Oscar Slater: Difference between revisions

Criminal Appeal (Scotland) Act 1927
Act of Parliament
	Parliament of the United Kingdom
Long title	An Act to amend the provisions of the Criminal Appeal (Scotland) Act, 1926, with regard to the power of the Secretary of State to refer a case, or any point arising therein, to the High Court of Justiciary.
Citation	17 & 18 Geo. 5. c. 26
Dates
Royal assent	22 December 1927
Other legislation
Repealed by	Statute Law (Repeals) Act 1977
Status: Repealed

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Oscar Joseph Slater (8 January 1872 – 31 January 1948) was the victim of a notorious miscarriage of justice in Scotland. Wrongly convicted of murder and sentenced to death, 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 Sherlock Holmes author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.^[1]

Early life[edit]

He was born Oskar Josef Leschziner in Oppeln, Upper Silesia, Germany, to a Jewish family. Around 1893, possibly to evade military service, he moved to London, where he purportedly worked as a bookmaker using various names, including Anderson, before settling on Slater for official purposes. He was prosecuted for alleged malicious wounding in 1896 and assault in 1897 but was acquitted in both cases.^[2]

In 1899, Slater moved to Edinburgh and by 1901 was living in Glasgow. He was known to be a well-dressed dandy, who billed himself variously as a dentist and a dealer in precious stones, but was believed to earn his living as a gambler.^[2]^[3]

Marion Gilchrist[edit]

In December 1908, Marion Gilchrist, a spinster aged 83 years, was beaten to death in a robbery at West Princes Street, Glasgow, after her maid, Helen Lambie, had popped out for ten minutes.^[7] Although she had jewellery worth £3,000 (equivalent to £400,000 in 2023) hidden in her wardrobe,^[8] the robber, who was disturbed by a neighbour,^[7] had rifled through Mrs. Gilchrist's personal papers and taken only a brooch. Slater left for New York five days after the murder and came under suspicion, as apparently before the murder, a caller to Gilchrist's house had been looking for someone called "Anderson", and Slater had coincidentally previously been seen trying to sell a pawn ticket for a brooch.^[2]

The police soon realised that the pawn ticket was for an entirely different brooch and a false lead, but notwithstanding the contradictory evidence, still applied for Slater's extradition. While Slater was advised that the application would probably fail anyway, he voluntarily returned to Scotland to clear his name of the alleged crime.^[2]

Trial of Oscar Slater[edit]

At his trial presided over by Lord Guthrie, whose summing up was highly prejudicial, defence witnesses provided Slater with an alibi and confirmed that he had announced his trip to America long before the date of Mrs. Gilchrist's murder.^[9] He was convicted by a majority of nine to six (five "not proven" and one "not guilty").^[2] In May 1909, he was sentenced to death, with the execution to take place before the end of that month.^[10] However, Slater's lawyers organised a petition that was signed by 20,000 people,^[11] and the Secretary of State for Scotland, Lord Pentland, subsequently issued a conditional pardon and commuted the sentence to life imprisonment.^[2] Slater would serve nineteen years at Peterhead Prison.^[12]

The following year, the 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 alleged "flight from justice". The prosecution's evidence and witnesses identifying Slater as a suspect, including maid Helen Lambie, were also criticized as fleeting and otherwise unreliable, prejudiced, tainted, or coached. In particular, Slater was conspicuously contrasted with nine off-duty policemen in a rigged identification parade.^[2]

Slater received little support from within Glasgow's Jewish community, which was attributed towards concerns around drawing attention to Slater's Jewish identity in light of the case's notoriety and the potential for a rise in antisemitism as a result.^[13]

The Case of Oscar Slater[edit]

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.^[2] In 1912, Conan Doyle published The Case of Oscar Slater, a plea for a full pardon for Slater.^[8]

In 1914, Thomas McKinnon Wood ordered a Private Inquiry into the case. A detective in the case, John Thomson Trench, provided information which had allegedly been deliberately 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 trumped-up charges from which he was eventually acquitted.^[2]^[12]

Criminal Appeal (Scotland) Act 1927[edit]

1927 saw the publication of The Truth about Oscar Slater by William Park. The contents of the book led the Solicitor General for Scotland, Alexander Munro MacRobert, to conclude that it was no longer proven that Slater was guilty.^[2]

An Act (17 & 18 Geo. 5. c. 26) was passed to extend the jurisdiction of the then 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 grounds that Lord Guthrie had failed to direct the jury about the irrelevance of allegations relating to Slater's previous character.

Aftermath[edit]

Detective-Lieutenant Trench died in 1919, aged fifty, and never lived to see justice done.^[2]

After serving an almost two-decades long prison sentence of hard labour, Slater received only £6,000 (2019: £364,170) in compensation.^[2] He met his most famous advocate, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, only once in-person; they had a public falling out when Conan Doyle demanded he "be a gentleman" and pay his supporters back for legal fees, which Slater did not.^[3]

In the 1930s, Slater married a local Scottish woman of German descent thirty years his junior and settled in the seaside town of Ayr where he repaired and sold antiques. He also returned to using his birth name surname. As an enemy alien (born German), Slater and his wife were interned for a brief time at the start of World War II, though Slater had long since lost his German citizenship due to his imprisonment and never returned to Germany. Most of Slater's surviving family, including his two sisters, ultimately were murdered in the Holocaust. He died in Ayr in 1948 of natural causes.^[14]

More recently, the Slater case has been revisited by several scholars and writers.^[1]^[15]^[16]^[17]^[18]^[3]

Legacy[edit]

The lessons of the Slater miscarriage were considered, as late as 1976, by the Devlin Committee review on the limitations of identity parades.

As a result of controversy around the Slater Case and its aftermath, Scotland created the Scottish Court of Criminal Appeal (see above).^[14]

In Glasgow rhyming slang, See you "Oscar" rhymes Slater with later, although the expression has long been out of use.^[19]

The murder of Marion Gilchrist remains unsolved, but no additional charges have ever been made.^[20]

References[edit]

^ ^a ^b Margalit Fox, "Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and the Case of the Wrongfully Imprisoned Man", Medium, 21 June 2018.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h ⁱ ^j ^k ^l Leslie William Blake, 'Slater, Oscar Joseph (1872–1948)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004.
^ ^a ^b ^c Fox, Margalit (2018). Conan Doyle for the Defense: How Sherlock Holmes's Creator Turned Real-Life Detective and Freed a Man Wrongly Imprisoned for Murder. Random House. ISBN 978-0399589454.
^ "Trial of Oscar Slater". Edinburgh ; Glasgow : Hodge. 22 October 1915. Retrieved 22 October 2019 – via Internet Archive.
^ "The Case of Oscar Slater". National Records of Scotland. 31 May 2013. Retrieved 21 February 2022.
^ Geoff Holder. The Guide to Mysterious Glasgow. Stroud: The History Press, 2009.
^ ^a ^b The Times, The Case Of Oscar Slater. Sir Herbert Stephen And The Evidence, 19 September 1912.
^ ^a ^b The Times, "The Case of Oscar Slater," 21 August 1912.
^ The Times, Glasgow Murder Trial 6 May 1909.
^ The Times, Index 7 May 1909.
^ "The Oscar Slater Case". Conan Doyle Info. 11 July 2020. Retrieved 20 February 2022.
^ ^a ^b Roughead, William (1941). "Oscar Slater". In Hodge, Harry (ed.). Famous Trials. Vol. 1. Penguin Books. pp. 72–74.
^ Braber, Ben (April 2003). "The Trial of Oscar Slater (1909) and Anti-Jewish Prejudices in Edwardian Glasgow". History. 88 (290): 262–279. doi:10.1111/1468-229X.00262. ISSN 0018-2648.
^ ^a ^b Fox, Margalit. Conan Doyle for the defense : the true story of a sensational British murder, a quest for justice, and the world's most famous detective writer (First U.S. ed.). New York. ISBN 9780399589454. OCLC 1030445407.
^ Toughill, Thomas (1994). Oscar Slater: The Mystery Solved. Canongate Books Ltd. ISBN 978-0862414511.
^ Toughill, Thomas (2007). Oscar Slater: The 'Immortal' Case of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The History Press. ISBN 978-0750945738.
^ Sandford, Christopher (2018). The Man Who Would Be Sherlock: The Real-Life Adventures of Arthur Conan Doyle. Thomas Dunne Books. ISBN 978-1250079565.
^ Whittington-Egan, Richard (2001). The Oscar Slater Murder Story: New Light on a Classic Miscarriage of Justice. Neil Wilson. ISBN 978-1897784884.
^ The Herald Punting across the great divide, 13 January 1998.
^ "Murder of Marion Gilchrist – 1908 – Glasgow Police Museum". Retrieved 2 January 2024.

d==Further reading==

Conan Doyle, The Case of Oscar Slater (1912), available at Project Gutenberg
Margalit Fox, Conan Doyle for the Defense: The True Story of a Sensational British Murder, a Quest for Justice, and the World's Most Famous Detective Writer, Random House (2018) ISBN 9780399589454
William Park, The Truth About Oscar Slater (1927)
Rothschild, Zeta (January 1929). "Thirty Thousand Dollars for Eighteen Years of Hell!". True Detective Mysteries. X (4): 34–37. Retrieved 22 June 2022.
William Roughead, Trial of Oscar Slater (1910), available at the Internet Archive

External links[edit]

[:0-1] Margalit Fox, "Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and the Case of the Wrongfully Imprisoned Man", Medium, 21 June 2018.

[ODNB-2] ^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h ⁱ ^j ^k ^l Leslie William Blake, 'Slater, Oscar Joseph (1872–1948)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004.

[:1-3] Fox, Margalit (2018). Conan Doyle for the Defense: How Sherlock Holmes's Creator Turned Real-Life Detective and Freed a Man Wrongly Imprisoned for Murder. Random House. ISBN 978-0399589454.

[4] "Trial of Oscar Slater". Edinburgh ; Glasgow : Hodge. 22 October 1915. Retrieved 22 October 2019 – via Internet Archive.

[5] "The Case of Oscar Slater". National Records of Scotland. 31 May 2013. Retrieved 21 February 2022.

[6] Geoff Holder. The Guide to Mysterious Glasgow. Stroud: The History Press, 2009.

[Times5-7] The Times, The Case Of Oscar Slater. Sir Herbert Stephen And The Evidence, 19 September 1912.

[Times4-8] The Times, "The Case of Oscar Slater," 21 August 1912.

[9] The Times, Glasgow Murder Trial 6 May 1909.

[10] The Times, Index 7 May 1909.

[11] "The Oscar Slater Case". Conan Doyle Info. 11 July 2020. Retrieved 20 February 2022.

[Roughead-12] Roughead, William (1941). "Oscar Slater". In Hodge, Harry (ed.). Famous Trials. Vol. 1. Penguin Books. pp. 72–74.

[13] Braber, Ben (April 2003). "The Trial of Oscar Slater (1909) and Anti-Jewish Prejudices in Edwardian Glasgow". History. 88 (290): 262–279. doi:10.1111/1468-229X.00262. ISSN 0018-2648.

[:2-14] Fox, Margalit. Conan Doyle for the defense : the true story of a sensational British murder, a quest for justice, and the world's most famous detective writer (First U.S. ed.). New York. ISBN 9780399589454. OCLC 1030445407.

[15] Toughill, Thomas (1994). Oscar Slater: The Mystery Solved. Canongate Books Ltd. ISBN 978-0862414511.

[16] Toughill, Thomas (2007). Oscar Slater: The 'Immortal' Case of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The History Press. ISBN 978-0750945738.

[17] Sandford, Christopher (2018). The Man Who Would Be Sherlock: The Real-Life Adventures of Arthur Conan Doyle. Thomas Dunne Books. ISBN 978-1250079565.

[18] Whittington-Egan, Richard (2001). The Oscar Slater Murder Story: New Light on a Classic Miscarriage of Justice. Neil Wilson. ISBN 978-1897784884.

[19] The Herald Punting across the great divide, 13 January 1998.

[20] "Murder of Marion Gilchrist – 1908 – Glasgow Police Museum". Retrieved 2 January 2024.

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+{{Short description|Victim of a miscarriage of justice in Scotland}}
+{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}}
 [[File:Oscar Slater 1908.jpg|thumb|Oscar Slater 1908]]
 [[File:Oscar Slater's hammer.jpg|thumb|Oscar Slater's hammer]]
-'''Oscar Joseph Slater''' (8 January 1872 – 31 January 1948) was the victim of a [[miscarriage of justice]] in [[Scotland]]. Wrongly convicted of murder and sentenced to death, he was freed after almost two decades of [[Penal labour|hard labour]] at Scotland’s [[HM Prison Peterhead]] through the efforts of multiple journalists, lawyers, and writers, including [[Sherlock Holmes]] author Sir [[Arthur Conan Doyle]].<ref name=":0">Margalit Fox, [https://medium.com/s/story/sir-arthur-conan-doyle-and-the-case-of-the-wrongfully-imprisoned-man-dc5eb26b0331 "Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and the Case of the Wrongfully Imprisoned Man"], ''Medium'', 21 June 2018.</ref>
+'''Oscar Joseph Slater''' (8 January 1872 – 31 January 1948) was the victim of a notorious [[miscarriage of justice]] in [[Scotland]]. Wrongly convicted of murder and sentenced to death, he was freed after almost two decades of [[Penal labour|hard labour]] at Scotland’s [[HM Prison Peterhead]] through the efforts of multiple journalists, lawyers, and writers, including [[Sherlock Holmes]] author Sir [[Arthur Conan Doyle]].<ref name=":0">Margalit Fox, [https://medium.com/s/story/sir-arthur-conan-doyle-and-the-case-of-the-wrongfully-imprisoned-man-dc5eb26b0331 "Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and the Case of the Wrongfully Imprisoned Man"], ''Medium'', 21 June 2018.</ref>
 == Early life ==
 He was born '''Oskar Josef Leschziner''' in [[Opole|Oppeln]], [[Upper Silesia]], [[Germany]], to a [[Jews|Jewish]] family. Around 1893, possibly to evade [[German Army (German Empire)|military service]], he moved to [[London]], where he purportedly worked as a [[bookmaker]] using various names, including ''Anderson'', before settling on ''Slater'' for official purposes. He was prosecuted for alleged malicious wounding in 1896 and assault in 1897 but was acquitted in both cases.<ref name=ODNB>Leslie William Blake, 'Slater, Oscar Joseph (1872–1948)', [[Oxford Dictionary of National Biography]], Oxford University Press, 2004.</ref>
-In 1899, Slater moved to [[Edinburgh]] and by 1901 was living in [[Glasgow]]. He was known to be a well-dressed [[dandy]], who billed himself variously as a dentist and a dealer in precious stones, but was believed to earn his living as a gambler.<ref name=":1" /><ref name=ODNB/>
+In 1899, Slater moved to [[Edinburgh]] and by 1901 was living in [[Glasgow]]. He was known to be a well-dressed [[dandy]], who billed himself variously as a dentist and a dealer in precious stones, but was believed to earn his living as a gambler.<ref name="ODNB" /><ref name=":1" />
 ==Marion Gilchrist==
-[[File:The victim's room of the Oscar Slater Case.jpg|thumb|The victim's room of the Oscar Slater Case<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://archive.org/details/trialofoscarslat00slat|title=Trial of Oscar Slater|date=22 October 1915|publisher=Edinburgh ; Glasgow : Hodge|access-date=22 October 2019|via=Internet Archive}}</ref><ref>http://www.nas.gov.uk/documents/AD21-5-53-and-63.pdf</ref>]]
+[[File:The victim's room of the Oscar Slater Case.jpg|thumb|The victim's dining room and the site of the murder<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://archive.org/details/trialofoscarslat00slat|title=Trial of Oscar Slater|date=22 October 1915|publisher=Edinburgh ; Glasgow : Hodge|access-date=22 October 2019|via=Internet Archive}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|date=2013-05-31|title=The Case of Oscar Slater|url=https://www.nrscotland.gov.uk/research/learning/features/the-case-of-oscar-slater|access-date=2022-02-21|website=[[National Records of Scotland]]|language=English}}</ref>]]
-[[File:Glasgow. Woodlands. 49 West Princes Street. Marion Gilchrist&#039;s house.JPG|thumb|[[Woodlands, Glasgow|Woodlands]]. 49 West Princes Street. Marion Gilchrist&#039;s house. 2020.<ref>[[Geoff Holder]]. The Guide to Mysterious Glasgow. Stroud: [[The History Press]], 2009.</ref>]]
+[[File:Glasgow. Woodlands. 49 West Princes Street. Marion Gilchrist's house.JPG|thumb|[[Woodlands, Glasgow|Woodlands]]. 49 West Princes Street. Marion Gilchrist's house. 2020.<ref>[[Geoff Holder]]. The Guide to Mysterious Glasgow. Stroud: [[The History Press]], 2009.</ref>]]
 [[File:Square Mile of Murder map.svg|thumb|right|[[Square Mile of Murder]]. Location of murder top circle.]]
-In December 1908, Marion Gilchrist, a spinster aged 83 years, was beaten to death in a robbery at [[Square Mile of Murder|West Princes Street, Glasgow]], after her maid, Helen Lambie, had popped out for ten minutes.<ref name=Times5>The Times, ''The Case Of Oscar Slater. Sir Herbert Stephen And The Evidence,'' 19 September 1912.</ref>  Although she had jewellery worth £3,000 (''2015: £{{formatnum:{{Inflation|UK|3000|1909|2015|r=-4}}}}'') hidden in her wardrobe,<ref name=Times4>The Times, "The Case of Oscar Slater,"  21 August 1912.</ref> the robber, who was disturbed by a neighbour,<ref name=Times5/>  had rifled through Mrs. Gilchrist's personal papers and taken only a [[brooch]]. Slater left for [[New York City|New York]] five days after the murder and came under suspicion, as apparently before the murder, a caller to Gilchrist's house had been looking for someone called "Anderson", and Slater had coincidentally previously been seen trying to sell a [[pawn ticket]] for a brooch.<ref name=ODNB/>
+In December 1908, Marion Gilchrist, a spinster aged 83 years, was beaten to death in a robbery at [[Square Mile of Murder|West Princes Street, Glasgow]], after her maid, Helen Lambie, had popped out for ten minutes.<ref name=Times5>The Times, ''The Case Of Oscar Slater. Sir Herbert Stephen And The Evidence,'' 19 September 1912.</ref>  Although she had jewellery worth £3,000 ({{Inflation|UK|3000|1909|r=-4|fmt=eq|cursign=£}}) hidden in her wardrobe,<ref name=Times4>The Times, "The Case of Oscar Slater,"  21 August 1912.</ref> the robber, who was disturbed by a neighbour,<ref name=Times5/>  had rifled through Mrs. Gilchrist's personal papers and taken only a [[brooch]]. Slater left for [[New York City|New York]] five days after the murder and came under suspicion, as apparently before the murder, a caller to Gilchrist's house had been looking for someone called "Anderson", and Slater had coincidentally previously been seen trying to sell a [[pawn ticket]] for a brooch.<ref name=ODNB/>
 The police soon realised that the pawn ticket was for an entirely different brooch and a false lead, but notwithstanding the contradictory evidence, still applied for Slater's extradition. While Slater was advised that the application would probably fail anyway, he voluntarily returned to Scotland to clear his name of the alleged crime.<ref name=ODNB/>
 == Trial of Oscar Slater ==
-At his trial presided over by [[Charles John Guthrie, Lord Guthrie|Lord Charles John Guthrie]], whose summing up was highly [[Prejudice (legal term)|prejudicial]], defence witnesses provided Slater with an [[alibi]] and confirmed that he had announced his trip to America long before the date of Mrs. Gilchrist's murder.<ref>[[The Times]], ''Glasgow Murder Trial'' 6 May 1909.</ref>  He was convicted by a majority of nine to six (five "[[not proven]]" and one "[[Acquittal|not guilty]]").<ref name=ODNB/> In May 1909, he was sentenced to death, with the execution to take place before the end of that month.<ref>The Times, ''Index'' 7 May 1909.</ref> However, Slater's lawyers organised a petition that was signed by 20,000 people,<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.siracd.com/life/life_case2.shtml |title=Archived copy |access-date=2010-06-16 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20091207031551/http://www.siracd.com/life/life_case2.shtml |archive-date=2009-12-07 }}</ref> and the [[Secretary of State for Scotland]], [[John Sinclair, 1st Baron Pentland|Lord Pentland]], subsequently issued a conditional pardon and commuted the sentence to life imprisonment.<ref name=ODNB/> Slater was to serve nineteen years at [[Peterhead (HM Prison)|Peterhead Prison]].<ref name="Roughead"/>
+At his trial presided over by [[Charles John Guthrie, Lord Guthrie|Lord Guthrie]], whose summing up was highly [[Prejudice (legal term)|prejudicial]], defence witnesses provided Slater with an [[alibi]] and confirmed that he had announced his trip to America long before the date of Mrs. Gilchrist's murder.<ref>[[The Times]], ''Glasgow Murder Trial'' 6 May 1909.</ref>  He was convicted by a majority of nine to six (five "[[not proven]]" and one "[[Acquittal|not guilty]]").<ref name=ODNB/> In May 1909, he was sentenced to death, with the execution to take place before the end of that month.<ref>The Times, ''Index'' 7 May 1909.</ref> However, Slater's lawyers organised a petition that was signed by 20,000 people,<ref>{{cite web|date=July 11, 2020|title=The Oscar Slater Case|url=https://www.conandoyleinfo.com/life-conan-doyle/conan-doyles-own-mystery-cases/oscar-slater/|access-date=2022-02-20|website=Conan Doyle Info}}</ref> and the [[Secretary of State for Scotland]], [[John Sinclair, 1st Baron Pentland|Lord Pentland]], subsequently issued a conditional pardon and commuted the sentence to life imprisonment.<ref name=ODNB/> Slater would serve nineteen years at [[Peterhead (HM Prison)|Peterhead Prison]].<ref name="Roughead"/>
 The following year, the 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 alleged "flight from justice". The prosecution's evidence and witnesses identifying Slater as a suspect, including maid Helen Lambie, were also criticized as fleeting and otherwise unreliable, prejudiced, tainted, or coached. In particular, Slater was conspicuously contrasted with nine off-duty policemen in a rigged [[identification parade]].<ref name=ODNB/>
-Slater received little support from within Glasgow's Jewish community, which was attributed towards concerns around drawing attention to Slater's Jewish identity in light of the case's notoriety and the potential for a rise in [[antisemitism]] as a result.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Braber|first=Ben|date=2003-04-XX|title=The Trial of Oscar Slater (1909) and Anti-Jewish Prejudices in Edwardian Glasgow|url=http://doi.wiley.com/10.1111/1468-229X.00262|journal=History|language=en|volume=88|issue=290|pages=262–279|doi=10.1111/1468-229X.00262|issn=0018-2648}}</ref>
+Slater received little support from within Glasgow's Jewish community, which was attributed towards concerns around drawing attention to Slater's Jewish identity in light of the case's notoriety and the potential for a rise in [[antisemitism]] as a result.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Braber|first=Ben|date=April 2003|title=The Trial of Oscar Slater (1909) and Anti-Jewish Prejudices in Edwardian Glasgow|url=http://doi.wiley.com/10.1111/1468-229X.00262|journal=History|language=en|volume=88|issue=290|pages=262–279|doi=10.1111/1468-229X.00262|issn=0018-2648}}</ref>
 ==''The Case of Oscar Slater''==
 Roughead's book convinced many of Slater's innocence; influential people included [[Sir Edward Marshall Hall]]; [[Ramsay MacDonald]]; (eventually) [[Stanley Buckmaster, 1st Viscount Buckmaster|Viscount Buckmaster]]; and [[Sir Arthur Conan Doyle]].<ref name=ODNB/> In 1912, Conan Doyle published ''The Case of Oscar Slater,'' a plea for a full pardon for Slater.<ref name=Times4/>
-In 1914 [[Thomas MacKinnon Wood]] ordered a Private Inquiry into the case. A detective in the case, John Thomson Trench, provided information which had allegedly been deliberately 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 trumped-up charges from which he was eventually acquitted.<ref name=ODNB/><ref name="Roughead">{{cite book|title = Famous Trials | volume = 1 | last1 = Roughead | first1 = William | contribution = Oscar Slater | pages = 72–74 | editor1-last = Hodge | editor1-first = Harry | publisher = Penguin Books | author-link = William Roughead | year = 1941}}</ref>
+In 1914, [[Thomas McKinnon Wood]] ordered a Private Inquiry into the case. A detective in the case, John Thomson Trench, provided information which had allegedly been deliberately 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 trumped-up charges from which he was eventually acquitted.<ref name=ODNB/><ref name="Roughead">{{cite book|title = Famous Trials | volume = 1 | last1 = Roughead | first1 = William | contribution = Oscar Slater | pages = 72–74 | editor1-last = Hodge | editor1-first = Harry | publisher = Penguin Books | author-link = William Roughead | year = 1941}}</ref>
 ==Criminal Appeal (Scotland) Act 1927==
+{{Infobox UK legislation
-saw the publication of ''The Truth about Oscar Slater'' by William Park. The contents of the book led the [[Solicitor General for Scotland]], [[Alexander Munro MacRobert]], to conclude that it was no longer proven that Slater was guilty.<ref name=ODNB/>  An Act ([[17 & 18 Geo. V]]) was passed to extend the jurisdiction of the then 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 grounds that Lord Guthrie had failed to direct the jury about the irrelevance of allegations relating to Slater's previous character.
+| short_title           = Criminal Appeal (Scotland) Act 1927
+| type                  = Act
+| parliament            = Parliament of the United Kingdom
+| long_title            = An Act to amend the provisions of the Criminal Appeal (Scotland) Act, 1926, with regard to the power of the Secretary of State to refer a case, or any point arising therein, to the High Court of Justiciary.
+| year                  = 1927
+| citation              = [[17 & 18 Geo. 5]]. c. 26
+| introduced_commons    =
+| introduced_lords      =
+| territorial_extent    =
+| royal_assent          = 22 December 1927
+| commencement          =
+| expiry_date           =
+| repeal_date           =
+| amends                =
+| replaces              =
+| amendments            =
+| repealing_legislation = [[Statute Law (Repeals) Act 1977]]
+| related_legislation   =
+| status                = repealed
+| legislation_history   =
+| theyworkforyou        =
+| millbankhansard       =
+| original_text         =
+| revised_text          =
+| use_new_UK-LEG        =
+| UK-LEG_title          =
+| collapsed             =
+}}
+saw the publication of ''The Truth about Oscar Slater'' by William Park. The contents of the book led the [[Solicitor General for Scotland]], [[Alexander Munro MacRobert]], to conclude that it was no longer proven that Slater was guilty.<ref name=ODNB/>
+An Act ([[17 & 18 Geo. 5]]. c. 26) was passed to extend the jurisdiction of the then 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 grounds that Lord Guthrie had failed to direct the jury about the irrelevance of allegations relating to Slater's previous character.
-After serving an almost two-decades long prison sentence of hard labour, Slater received only £6,000 (''2015: £{{formatnum:{{Inflation|UK|6000|1928|2015|r=-4}}}}'') in compensation.<ref name=ODNB/>
 ==Aftermath==
 Detective-Lieutenant Trench died in 1919, aged fifty, and never lived to see justice done.<ref name="ODNB" />
+After serving an almost two-decades long prison sentence of hard labour, Slater received only £6,000 (''2019: £{{formatnum:{{Inflation|UK|6000|1928|2019|r=-1}}}}'') in compensation.<ref name="ODNB" /> He met his most famous advocate, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, only once in-person; they had a public falling out when Conan Doyle demanded he "be a gentleman" and pay his supporters back for legal fees, which Slater did not.<ref name=":1" />
-In the 1930s, Slater married a local Scottish woman of German descent thirty years his junior and settled in the seaside town of [[Ayr]] where he repaired and sold antiques. As an enemy alien (born German), Slater and his wife were interned for a brief time at the start of [[World War II]], though Slater had long since lost his German citizenship and never returned to Germany. Most of Slater's surviving family, including his two sisters, ultimately died in the [[The Holocaust|Holocaust]].  He died in Ayr in 1948 of natural causes.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Conan Doyle for the defense : the true story of a sensational British murder, a quest for justice, and the world's most famous detective writer|last=Fox|first=Margalit|isbn=9780399589454|edition= First U.S.|location=New York|oclc=1030445407}}</ref>
+In the 1930s, Slater married a local Scottish woman of German descent thirty years his junior and settled in the seaside town of [[Ayr]] where he repaired and sold antiques. He also returned to using his birth name surname. As an enemy alien (born German), Slater and his wife were interned for a brief time at the start of [[World War II]], though Slater had long since lost his German citizenship due to his imprisonment and never returned to Germany. Most of Slater's surviving family, including his two sisters, ultimately were murdered in [[the Holocaust]]. He died in Ayr in 1948 of natural causes.<ref name=":2">{{Cite book|title=Conan Doyle for the defense : the true story of a sensational British murder, a quest for justice, and the world's most famous detective writer|last=Fox|first=Margalit|isbn=9780399589454|edition= First U.S.|location=New York|oclc=1030445407}}</ref>
-The lessons of the Slater miscarriage were considered, as late as 1976, by the [[Devlin Committee]] review on the limitations of [[identity parades]].
 More recently, the Slater case has been revisited by several scholars and writers.<ref name=":0" /><ref>{{Cite book|last=Toughill|first=Thomas|title=Oscar Slater: The Mystery Solved|publisher=Canongate Books Ltd|year=1994|isbn=978-0862414511}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|last=Toughill|first=Thomas|title=Oscar Slater: The 'Immortal' Case of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle|publisher=The History Press|year=2007|isbn=978-0750945738}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|last=Sandford|first=Christopher|title=The Man Who Would Be Sherlock: The Real-Life Adventures of Arthur Conan Doyle|publisher=Thomas Dunne Books|year=2018|isbn=978-1250079565}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|last=Whittington-Egan|first=Richard|title=The Oscar Slater Murder Story: New Light on a Classic Miscarriage of Justice|publisher=Neil Wilson|year=2001|isbn=978-1897784884}}</ref><ref name=":1">{{Cite book|last=Fox|first=Margalit|title=Conan Doyle for the Defense: How Sherlock Holmes's Creator Turned Real-Life Detective and Freed a Man Wrongly Imprisoned for Murder|publisher=Random House|year=2018|isbn=978-0399589454}}</ref>
 == Legacy ==
+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''.<ref>[[The Herald (Glasgow)|The Herald]] ''Punting across the great divide'', 13 January 1998.</ref>
+As a result of controversy around the Slater Case and its aftermath, Scotland created the [[Scottish Court of Criminal Appeal]] (see above).<ref name=":2" />
+In Glasgow [[rhyming slang]], ''See you "Oscar"'' rhymes ''Slater'' with ''later'', although the expression has long been out of use.<ref>[[The Herald (Glasgow)|The Herald]] ''Punting across the great divide'', 13 January 1998.</ref>
+The murder of Marion Gilchrist remains unsolved, but no additional charges have ever been made.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Murder of Marion Gilchrist – 1908 – Glasgow Police Museum |url=https://www.policemuseum.org.uk/crime-casebook/interesting-cases/murder-of-marion-gilchrist-1908/ |access-date=2024-01-02 |language=en-GB}}</ref>
 ==See also==
@@ Line 52: / Line 89: @@
 {{Reflist}}
-==Further reading==
+d==Further reading==
 *[[Arthur Conan Doyle|Conan Doyle]], ''The Case of Oscar Slater'' (1912), available at [http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks12/1202651h.html Project Gutenberg]
 *[[Margalit Fox]], ''Conan Doyle for the Defense: The True Story of a Sensational British Murder, a Quest for Justice, and the World's Most Famous Detective Writer'', Random House (2018) {{ISBN|9780399589454}}
 * William Park, ''The Truth About Oscar Slater'' (1927)
+*{{Cite journal
+ | first = Zeta
+ | last = Rothschild
+ | date = January 1929
+ | title = Thirty Thousand Dollars for Eighteen Years of Hell!
+ | journal = True Detective Mysteries
+ | volume = X
+ | issue = 4
+ | pages = 34–37
+  | url = https://archive.org/details/true-detective-jan-1929/page/34/mode/2up
+ | access-date = June 22, 2022
+}}
 * [[William Roughead]], ''Trial of Oscar Slater'' (1910), available at [https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.221971 the Internet Archive]
 == External links ==
-{{commons category-inline|The Case of Oscar Slater}}
+{{commons category|The Case of Oscar Slater}}
-* [http://www.nas.gov.uk/about/081214.asp 100th Anniversary of a Notorious Glasgow Murder]
+* [http://www.nas.gov.uk/about/081214.asp 100th Anniversary of a Notorious Glasgow Murder] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20091212190721/http://www.nas.gov.uk/about/081214.asp |date=12 December 2009 }}
 * [http://www.fmap.archives.gla.ac.uk/Case%20Files/Slater/Case_File1.htm Forensic Medicine Archives Project – University of Glasgow]
 * [http://www.westminsteronline.org/conandoyle/TrueCrime_OscarSlaterCase.pdf The Case of Oscar Slater]
@@ Line 75: / Line 124: @@
 [[Category:20th-century British people]]
 [[Category:Overturned convictions in Scotland]]
-[[Category:German emigrants to England]]
+[[Category:Emigrants from the German Empire to the United Kingdom]]
 [[Category:Silesian Jews]]
 [[Category:People from Opole]]
@@ Line 81: / Line 130: @@
 [[Category:People wrongfully convicted of murder]]
 [[Category:German emigrants to Scotland]]
-[[Category:Scottish criminals]]
+[[Category:20th-century Scottish criminals]]
+[[Category:Scottish prisoners sentenced to death]]
+[[Category:Prisoners sentenced to death by Scotland]]

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