George Ernest Thompson Edalji (22 January 1876 – 17 June 1953) was an English solicitor and son of a vicar of Indian Parsi descent in a Staffordshire village. He became known as a victim of a miscarriage of justice, having served three years' hard labour after being convicted on a charge of injuring a pony. He was initially regarded having been responsible for the series of animal mutilations known as the Great Wyrley Outrages, but the prosecution case against him became regarded as weak and prejudiced. He was pardoned on the grounds of the conviction being an unsafe one after a campaign in which Sir Arthur Conan Doyle took a prominent role.
The difficulty in overturning the conviction of Edalji was cited as showing that a better mechanism was needed for reviewing unsafe verdicts, and it was a factor in the 1907 creation of the Court of Criminal Appeal for England and Wales. Despite an official inquiry's finding that Edalji was the author of poison pen letters associated with the mutilations, he was allowed to resume practice as a solicitor and lived quietly with a sibling until his death.
Background Edalji was the eldest of the three children. His mother was Charlotte Edalji (née Stoneham), the daughter of a Shropshire vicar. His father was the Reverend Shapurji Edalji, a convert from a Bombay Parsi family. He had served as the curate in several parishes before being given the living as vicar of St Mark's, Great Wyrley. The right to make this appointment lay with the bishop, and the Reverend Mr. Edalji obtained the position through the previous incumbent, his wife's uncle, who arranged it as a wedding present. Livings were much sought after because they were scarce and conferred valuable emoluments.
The Edaljis moved into the vicarage in late 1875; it was a large house with its own grounds. George, the first child, was born there soon after. The senior Edalji was a more assertive vicar than his predecessor and was sometimes involved in controversy about parish business. Many writers have noted that the Edaljis were the first Parsis and the first Indians to move into Great Wyrley, a major contributing factor in the hostile way they were treated in the village.Christian, Paul. (2013). ‘Sherlock Holmes’ and the curious case of Welwyn Garden City man George Edalji. Welwyn Hatfield Times (online), 17 June, see , accessed 20 September 2015. An aristocratic former army officer named Captain the Honourable G.A. Anson was the Chief Constable of Staffordshire during the case, in a long period of office extending from 1888 to 1929. Anson was markedly hostile in his dealings with the Edaljis, which several writers have suggested was due to their ethnicity.Costello, Peter. (2006). Persecution of George Edalji. [In] Conan Doyle, Detective, pp. 95–132, New York, NY, USA: Carroll & Graf, and 1472103653, see , accessed 20 September 2015.Kerr, Douglas. (2015). Conan Doyle: Writing, Profession, and Practice, p. 153, Oxford, GBR: Oxford University Press, , see , accessed 20 September 2015.Nash, Jay Robert. (2008). I Am Innocent!: A Comprehensive Encyclopedic History of the World's Wrongly Convicted Persons. Boston, MA, USA: Da Capo Press, , see , accessed 20 September 2015.Anon. (2015). The George Edalji Case. Birmingham City Council (online), at "Things to do: Libraries, Archives, and Heritage", see . Accessed 20 September 2015.
Anonymous letters of 1888 Anonymous threatening letters were sent to the vicarage in 1888, when George Edalji was twelve and a half, demanding that the vicar order a particular newspaper and threatening to break windows if this was not done. He ignored them. Windows were broken and a threat was made to shoot the vicar; he became alarmed and called in the police. Graffiti was written slandering the Edaljis on the inside and outside walls of the vicarage. Pseudonymous letters were sent to the vicarage maid-of-all-work, 17-year-old Elizabeth Foster, threatening to shoot her when her "Black master" was out. One was found inside the hall with the envelope wet; the letter was written on pages from the exercise books of the Edalji children.Weaver, G. (2006). Conan Doyle and the Parson's Son: The George Edalji Case. Cambridge, GBR: Vanguard, , see , accessed 20 September 2015.
The circumstances made it clear that either Foster or Edalji was responsible. Foster was implicated by assertions made by Edalji; the vicar, his wife, and police Sergeant Upton thought that they perceived similarities between Foster's handwriting and that of the pseudonymous threatening letters. The vicar prosecuted Foster for writing the letters, which she denied doing. He offered to drop the case if Foster confessed, but she refused and went to live with an aunt. Foster was unable to pay for a defence at trial and pleaded guilty in front of the magistrates in exchange for being given probation. She continued to maintain her innocence thereafter. The vicar congratulated Upton for his performance.Weaver asserts that Captain Anson disapproved of Upton obtaining the conviction of Foster, which may have affected the way in which Upton dealt with the later 1892 letters, but apparently does not cite his source for that information. Weaver also says that Anson later "disingenuously" denied that he had been aware of the 1888 letters at the time that they happened. Weaver (2006), op. cit. p. 34.
Letters and malicious mischief of 1892 In 1892, a member of the parish council named W.H. Brookes received obscene letters that included accounts of his adult daughter sexually abusing her 10-year-old sister. The letters mentioned Edalji among others at first, but increasingly concentrated on Edalji and the vicar, sometimes using a phrase ("the blackman") that had occurred in 1888 letters attributed to Elizabeth Foster. One letter was made in two distinctly different handwritings. The letters to Brookes accused his son of writing the 1888 letters to the vicarage which had been attributed to Elizabeth Foster, and of giving them to George Edalji to post. The vicar and a vicarage servant also got letters, in which the vicar was accused of "gross immorality with persons using Vaseline in the same way as did Oscar Wilde".Conan Doyle and the Parson's Son: The George Edalji Case, Gordon Weaver, p65 Letters purporting to be from the Reverend Mr Edalji were sent to other vicars.
Brookes and the Reverend Mr Edalji called in the police, and Sergeant Upton again found himself investigating poison pen letters to the vicar. Attempts to get the post office to identify the sender failed as the mailed letters ceased. Notes began appearing at the vicarage (a total of over 70), and various objects were left on the doorstep, including a bag of excrement. Police kept watch and claimed to have established that the key, stolen from Walsall Grammar School (where George Edalji was a student) six miles away, that had appeared on the doorstep had done so in a time frame when only George Edalji had used the entrance.Justice Denied: Extraordinary miscarriages of justice By James Morton Following this, excrement was smeared on the outside of upstairs windows, and Upton decided that George had been responsible for the letters. It was about this time that Mr Edalji began sharing a bedroom with George; the arrangement continued for the next 17 years.
A police ploy, which was clearly aimed at getting Edalji to incriminate himself as the note writer, brought forth protests from his mother at the way the investigation was focusing on him. She and her husband demanded that Foster be arrested. A campaign of hoax ordering of goods and services for the vicarage lasted for 3 years. Police largely ceased investigating the incidents. In response to her protests, Chief Constable of the county Captain Anson told Mrs. Edalji that she should make a serious effort to help catch the culprit if she wanted his men to spend more time on the matter, as it was obviously either her husband or son. Mr Edalji threatened to complain to higher authority about the conduct of Anson. The notes and hoaxes ceased in December 1895.
Perceptions of Edalji Brookes came to believe that Edalji was the author of the 1892 poison pen letters. He said that Edalji had smiled at him in the railway station, to which Brookes had responded with a disagreeable look, thereafter, Brookes asserted, the letters began to refer to him as "sour face". Brookes also said that the letters to him stopped after he had swung punches at Edalji on the platform. Edalji was hired at a legal firm as a trainee solicitor and scored exceptionally high marks in his professional examinations but was not taken on as a newly qualified solicitor. In 1899, his family helped him set up on his own, working out of an office in Birmingham and sometimes from the vicarage.
He was described as looking younger than his age, of a rather peculiar appearance, and solitary, being given to taking evening strolls by himself.Conan Doyle and the Parson's Son: The George Edalji Case by Gordon Weaver p74 A couple of roughs were fined for hitting him while he was on one of his evening walks three miles from his house one night in 1900; the assailants were not from Great Wyrley or known to Edalji. His book Railway Law for the ‘Man in the train’ was published in 1901. A solicitor, clerk to the court and friend of Anson, C.A. Loxton, was later to accuse Edalji of writing "immoral and offensive" allegations on walls about Loxton and his fiancée. Most present-day commenters on the case take the view that the traditional culture in a Staffordshire village of the time would make George Edalji an object of suspicion because of his ethnic background, but he appears to have attracted favourable comment for his book, and had been trusted enough to have clients among local small businessmen.
Financial misfortune As a result of having agreed to stand surety for a fellow solicitor (who then absconded), Edalji became liable for a debt of nine thousand pounds. In December 1902 his creditors threatened him with bankruptcy unless he paid a hundred of the amount immediately. Initially Edalji wrote begging letters, but he appears to have obtained the demanded payment, possibly by going to his parents.D. Michael Risinger, page 49 International Commentary on Evidence, V 4, I 2 2006 Boxes in Boxes: Edalji Case
1903 letters and animal maiming In January 1903, when Edalji was 27 years old, a series of slashings occurred against horses and other livestock, known as the 'Great Wyrley Outrages'. A horse was maimed on 1 February 1903, two horses were similarly wounded on 29 June 1903, and a number of other animals received injuries resulting in their being put down. Isolated cases of livestock maiming were not unheard of as a way of settling scores in farming communities, but the series of attacks provoked a public outcry far beyond the area.
Police received pseudonymous letters purporting to be from one of a gang of culprits, and the letters named real people as members of the gang, including Edalji. Several others named in the letters were schoolboys whom Edalji regularly commuted with in the same train compartment. A letter was also sent to Edalji purporting to be from one of them, 15-year-old Wilfred Greatorex.
Investigation The Staffordshire Chief Constable, Captain Anson, was an administrator without experience of investigatory police work. He believed that Edalji was the author of the letters, but someone of his professional status could have had no involvement in the animal maimings. Inspector Campbell headed enquiries into the maimings and from an early stage considered Edalji a person of particular interest, although there were a number of suspects.