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Oscar
Joseph SLATER
Birth name: Oscar Leschziner
Classification: Murderer?
Characteristics: Victim of miscarriage of justice
- Robbery
Number of victims: 1 ?
Date of murder: December 21,
1908
Date of birth: January 8,
1872
Victim profile: Marion Gilchrist, 83
Method of murder: Hitting with a hammer
Location: Glasgow, Scotland, United Kingdom
Status: Sentenced to death in May 1909. Commuted to
imprisonment with hard
labor for life. Released in
1928 with £6,000 compensation. Died in 1948
Oscar Joseph Slater (8 January 1872 – 1948) was a
victim of miscarriage of justice. He was born Oscar Leschziner in Oppeln,
Upper Silesia, Germany to a Jewish family. Around 1893, to evade military
service, he moved to London where he worked as a bookmaker using various names,
including Anderson, before settling on Slater for official
purposes. He was prosecuted for malicious wounding in 1896 and assault in 1897
but was acquitted in both cases.
In 1899 he moved to Edinburgh and by 1901 was living in
Glasgow. He claimed to be a gymnastics instructor, a dentist, and a dealer in
precious stones but was known to police as a pimp and gangster who associated
with thieves, burglars, and receivers of stolen goods.
Marion
Gilchrist
In December 1908 Marion Gilchrist, an 83 year old
spinster, was beaten to death in a robbery at West Princes Street, Glasgow after
her maid had popped out for 10 minutes. Despite the fact that she had £3,000 (2009:
£220,000) of jewelry hidden in her wardrobe, the robber was disturbed by a
neighbour and all that was taken was a brooch. Slater had left for New York five
days after the murder and came under suspicion as, before the murder, a caller
to Gilchrist's house had been looking for someone called 'Anderson', and Slater
had previously been seen trying to sell a pawn ticket for a brooch.
The police soon realised that the pawn ticket was a false
lead but still applied for Slater's extradition. Slater was advised that the
application would probably fail, but, in any case, decided to return voluntarily
to Scotland.
Trial
of Oscar Slater
At his trial, defence witnesses provided Slater with an alibi
and confirmed that he had announced his visit to America long before the murder.
He was convicted by a majority of nine to six (five ‘not proven’ and one ‘not
guilty').
In May 1909 he was sentenced to death, the execution to take
place before the end of the month. However, the trial judge, Lord Guthrie
organised a petition, signed by 20,000 people and the secretary for Scotland,
Lord Pentland, issued a conditional pardon and commuted the sentence to life
imprisonment.
The following year Scottish lawyer and amateur criminologist,
William Roughead, published his Trial of Oscar Slater highlighting flaws
in the prosecution. The circumstantial evidence against Slater included his
‘flight from justice’; while the Jury had been made aware of his entire past
life; The identification evidence was fleeting and otherwise unreliable,
prejudiced, tainted, or coached. In particular Slater was conspicuously
contrasted with nine off-duty policemen in his identification parade.
Under pressure from Detective Trench, a prison doctor and a
Glasgow lawyer named David Cook the then Scottish Secretary
McKinnon Wood launched a secret enquiry in 1914. However this was
a "farce" and "Gilbertian" and Trench was sacked and then framed
for reset by the Glasgow Police. Indeed the case remains the worst
miscarriage of justice in Scottish legal history with several
senior police officers, Stevenson, Orr, Ord disgracing themselves,
John Neil Hart the Fiscal and several Liberal Lord Advocates, and
even the Judge Lord Guthrie as well as politicans actively
colluding to retain the conviction. Slater was released only in
1928 with £6,000 compensation when pressure from the Conservative
Secretary of State, Labour opposition politicans including Ramsay
MacDonald), Arthur Conan Doyle and several journalists lead to a
new act and court of appeal for Scotland. Those responsible for
Miss Gilchrist's murder were never brought to justice but the
crime was almost certainly the joint enterprise of two or three
male relatives ( including a doctor/academic and a lawyer who were
protected by legal and political connections).
The Case of Oscar Slater
Roughead's book convinced many of Slater's innocence;
influential people included Sir Edward Marshall Hall; Ramsay MacDonald; (eventually)
Viscount Buckmaster; and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. In 1912, Conan Doyle published
The Case of Oscar Slater, a plea for a full pardon for Slater.
In 1914 Thomas MacKinnon Wood ordered a Private Inquiry into
the case. A detective in the case, John Thompson Trench, provided information
which had allegedly been concealed from the trial by the police. The Inquiry
found that the conviction was sound and, instead, Trench, was dismissed from the
force and prosecuted on a trumped-up charges.
Criminal
Appeal (Scotland) Act 1927
Finally, in 1927 the publication of The Truth about Oscar
Slater by William Park proved decisive. Solicitor General for Scotland,
Alexander Munro MacRobert, reported to Sir John Gilmour, that it was no longer
proven that Slater was guilty. An Act (17 & 18 Geo. V) was passed to extend the
Jurisdiction of the the recently established Scottish Court of Criminal Appeal
to convictions before the original shut-off date of 1926. Slater's conviction
was quashed in July 1928 on the ground that the judge had not directed the jury
about the irrelevance of Slater's previous character. Slater received £6000 (2009:£260,000)
compensation.
Aftermath
As an enemy alien, Slater was interned for a brief time at
the start of WWII. He died in 1948. Detective-Lieutenant Trench had died in
1919, aged fifty, and never lived to see Justice done.
The lessons of the Slater miscarriage were considered as late
as 1976 by the Devlin Committee review on the limitations of
identity parades.
In Glasgow rhyming slang See you "Oscar" rhymes Slater with
later.
More recently, the Slater case has been revisited by several authors of non-fiction.
Wikipedia.org
The trial of the century
EveningTimes.co.uk
EVEN in Glasgow, a city which is no stranger to notorious
murders, the killing of 83-year- old spinster Marion Gilchrist was savage and
shocking.
The "fastidious and cultured" pensioner was bludgeoned to
death in the dining room of her city apartment.
But the discovery of her battered body 100 years ago this
month sparked a sensational chain of events which led to a notorious miscarriage
of justice and an establishment cover-up.
It also prompted Sherlock Holmes author Sir Arthur Conan
Doyle to intervene on behalf of the man wrongly convicted of Marion's murder,
Oscar Slater.
It is a name which for a century has been embedded in Glasgow
folklore. In recent years a pub in St George's Road had the name of Oscar
Slater's. It is now the Carnarvon.
The scene which greeted Marion's maidservant Helen Lambie
when she opened the living room door of her home was one of true horror.
The room had been ransacked and the old lady was lying in a
pool of blood. Every bone in her head had been smashed by her killer.
Helen had left the flat in Queen's Terrace, now part of West
Prince's Street, 10 minutes earlier to get a newspaper. When she returned a
neighbour, Arthur Adams, was pacing round the hallway. He had heard noises
coming from Marion's flat.
The two saw a man leaving the building but thought nothing of
it until the body was found.
Ms Gilchrist's belongings had been rifled through but only a
diamond brooch was missing.
Police, facing a public outcry, were keen to act quickly.
Five days later - on Christmas Day - they received a tip that
a man who lived nearby had pawned a diamond brooch.
Oscar Slater, real name Oscar Leschnizer, was a 37-year-old
Jew who had fled his native Germany to avoid military conscription.
He had a sordid lifestyle as a gambler, pimp and trafficker
in stolen jewellery.
When police arrived at his home they discovered he had left
for New York on board the liner Lusitania - using a false name.
He and his mistress Andree Antoine, a prostitute, were booked
on the voyage as Mr and Mrs Otto Sando.
Police were certain they had their man. When New York
detectives boarded the vessel they arrested him for murder. In his pocket they
found a diamond brooch.
Three witnesses, Miss Lambie, Mr Adams and a 14-year-old girl,
Mary Barrowman, who had seen a man leaving the dead woman's flat, travelled
across the Atlantic. The two women identified him as the man they had seen.
Extradition proceedings were started but Slater, convinced he
would never be convicted, returned to Scotland of his own accord to stand trial.
It was the biggest mistake he made.
The legal establishment disapproved of his lifestyle and he
was not helped by anti-Jewish sentiment at the time.
Astonishingly the trial judge, Lord Guthrie, told the jury
that "a man of that kind has not the presumption of innocence in his favour."
Slater was sentenced to death, which was then commuted to
life imprisonment, and he was taken to Peterhead Jail.
But the trial was a travesty. It had ignored the fact that a
friend in San Francisco had invited Slater to the States, that he had changed
his name to avoid paying his ex-wife and that the brooch in his pocket belonged
to him.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was horrified by what he saw as a
clear miscarriage of justice and published two books on the case.
A Glasgow journalist, William Park, also wrote a book which
claimed evidence pointed to Miss Gilchrist's nephew, Dr Francis Charteris, being
the killer.
The book was a sensation and in 1927, after more than 18
years in prison, Oscar Slater was released. He was later pardoned and given
£6000 compensation.
But who was the man seen leaving Miss Gilchrist's apartment
that night if it was not Slater?
Dr Charteris, who went on to become a professor at St Andrews
University, fitted the description. But authors over the years have not thought
him the likely killer.
Instead they lean towards another of Miss Gilchrist's family
called Wingate Birrell.
He was the fiance of the maidservant Helen Lambie who -
perhaps conveniently - was out of the house for the short time it took for her
employer to be killed.
The case also ended the police career of John Trench, the
detective who led the investigation into the murder.
Convinced a conspiracy had taken place he leaked documents to
the Press and the courts and was immediately sacked with the loss of his 21-year
police pension.
One hundred years on the conviction of Oscar Slater still
casts a black cloud over the Scottish legal establishment.
The Oscar Slater Case
In 1925 William Gordon was released from
Peterhead Prison in Scotland. Unbeknownst to the authorities Gordon smuggled
out a message from fellow prisoner, Oscar Slater. The message, written on
waterproof paper and hidden under Gordon's tongue, was a plea for help. It was
to be delivered to none other than Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
Conan Doyle first heard the name Oscar Slater
years earlier. He became aware of the case when Slater was
sentenced to death for the murder of Marion Gilchrist.
The crime occurred on December 21, 1908 in Glasgow. Helen
Lambie, the sole servant of the elderly Miss Marion Gilchrist, left her employer
for a few minutes to get a newspaper. Shortly thereafter, Arthur Adams, who
lived in the apartment directly below Miss Gilchrist said he and his sisters
heard three knocks on the ceiling. Thinking that Miss Gilchrist wanted his
assistance, Adams went to investigate. When he arrived at Miss Gilchrist's door
he rang the bell. Although no one came to the door he heard noises inside the
apartment. He returned downstairs, but his sisters urged him to check on Miss
Gilchrist one more time. He returned upstairs and was in front of the door when
Helen Lambie returned from her errand. At about this time they glimpsed a man
in the building's hallway. However it didn't strike either of them as unusual.
Perhaps it was another tenant or a visitor. At any rate, Adams told Helen what
had been going on and together they entered the apartment.
To their horror they discovered that Miss Gilchrist had been
bludgeoned to death. Her personal papers had been rifled and a diamond brooch
was stolen.
There was a public outcry against the brutal murder. The
police and the public wanted the crime to be solved quickly and the murderer put
behind bars. Within five days the police announced that they were looking for a
suspect. His name was Oscar Slater.
At first glance it did seem that the police had found their
man. Slater lived near Miss Gilchrist. He was known to the police for running
an illegal gambling operation. He recently pawned a diamond brooch. Even more
damning was the fact that soon after the murder Slater left the country under an
assumed name.
Slater was discovered in America. Once he was made aware of
the accusations against him Slater willingly returned. He was positive that he
could prove his innocence.
The brooch that he pawned did not match the description of
Miss Gilchrist's brooch. He also had witnesses who could testify as to his
location at the time in question.
The police were not swayed by Slater's evidence. They were
sure that he was the culprit. In addition to Slater's criminal history was the
fact that the police had witnesses. After some coaching by the authorities,
these people, including Helen Lambie, were sure that they'd seen Slater leaving
the scene of the murder. Also the police believed they found the murder weapon
after a small hammer was found in Slater's possession.
The trial was held in 1909. Despite the conflicting evidence
Oscar Slater was found guilty of the murder of Marion Gilchrist and sentenced to
death. Slater's lawyers started a petition that urged mercy. Two days before
he was scheduled to die, Slater's sentence was changed to imprisonment with hard
labor for life.
Slater's lawyers also contacted Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
While Conan Doyle didn't approve of Slater or his lifestyle it was clear that he
was not the murderer of Marion Gilchrist. In 1912 Conan Doyle published The
Case of Oscar Slater. It examined evidence brought forward at the trial and
point by point proved that Slater was not the killer.
For example, Conan Doyle explained that Slater traveled under
an assumed name because he was traveling with his mistress. He was trying to
avoid detection by his wife, not the police. And while it was true that Slater
did posses a small hammer it wasn't large enough to inflict the type of wounds
that Miss Gilchrist had sustained. Conan Doyle stated that a medical examiner
at the crime scene declared that a large chair, dripping with blood, seemed to
be the murder weapon.
Conan Doyle also concluded that Miss Gilchrist had opened the
door to her murderer herself. He surmised that she knew the murderer. Despite
the fact that Miss Gilchrist and Oscar Slater lived near one another, they had
never met.
The Case of Oscar Slater caused some demand for a new
trial. However the authorities said the evidence didn't justify that the case
be reopened. In 1914 there were more calls for a retrial. New evidence had
come to light. Another witness was found that could verify Slater's whereabouts
during the time of the crime. Also, it was learned that before Helen Lambie
named Slater as the man she'd seen in the hallway the day of the murder she had
given the police another name. Unbelievably, the officials decided to let the
matter rest.
Conan Doyle was outraged. "How the verdict could be that
there was no fresh cause for reversing the conviction is incomprehensible. The
whole case will, in my opinion, remain immortal in the classics of crime as the
supreme example of official incompetence and obstinacy."
Throughout the years Conan Doyle raised the issue of the
injustice against Oscar Slater. However he was not successful in his efforts.
Then in 1925 he received the message smuggled out of Peterhead Prison. Oscar
Slater didn't offer any new revelations. There was no new evidence. It was
just a note from a desperate man who wanted justice. He begged Conan Doyle not
to forget him and to try one more time to free him.
Conan Doyle could not ignore Slater's heartfelt request. He
fired off a fresh barrage of letters. He wrote to his influential friends, the
press and to the secretary of state of Scotland. He made public appearances and
began to gather other likeminded people to the cause. The movement slowly began
to gather steam. The turning point was in 1927 when a book by Glasgow
journalist, William Park, was published.
The Truth About Oscar Slater reexamined the case.
Park came to the same conclusion that Conan Doyle did years ago, Miss Gilchrist
had likely known the murderer and had invited him into her home. Park
speculated that Miss Gilchrist had argued with this person about a document that
she possessed. During the argument she was pushed and hit her head. Her
assailant was then forced to make a decision. What would be worse? To have
Marion Gilchrist recover from her wounds and charge him with assault or to kill
her and be done with the matter? He chose to kill her. Libel laws prevented
Park from naming this person in the book, however he believed the murderer to be
the victim's nephew.
The book caused a huge uproar. Newspapers were full of
information about the case. Witness came forth to talk about the police
coaching them into naming Slater as the man they'd seen around the building that
fateful day.
On November 8, 1927 the secretary of state for Scotland
issued the following 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 license as soon as suitable arrangements
can be made." Within a few days Oscar Slater was a free man.
However the case was not totally a happy ending as far as
Conan Doyle was concerned. Slater was released, not pardoned. As a result the
case had to be reopened and retried. At that point Slater could apply for
compensation from the government for the years of wrongful imprisonment. Conan
Doyle and others gave money to Slater for his legal fees.
In the end Slater was cleared of all charges and awarded
�6,000 in compensation. Conan Doyle assumed that Slater would reimburse his
supporters for his legal fees. After all, it was what Conan Doyle would have
done. However Slater saw the matter in a different way. He thought it was
ridiculous that he had to pay court costs at all and so he shouldn't have to pay
them back.
Conan Doyle didn't need the �1,000 that he had given for
Slater's legal fees. What bothered him was that that Slater seemed ungrateful
for the support that he was given. Honor was very important to Conan Doyle and
he believed that Slater had behaved in a dishonorable manner. Conan Doyle wrote
to Slater saying, "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."
Had Conan Doyle been alive in 1948 he probably would have
disagreed with the newspaper notice about Oscar Slater's death: "Oscar Slater
Dead at 78, Reprieved Murderer, Friend of A. Conan Doyle".
