The Trial of Oscar Slater

I'm sure this has happened to you too, but sometimes I listen to an old time radio show, and it really sticks in my mind. That's what happened to me with this one...

I was listening to one of the new Unsolved Mysteries shows, called The Trial of Oscar Slater, and one of my favorite authors, Sherlock Holmes' Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was mentioned.

My interest was piqued, especially with the involvement of the creator of one of my favorite detectives of all time! I love to do a little online research, so I went off to dig up some history...

Oscar Slater (pictured above) was a Jew of German origin, who operated a gambling den in Scotland. It seems he was the victim of a terrible miscarriage of justice - wrongly convicted of murder and sentenced to death.

Thankfully, his lawyers organized a petition against this outrageous conviction, which was signed by a staggering 20,000 people, and the judge instead issued him a life sentence.

He was freed after almost two decades of hard labour at Scotland's HM Prison Peterhead, through the efforts of multiple journalists, lawyers and writers, including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle who, according to the narrator in the show, spent seventeen years on this case, trying to prove the innocence of the accused, tried and convicted man.

While Conan Doyle didn’t approve of Slater or his lifestyle, it was clear that he was not the murderer. In 1912 he even published The Case of Oscar Slater, pleading for a full pardon. It examined evidence brought forward at the trial and point by point proved that Slater was not the killer.

It was fascinating to discover that in addition to writing fiction, Arthur Conan Doyle was a fervent advocate of justice, and personally investigated other closed cases - one which led to another man being exonerated of the crime of which he was accused too.

It's believed that perhaps Oscar Slater's case excited Doyle's curiosity due to the inconsistencies in the prosecution's case and a general sense that Slater was not guilty. Whatever it was, he contributed enormously to Slater's appeal, which finally resulted in his release in 1928.

I hope you'll enjoy listening to the show. I'm absolutely hooked on this new series!  

Happy listening my friends,