The Christmas Murders by Jonathan Goodman

Author:Jonathan Goodman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kent State University Press

Addendum

From Who He? Goodman’s Dictionary of the Unknown Famous (Buchan & Enright, London, 1984):

After his experience with the Edalji case [see page 97], Conan Doyle had no wish to be involved in anything similar. But in 1910, following the appearance of Trial of Oscar Slater, edited by William Roughead and printed and published by William Hodge & Co. of Edinburgh as a title in the series of Notable Scottish Trials, he “went into the matter most reluctantly…. When I glanced at the facts, I saw that it was an even worse case than the Edalji one, and that this unhappy man had in all probability no more to do with the murder for which he had been condemned than I had.”

With William Roughead and a Glasgow newspaper reporter named William Park, Conan Doyle sought to remedy the apparent miscarriage of justice; one of his first important actions was the publication in 1912 of a slim volume called The Case of Oscar Slater. Assistance came from an unexpected source: John Thompson Trench, a detective-lieutenant of the Glasgow police force, who had taken part in the murder investigation. He stated that, shortly after the discovery of the crime, Helen Lambie had told senior officers that the man she had seen leaving the flat was known to her: known by name, for he was one of Miss Gilchrist’s most frequent visitors. For some reason, the officers involved had ignored this information; more than that, according to Trench, they had virtually dictated Lambie’s written statement. Trench was ordered to disavow what he had said, and when he refused to do so, was dismissed from the force without a pension.

The name of the man referred to by Lambie (who in 1927, when she was living in America, confirmed Trench’s statement) was never divulged in reports of hearings; nor, of course, in any of the several and diverse writings on the case by Conan Doyle, Roughead, and Park. Invariably, the letters A.B. were substituted. But since 4 July 1964, when the man died, aged eighty-eight, there has been no reason of law for keeping his identity secret. A scion of a wealthy Glasgow family, he was Dr Francis James Charteris; in the period around Marion Gilchrist’s murder, he ran a general practice from his home in Great Western Road, close to the scene of the crime. In 1920 he was made professor of materia medica at St Andrew’s University, where he remained until his retirement in 1948, having been for twenty years dean of the faculty of medicine.

I have said that in 1927 John Trench’s statement was confirmed by Helen Lambie. This sparked off press activity, as a result of which another important prosecution witness, Mary Barrowman, recanted much of her evidence. Within a fortnight, Slater was released. The official announcement carried no suggestion that he had been wrongly convicted; there was no mention of compensation for the eighteen and a half years he had spent in Peterhead Prison. Conan Doyle instigated, and guaranteed the costs of, an appeal within the High Court of Justiciary, Edinburgh.

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