is torn to bits until the reader is left with his hair standing on end in bewilderment that such an injustice could be possible in twentieth-century Britain. Park missed nothing; he did not stretch any statement beyond its meaning.
This is not a judgment with which, in the light of further and fuller research, a light powered by the examination of previously confidential papers and hidden-away archives, I find it possible to concur. By this new light one cannot help but perceive grievous flaws in the arguments of Park’s unshakable prejudices. He is a terrier with a rat in his mouth, and, even if it happens to be the wrong rat, he will not let go.
A shock wave registering high on the Slaterian Richter scale was generated by the Empire News of 7 August 1927.
‘Discovery of a “Dead” Witness’ ran the headline. Then … the announcement. An Empire News Special Commissioner had filed ‘surprising information to the effect that Helen Lambie, reported to have died some years ago, is alive under her marriage name in America’.
The Empire News had, it said, the name and address of the man who had given them the information that Lambie was definitely alive less than a month ago, and added, ‘in the interests of justice that name will be handed over if it is calculated to be of any assistance and official application is made for it’.
As far back as February 1925 it had been stated – in an article by Lovat Fraser in the Sunday Pictorial – that Lambie had died since the trial. Now, in the Daily Express of 16 September 1927 came further confirmation that Nellie was ‘alive and well’ and living with her husband, Mr Ronald Gillon, a Scottish miner, working near Pittsburgh, in the United States.
‘Mrs Gillon would be quite willing to return to this country for any inquiry into the case ordered by the Government. She is in weekly touch by letter with her mother and sisters, who live in the little Lanarkshire village of Holytown.’
The Daily News of 30 September reported that they had sent a cable to the editor of the Pittsburgh Press, and that
throughout last week [he] used every method of publicity American newspapers know how to adopt in order to trace Mrs Gillan [sic]. Broadcast appeals were made by radio, and announcements displayed in the morning and evening newspapers, but without success.
Helen, late of Holytown, was lying low.
A telegram to No. 12 Belgrave Crescent, Edinburgh, on 22 October 1927, was how they brought the good news from Doyle to Roughead.
Lambie confesses her error in Empire News tomorrow.
This should end case. Doyle.
And, sure enough, Sunday’s paper contained a long article, ‘Why I Believe I Blundered Over Slater!’ by Helen Lambie.
She was alleged to have written:
It has been said and denied that when first questioned by the police … I mentioned the name of a man who was in the habit of visiting [my mistress]. It is quite true that I did so because the strange man coming from the house … did not seem strange to me. Otherwise, I should have wanted to know more about his presence there, and certainly would have examined his features more closely.
When I told the police the name of the man I thought I recognised they replied ‘Nonsense! You don’t think he could have murdered and robbed your mistress!’ They scoffed so much at the notion of this man being the one I had seen that I allowed myself to be persuaded that I had been mistaken. The persistence of the police that I was mistaken so shook my own faith in my own judgment that it was easy for me to be convinced against my will that I was mistaken and that it was really Slater I had seen.
The man I thought I saw coming out of the flat had been visiting Miss Gilchrist on another occasion, and I happened to mention his name to my mistress afterwards. She flew into a temper with me and told me if I ever displayed the slightest curiosity about any of her visitors she would discharge me without a character.
Lambie was even more specific:
I am convinced that the man I saw was better dressed and of a better station in life than Slater.
She also said:
I have thought over the case a good deal, and before leaving Scotland I expressed my willingness to give any assistance necessary to a new inquiry that I was told had been ordered. I was told that my evidence would not be wanted.
Conan Doyle immediately, and ill-advisedly, went right over the top.
On being shown the amazing document published here, Sir Arthur declared that it was of ‘enormous importance’. On reading it through, he commented, ‘It completely knocks the bottom out of the case against Slater.’
Then, ‘for exclusive publication in the Empire News’, he solemnly penned the following:
I have read the document, which, I understand, comes direct from Helen Lambie, and can be certified by an affidavit from the interviewer … it is not too much to say that it must mark the end of the Oscar Slater case. I may say that there is nothing which Lambie says here which I did not see, and describe, in my book, published in 1912.
That very Sunday, Doyle wrote off to Sir John Gilmour – Secretary of State for Scotland – enclosing a copy of the Empire News:
In this she [Helen Lambie], the chief witness against Slater, tells us that at the time she recognised the murderer, that it was not Slater, and that she was bullied and cajoled by the police into making statements against her own convictions. I find that the journalist who saw her is a man of repute, and as to the truth of the statement it is not likely that the woman would invent what is so prejudicial to herself.
I have, I may say, failed to find any evidence that Doyle ever discovered who the journalist who claimed to have interviewed Mrs Gillon was.
A letter from Ramsay MacDonald, a former Prime Minister and now Leader of the Opposition, arrived at the Scottish Office on 25 October. Addressed to Sir John Gilmour, it opened with the words, ‘You will now have seen that to all intents and purposes the Slater case has ended.’
This did not at all accord with the Scottish Office view and a letter was sent off post-haste to the Lord Advocate, the Rt Hon William Watson, KC, MP. ‘I enclose a copy of a letter from Mr Ramsay MacDonald … The opening sentence is presumably based upon the authenticity and the conclusiveness of the statements attributed to Helen Lambie in the Empire News … ’
Writing to the Lord Advocate again the following day, Mr P J Rose, of the Scottish Office in Whitehall, observed: ‘The Empire News article contains passages which cast doubt on its genuineness.’ He referred in particular to the part in which Lambie speaks of having, before she left Scotland, indicated her willingness to give any assistance that she could to a new inquiry which had, she was informed, been ordered. ‘I was told that my evidence would not be wanted,’ she had apparently written.
Rose pointed out that
Helen Lambie made a statement before Mr Gardner Millar in 1914 and must be aware of that fact. It does not appear that the author of the statement in the Empire News is aware of that fact. There is no reference in the rest of the article to her appearance before Mr Gardner Millar.
This is powerfully indicative of the dubious validity of the Empire News piece.
Away in Ballantrae, happily oblivious of any dubieties as to the genuineness of the Empire News’ scoop, Lambie and her confession, William Park, positively beside himself, dashed off, on 27 October, a letter of great joy to Roughead. ‘It is all very wonderful … I think that the statement is perfectly genuine.’ Then the Park paranoia raises its multi-tentacled head: ‘The only fear I have is that Charteris and Birrell may send out someone to get her to contradict – that it was a journalistic stunt, etc. I have written the Editor to get an affidavit on its accuracy. Gilmour’s silence is contemptible.’
By this time, certain other sections of the press were veering towards cynicism. ‘It would be interesting to know,’ commented the Glasgow Weekly Herald of 29 October , ‘who was the interviewer and how much of the article is Lambie’s own, and how much of it was put into her mouth.’ The same day’s Evening Times announced that Helen Lambie had not responded to an appeal to come forward, and that steps taken by the Daily News to trace her in America had failed.
Undeniably, things were beginning to look a bit fishy.
By the beginning of November, Gilmour and the Lord Advocate, who had bumped into one another in the New Club in Edinburgh, had agreed that it would be of advantage to ‘try to verify the statement that Miss Lambie is alive’, and were wondering if they might ask Scotland Yard to investigate the matter for them; or, tact posed the question, would it be necessary to work through Glasgow?
‘I fancy,’ wrote Gilmour to Lamb, on 2 November, ‘Scotland Yard could get to the root of affairs more rapidly.’
In a handwritten letter to Lord Advocate Watson, a clearly sceptical Lamb opines:
I think we ought to write to the Empire News asking them to give us any evidence in their possession bearing on the authenticity of the statement and, if they have it, the address of Lambie.
He then, significantly, adds:
On the face of it, the statement does not appear to be genuine. There is no mention of Lambie’s appearance before Gardiner [sic] Millar … Now Lambie could not possibly have forgotten that she gave evidence in the Millar inquiry. The whole thing looks like a fake.
In the heel of it, it was, for whatever reason, decided that they would not write to the Empire News.
That newspaper’s Special Commissioner, returning to the fray, demanded in its issue of 6 November:
What is the attitude of the Government regarding the claims put forward by the Empire News for a reinvestigation of the Oscar Slater case now? Helen Lambie told the world through the Empire News that she had reason to revise the evidence she gave at the trial condemning Slater. She raised the doubt as to identity, and Slater must be given the benefit of this doubt, according to British law. This evidence, seeing that the British Consul in Pittsburg [sic] has been in touch with Helen Lambie and has told her to be prepared for a journey to England when called upon, could already have been taken on oath.
Now that Helen Lambie has broken silence, why is it that the authorities, as represented by the British Consul in Pittsburg [sic], should go out of their way to apply ‘hush hush’ principles regarding what she may have felt disposed further to say to the Press? How can the interests of Slater, imprisoned all these years while the authorities could have found Helen Lambie and Mary Barrowman whenever they wished, be served by asking Helen Lambie not to make any further public statements to the newspapers. Who is this caution and muzzle exercised on behalf of if not Slater?
On 7 November, Conan Doyle, picking up on the Empire News’ revelation that Lambie had been called upon by the British Consul or his representative at Pittsburgh, begged to remark upon the fact that he had ‘either persuaded or intimidated Lambie into saying no more concerning her false identification of Slater. I would wish to know on whose authority this impediment was placed in the way of truth.’
And, also on 7 November, a draft of a letter of reply to be sent from Sir John Gilmour to Doyle was put together.
I have read the article in the Empire News of 23 October which you forwarded with your letter of 23 October regarding a statement alleged to have been made by Helen Lambie in America on the case of Oscar Slater. I observe that you accept this article as an accurate version of a statement which has actually been made by Helen Lambie who figured as a witness in the Slater case.
I am anxious to receive and to consider any fresh evidence bearing on the case and I need scarcely say that it is incumbent on anyone who has such evidence to supply it to me. I should be glad, therefore, if you could cause me to be furnished with the document which purports to be a statement by Helen Lambie and with any evidence that exists that the document was written by her. I should also be glad to be furnished with information as to her present address and circumstances and as to her history and movements since the Slater trial, giving in particular the date on which she left this country for America.
In this connection I note that on page 13 of your preface to Mr Park’s book you imply that the witness Helen Lambie has died since the trial.3
That same Monday – 7 November 1927 – Doyle despatched to the Scottish Office ‘another document which bears directly upon this matter. The lady in question, a former employer of Helen Lambie, desires that her name should for the time be kept private’.
What had happened was that, pursuant to a letter received from a Mrs Agnes M. Guthrie, William Park and his sister had travelled to Giffnock, Renfrewshire – some five and a half miles south of Glasgow – to see her.
Mrs Guthrie told them that from 1903-5 she had employed Helen Lambie as a maid. ‘I found her a very good domestic worker, but most illiterate, of rather a low mentality, very cunning and not at all trustworthy in her standards.’ In the summer of 1905 Lambie left and went to work for Miss Gilchrist. Then, suddenly, one Sunday evening in 1908, a week or a fortnight before the murder, Lambie appeared at Mrs Guthrie’s house.
I asked her, ‘When you are out, would Miss Gilchrist open the door if anyone came to it?’ Her reply was, ‘Miss Gilchrist would never open the door. She never opens the door. To me she only opens when I give her a signal we have pre-arranged.’ I asked her if she had any gentleman visitors. Her answer was, ‘Only two – the Elder and the lawyer’
On a subsequent visit to Mrs Guthrie’s, a day or two after the murder, Lambie, in reply to a question, told Mrs Guthrie that she would not recognise the man who passed her in the hall.
She went on to say that the man held his head down (she acted the attitude to me) and that she had not seen his face. On this point she was most emphatic, leaving no room for doubt as to her inability to identify. I reminded her that she had previously informed me that Miss Gilchrist would on no account open the door without receiving the signal. She instantly burst into a fury and denied absolutely that she had ever told me anything of the kind. I was staggered at what was nothing else than a deliberate falsehood. Lambie did not wish to carry on the conversation further. Almost at once she got up and left the house. The impression I felt was that she knew all about it and knew the man.
Lambie never returned to see Mrs Guthrie again.
Official feeling with regard to Doyle’s two letters of 7 November was that a bare acknowledgment of receipt by the Private Secretary might be the best course. ‘The suggestion that the British Consul or his representative at Pittsburgh has been intimidating Helen Lambie is almost too grotesque to call for a denial.’
Doyle wrote to ‘Dear Sir John’ on 8 November, replying to
your note marked ‘Urgent’ … I was glad to read the ‘Urgent’. Three months have elapsed since the book4 was sent in, and that extra time has been added to this innocent man’s sufferings. In regard to your questions the report of Helen Lambie’s death was universally accepted in Scotland. It would be interesting to know who spread it. It certainly had the effect of heading off those who might wish to question her. It was only by chance that we found out that she was alive … The internal evidence of her confession is quite conclusive to me … but when applied to to take an affidavit she said she had been called upon by the British Consul, or his representative, and warned to say no more. If this be so the Government must have her address – but I could no doubt get it from the Editor of the Empire News. Steps are being taken to get an affidavit from the journalist, who is, I am told, a man of some standing.
He may well have been, but it has proved impossible to discover any record of his having stood up to be counted in this rather weird transaction. His identity remains to this day another ‘Slater case mystery’. All in all, there seems small doubt that the Empire News’ Lambie ‘confession’ was bogus.5
The last flickerings of the dying-down flames of this heated controversy illumine the pages of a draft reply to Doyle’s latest, prepared for Sir John Gilmour.
You remark upon the fact that Helen Lambie had been called upon by the British Consul … who has either persuaded or intimidated Lambie … and you wish to know on whose authority this impediment was placed in the way of truth. In your further letter of the 8th inst. you repeat this suggestion by saying that when applied to to take an affidavit she said that she had been called upon by the British Consul … and warned to say no more.
I say emphatically that I know of no foundation whatever for these allegations. I am unaware of Lambie’s address, or of anything that has happened to her since her appearance as a witness in the 1914 inquiry.
No later than the 7th inst. I wrote to you asking for information as to Lambie’s address, for other particulars about her which would enable me to secure and consider any fresh evidence bearing on the case. I felt that I was entitled to expect that you would be in possession of facts to justify your acceptance of the authenticity of a statement made by a person hitherto generally believed to be dead, and that you would be willing to assist me by producing these facts. In this respect I must confess that I find your letter of the 8th inst. disappointing.
The foregoing shows the content of the official mind and surely underlines how far short of the standard set by Sherlock Holmes his creator fell. Doyle knew nothing. He had been accepting uncorroborated ‘facts’ for the truth – as which they were being presented to him.
But that draft reply from Gilmour was never posted. The reply that was sent to Doyle on 16 November was briefer and blander.
Sir,
I am directed by the Secretary of State to acknowledge your two letters of the 7th instant...and your further letter of the 8th instant.
As you are no doubt aware from the answers given in Parliament on the 15th instant, it is contemplated that the case will be referred to the Court of Criminal Appeal in Scotland and that being so the Secretary of State does not feel that he can properly make any further observations in regard to the various statements and representations which you have advanced in the above mentioned, and in previous, letters.
I am, Sir,
Your obedient servant
John Lamb
Acutely aware of Slater’s racial background and antecedents, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had addressed the Jewish community in a letter published on 9 September 1927, in the Jewish Chronicle.
There was an official promise that the book [The Truth About Oscar Slater] would be read, but nearly two months have passed, and we get no definite answer from the Scottish Office. If an inquiry should be refused in the face of the unanimous public demand, it would mean that those officials were not our servants and delegates, but our masters, who are prepared to sacrifice justice in order to cover their own scandalous errors.
In the first weeks of September, Doyle had approached Ramsay MacDonald, sending him a copy of Park’s book, and by 15 September he had heard from MacDonald, who had looked through the book and written to his late Lord Advocate, Hugh Patison Macmillan, seeking his opinion and advice. ‘I expect any day to hear from him,’ he told Doyle. ‘As soon as I do so I intend to get in touch with the Secretary of State for Scotland, but I wanted to be quite sure of my ground before doing so.’
Macmillan, who, interestingly enough, had in the earliest days of his career at the Scottish Bar devilled for Lord Guthrie, must have replied both swiftly and decisively, for on 26 September MacDonald wrote again to Doyle: ‘I have been going further into the case and am quite convinced that this man has received a most horrible injustice and that the matter must be wound up, not only by releasing him, but by clearing him.’ Sagacious politician that he was, MacDonald could not resist adding the cautionary rider: ‘What further steps can be taken to indemnify him and to carry the charge into other channels, is another matter.’
There can be no question about it, public disquiet was increasing, approaching steadily that volume where something had to be done. And, in acknowledging this, one should acknowledge also the trinity whose work and efforts over the years had brought it about: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who, in 1912, wrote the first pamphleteering defence of Slater; William Park, who, 15 years on, and backed by Conan Doyle, produced a second stinging attack on those who had made Slater the Great Scapegoat; and William Roughead, whose 1910 volume in the series Notable Scottish Trials series set the critical tone and provided the ammunition for both the works of conscientious agitation which followed it.
Now a fourth, and very much latter-day, guardian angel was about to spread protective wings about Oscar.
In his wisdom – and it was a wise choice – the editor of the Daily News had appointed as his Special Commissioner (as they used to designate special correspondents in those days) one Ernest Charles Clephan Palmer. Rejoicing in the nom de plume ‘The Pilgrim’, charged to go forthwith that breath-holding September of 1927 to Scotland in order to discover – and place before the sometimes vacillating public – the true and whole facts of the enigmatic Slater case, Palmer, at that time in his early forties, was later to become widely known and respected as the Parliamentary Correspondent of the News Chronicle.
The Pilgrim’s dispatches from the Caledonian front began on Friday, 16 September 1927.6 Arrived in Glasgow, he quartered himself in a private house in the street where the murder was committed: ‘The room in which I write is within a few yards of the fatal street lamp under which this child [Barrowman] claimed to identify the supposed murderer.’ (Palmer does not take her evidence at all seriously.) And from this lodging he despatched a series of 24 articles, covering pretty well every aspect of the case.
Very early, he tartly observed that Lord Strathclyde, the cidevant Mr Alexander Ure, KC, ‘in spite of knowing, as presumably he must know, that the unintentional errors of fact in his final address may have had a decisive effect on the minds of the jury, has kept silent ever since the trial.’
The Pilgrim also felt constrained to write:
It is clear from further inquiries I have made that at the moment the authorities have not the slightest intention of sanctioning a public investigation. They do not take Sir Arthur Conan Doyle seriously, largely because of his association with spiritualism. They are hoping finally to hush up the whole affair by releasing Slater as soon as it is considered possible to do so without risk.
In his sixth article The Pilgrim abandons all pretences:
In Glasgow the inquirer finds himself confronted by a plain blank wall of non-committal courtesy. Anyone who goes at all deeply into the case will, I think, have great difficulty in resisting the impression that the authorities having once got Slater into their hands through an entirely false clue, the pawned brooch, manipulated the evidence without any regard for justice or common fairness to the prisoner.
Strong words.
Quite exceptionally, The Pilgrim strikes a false note in his thirteenth article of September 30th. Having recounted the tale told by Trench, he says,
I propose to make no comment myself, but to quote William Roughead: ‘We may note the unexplained fact spoken to by three of the police witnesses that “A.B.”s’ movements were strictly inquired into after the murder. Why this was done when neither Trench, Miss Birrell, nor Helen Lambie had mentioned his name is not disclosed.’
The answer, plain and simple, to Roughead and The Pilgrim’s question is that it is a matter of police recorded fact that all the relations of Miss Gilchrist were the subject of careful – i.e. strict – inquiry as to their motives and movements, Dr Charteris taking his expected place among the ranks of those being formally investigated.
The twenty-seventh, and final, article in the series appeared on 18 October 1927. In it, The Pilgrim wrote:
I have now come to the end of this inquiry. When I set out about a month ago I had an open mind on the question of his guilt or innocence, and it was entirely the pressure of facts that made me after a few days doubtful of his guilt, and in the end as persuaded as one can be of his innocence.
Watching all this from the wings was a pair of severely jaundiced eyes belonging to whilom Detective Sergeant James Dornan. Retired now, with the rank of Lieutenant of Police, he was living at Torhouse, in his native Wigtownshire, whence, exceedingly hot in the area which was once under his official collar, he so climaxed with indignation that, overcoming a professional lifetime’s training in keeping to his humble station, on 29 October 1927 he took up his pen to address himself to the Right Honourable His Majesty’s Lord Advocate.
Pardon me if I do anything wrong in addressing to you a few brief remarks on the Oscar Slater case … In doing this I am not in any way prompted by any feelings about Slater … But I do feel at the moment that the comments are unfair to the Crown Authorities and those persons particularly who were specifically engaged on the case endeavouring conscientiously to do justice, to the living and the dead, connected with this horrible murder. I would like confidently to speak my mind, freely to you on this matter at this stage and endeavour to defend my Brethren who are gone and ex-Det. Pyper with myself who are left.
While being aware that there are considerable influential means behind this case, I have always put down a great deal of the trouble which has arisen to what is known as ‘Professional Jealousy’ in the Police Force, and for a start I would like to name those who were connected with the case. The then Lord Advocate (Mr Ure) who knew Miss Gilchrist well and took an active interest himself … Mr Hart and I knew the case from ‘A to Z’, and Mr Douglas and Mr Pyper nearly as much. I would here refer to the personal jealousy I have mentioned.
The then Detective Superintendent was Mr Ord, who kept a few pet children who could not do wrong, one of whom was ex-Det. Trench (deceased) who has been responsible for a great deal of the trouble. Mr Ord and his pet family felt annoyed because they did not get charge of this enquiry from Mr Hart, who deputed Mr Pyper of the Western District to carry out the enquiry, and in turn he requested my assistance. One part was deputed to Mr Ord, he being at Headquarters, and that was the correspondence with Germany re. Slater’s antecedents and character, and in connection with this Det. Trench may have carried over to the County Buildings a dozen-and-a-half reports or so to Mr Hart. And practically any other work he did in the matter we termed as ‘poaching’, he in no way made reports to Mr Hart. What he did, was this. I have told you how Mr Ord felt slighted, and he would phone Mr Pyper in the Western enquiring what was going on, and on being told might sometimes ask Trench or other pet child to see what they could learn. This did not so bad till Mr Pyper was sent with Mr Warnock and witnesses to America, when Mr Hart placed me in full charge of the enquiry. Mr Ord then phoned me on the matter, but owing to my instructions from Mr Hart I consulted my own Supt. Mr Douglas, and decided not [to] tell him anything about the case. Mr Hart told me to tell no person anything of the case but himself and that if I required assistance I was to get Mr Douglas to assist me and not a neighbour officer.
From what I have said you will see that Trench was not making enquiry here for the Crown … but to satisfy the curiosity of slighted Mr Ord, who has often sat outside Mr Hart’s door for a very long time waiting to see me when I came out to see if he could learn anything.
Your Lordship will see from what I have written what a straight honest man has to suffer often and say nothing. The late Det. Trench paid back Mr Ord in a nice way, for all that was done for him at the expense of others. I have kept quiet and watched it all. I have read the flowing articles of the late Det. Trench in the press years ago about what he did in the Slater case, and suffered it. But I really feel now that the thing is going too far. It is making a big impression among the ‘Public’, that those who worked this case were unworthy men, I feel it very much.
Why if Slater was wronged is it not worked from the true facts, copy of which is in Your Lordship’s office. Pardon me when I say that I feel that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle & Coy. [sic] are going too far with side issues, and in my opinion does not say much for a literary man. He surely has a large opinion of himself, and a very poor opinion of other people.
Some important statements by witnesses were never lead [sic] in this case, one in particular was the statement by Gordon Henderson. When Mr Pyper and I called on this man, who was then in charge of a club in India Street enquiring for any trace of the murderer who was then unknown, he said: ‘Come in, gentlemen, there was a man named Anderson (Slater’s name) came here nightly and I have not seen since the night of the murder. After I had missed him some nights I said to his friend (here he gave his name) “What has become of your friend Anderson, I have not seen him for some time,” and he replied putting up his hands, “Wheesht, wheesht, he has murdered that woman and is away to America”.’
Mr Pyper and I got this German who made this statement, but he denied it. It however was the means of tracing Slater. Although note he had been traced earlier by Central officers, and their actions hunted him, I admit that Slater if that information had been right handled, would never have got clear of the country. The Lord Advocate did not use Henderson at the trial, as he pled for mercy, and that the gang would kill him.
Now Your Lordship, I plead for your tolerance in this matter. My sole object in writing Your Lordships [sic] is to show you my feelings for the case. I am the one that knows it all. Officially and rightly. And I think it is time this bunkum by Trench was put an end to.
That 5 November l927 brought some Guy Fawkes Day fireworks. They exploded in the Daily News. The Pilgrim, back in Glasgow, had made contact with Mary Barrowman, now a married woman of 34. Mr Palmer wrote: ‘I found her anxious to make her position clear and to correct any wrong impression that may unwittingly have been given at the trial.’
Barrowman had signed a statement for him. In it she said that on being confronted with the prisoner for the first time in New York, she did not feel able to say anything more than that Slater was very like the running man in West Princes Street. On her return to Glasgow the question of Slater’s being positively the man was raised by Fiscal Hart.
This gentleman was most severe in his treatment of me as a witness. He made me appear at his office day after day. I was in attendance at his office for the purpose of going over my evidence on at least 15 occasions. He went over my evidence, himself doing all the talking and I for the most part listening. He was so much the director of the things that were to be said that I had no opportunity, or very little, to have my say. It was Mr Hart who got me to change my statement from being ‘very like the man’ to the emphatic declaration that Slater was the man. I want to state most definitely that I thought Mr Hart’s demeanour was not what it should be. He was the party who was laying down what was to be said. I was just a girl of 15 years of age then, and I did not fully appreciate the difference between saying that Slater was the man instead of very like the man.
Barrowman also said that Hart was not the only one who ‘adopted a strong attitude towards me. Superintendent Douglas was another. This officer I also blame for putting things into my head.’7
1 Daniel Stashower in his Teller of Tales: The Life of Arthur Conan Doyle, pp 409-10, names the pellet-carrier as William Gordon.
2 In Oscar Slater: The Great Suspect.p190
3 In his Introduction to The Truth About Oscar Slater, Doyle had indeed written, pp. 12-13, ‘It is certainly a most remarkable fact that, in 1909, Slater should have been within twenty-four hours of being hanged and that he should now be alive, while Guthrie the judge, Hart the Procurator Fiscal, Lambie, the chief witness, Millar, the Chairman of the Committee, Trench and Cook, the two men who stood out for justice, and several other protagonists have passed away.’
4 The Truth About Oscar Slater
5 See further: pp 299-302
6 In fact, the first three pieces were written from the paper’s Bouverie Street office in London.
7 The Weekly Record, 12 November 1927