In the summer of 1906, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle—beloved author of the Sherlock Holmes novels—entered the lobby of a hotel in the English Midlands. He stood for a while observing a small, dark-skinned, bespectacled man who was sitting in an armchair reading a newspaper.
The small man was a notorious criminal, convicted of a brutal crime. According to one of Britain’s most respected police officers, Captain Anson, Chief Constable of Staffordshire, he was a villain of monstrous cunning, who moved like a panther and had eyes that “emitted a strange sort of glow” like those of a cat.
Sir Arthur watched the small man for a few minutes and shook his head. “I knew from that first moment that he was an innocent man,” he would later recall.
The intervention of the world’s most renowned detective writer would be one of the final twists in what had become known throughout Britain and its Empire simply as The Great Wyrley Outrages.
Surrounded by woods and pasture, to the Victorian visitor the Staffordshire village of Great Wyrley must have appeared a peaceful place. Yet the events in this rural community between 1888 And 1903 would fully vindicate Sherlock Holmes’ most famous observations on English life: “It is my belief, Watson, founded upon my experience, that the lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside."
The start of the trouble could be traced to 1876 and the appointment of a new vicar to serve at the village church. The man chosen for the role by the Bishop of Lichfield was Reverend Shapurji Edalji.
The Reverend Edalji had been born in Mumbai. The son of a Parsi family, he had converted to Christianity as a teenager and trained for the priesthood in Canterbury. He was the first South Asian vicar to serve in any Church of England parish, and in all likelihood, the first person of color to fill that role at a church of any denomination anywhere in the UK.
Sign up for the Murder & Mayhem newsletter and get the best mystery and thriller recommendations delivered straight to your inbox.
The Rev. Edalji had married a white Englishwoman, Charlotte Stuart, a vicar’s daughter from Shropshire. The couple had three children George, Horace and Maude, all of them born in Staffordshire.
The arrival of a mixed-race couple in an English country village in the 19th century was a rare occurrence, but it appears the Edalji’s were warmly welcomed. If there was resentment and racist feelings towards them, it would not bubble up until they were well established in the community.
In 1888, a series of vicious anonymous letters falsely accusing the Rev. Edalji of an assortment of sexual crimes and threatening murder to anyone who served this “black master” began arriving at the vicarage. Others were sent to the homes of members of the village council and prominent local clergymen.
An orchestrated campaign of harassment directed against the Edaljis began. Abusive graffiti was daubed on the walls of their garden, animal excrement smeared on outbuildings, and windows of the vicarage broken.
The local police investigated, but, evidently under direction of the Chief Constable of Staffordshire, Captain Anson, not with much enthusiasm.
The Rev. Edalji had forthright views on church matters and was not afraid of voicing them. There was a feeling amongst some prominent citizens—including, it seemed, the Chief Constable—that he was a little too big for his boots.
The rulers of the Empire did not take kindly to other races telling them what to do.
The campaign of abuse continued until 1895 when it stopped completely. Calm once again descended on Great Wyrley.
During the vilification, eldest son George had been working diligently. He was solitary and wore thick glasses to correct severe myopia which gave him a peculiar, owlish appearance.
He was also highly intelligent. George did well at school and, after attending college, became a solicitor, winning prizes from the Birmingham Law Society.
Yet despite his success, even in his late 20s, George Edalji continued to live with his parents. He had no friends, no girl he was sweet on.
His only hobby was taking long, lonely walks in the countryside, often as darkness was falling. At night he slept in the same bedroom as his father, who, it was said, locked the door before switching out the light.
That George was not your average villager was undeniable. His outsider status was to have grave consequences.
On February 1st, 1903, eight years after the last poison pen letter about the Edalji’s had been sent, a horse was cruelly maimed at a farm in Great Wyrley. Over the next six months, more animals were attacked and injured with a bladed weapon.
When the attacks began, anonymous letters started to arrive once more. Purporting to be from the gang carrying out the attacks, the letters named George Edalji as a leading member.
The police, led by Captain Anson, needed no second invitation. They began compiling evidence against George Edalji and trailing him as he went about Great Wyrley.
Despite the suspicion that surrounded him, George Edalji continued to go on his walks. On August 18th, a wounded pony was found just half a mile from the scene of the first attack.
The police arrested the vicar’s son and then tried to find evidence that connected him to the crime.
A set of old cut throat razors uncovered in the bedroom he shared with his father (the “blood” on them was later revealed to be rust), an overcoat covered in what they believed to be horse hairs (they were likely just loose threads), and a set of footprints police claimed led from the scene of the crime to the vicarage were enough for the constabulary to make a case.
George Edalji stood trial for the attack on the pit pony. The evidence was circumstantial, but his oddness—and likely his color—counted against him.
Edalji was convicted and sentenced to seven years with hard labor. There was an immediate outcry; 10,000 people signed a petition protesting the verdict, but the sentence was upheld.
A model prisoner, George Edalji was paroled in 1906, but the conviction hung over him and he continued to campaign to clear his name. This is where Sir Arthur Conan Doyle came in.
It did not take Sir Arthur long to see the flaw in the police case.
Watching George reading the newspaper, Sir Arthur observed how close to his face he held it, and how he altered the angle constantly as he read. He concluded that no man whose eyesight was as bad as George Edalji’s was could have crept around in the pitch dark, clambering over fences, vaulting streams, attacking livestock, and all the while avoiding the policemen who were tailing him.
Sir Arthur travelled to Great Wyrley and spent eight months compiling evidence. He clashed with Captain Anson who remained convinced that Edalji was guilty, despite the fact animal maiming around the village had continued while George was in prison.
Sir Arthur concluded that the police findings were wrong, and that the most likely culprit was Royden Sharp, a former sailor who worked for the village butcher. His findings were published in two articles in the London Daily Telegraph in January of 1908, and subsequently serialized around the world.
Along with pressure from senior lawyers, it was enough to earn George Edalji a pardon in May of 1908.
While Sharp would never be arrested for the crimes, a full 26 years later Enoch Knowles from nearby Wednesbury would be convicted of writing the abusive letters that had targeted the Edalji family.
By then, Shapurji Edalji was dead. He passed away in 1918, having served as the vicar of Great Wyrley for 42 years.
His son George would continue to work as a solicitor, living with his sister just outside London until his death in 1953.
Sign up for the Murder & Mayhem newsletter and get the best mystery and thriller recommendations delivered straight to your inbox.
