Arthur Conan Doyle came to the defense of two wrongfully accused men.
George Edalji, a solicitor, was convicted in 1903 of dismembering a horse and sending a string of ominous anonymous letters to a remote parish. He was released from prison without a pardon three years later because the evidence against him was weak—the letters had been sent to his own family, for example. Conan Doyle, who created Sherlock Holmes, was contacted by Edalji in an effort to get him exonerated. After seeing Edalji and visiting the crime scene, Conan Doyle was convinced of his innocence.
Among other things, he noted that Edalji's nearsightedness made it impossible for him to slip through the countryside at night to attack livestock. And he understood that racial prejudice was probably at work; the author of an article suggesting that Edalji had been falsely charged claimed that Edalji, whose father was of Parsee heritage, "must definitely have [seemed] a very strange man to the eyes of an English town." Conan Doyle also bombarded the chief constable in charge of the investigation with letters, presenting new information and speculations about potential perpetrators. Despite receiving a pardon in the end, Edalji did not receive any recompense for the unfair prosecution of him.
Conan Doyle also worked to defend German-Jewish bookmaker Oscar Slater, who was found guilty of killing a wealthy woman in Glasgow. Despite Slater's alibi, the police focused on him as the criminal, and it would subsequently become clear that crucial evidence was suppressed throughout the trial. Conan Doyle was a strong supporter of Slater's release from prison and published The Case of Oscar Slater in 1912, which exposed serious faults in the investigation and trial. Conan Doyle persisted in exerting political pressure and even chipped in to cover Slater's legal costs after his petition to the authorities fell on deaf ears. After serving more than 18 years in jail, Slater was released in 1927.
