THE CASE OF OSCAR SLATER

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 20005, 23 November 1927, Page 7

THE CASE OF OSCAR SLATER

AN UNSOLVED MYSTERY DID JUSTICE MISCARRY? Following upon an energetic agitation by friends and sympathisers, Oscar Slater, condemned to death at Glasgow in 1909, for murder, the sentence being commuted to imprisonment for life, has now been released. A further agitation is now on foot to secure for him such compensation as is possible for what numerous people consider a miscarriage of justice. Oscar Slater was sentenced to death !in the JEligh Court of Justice, Edinburgh, on May 6,1909, for a murder committed in Glasgow the previous December, says John o’ London’s Weekly. Owing to certain unsatisfactory features of his trial, and the fact that the verdict against him was returned by a majority of nine to six only, he was reprieved. In 1914 the Secretary for Scotland ordered an inquiry into certain new evidence tending to prove Slater’s innocence, but the enquiry disclosed no ground for further action. In 1912, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle published a little book on the case, in which he maintained that Slater was the victim of a miscarriage of justice. There is now another book, “The Truth About Oscar Slater,’’ by a Glasgow Ijournalist, Mr William Park, for whom ISir Arthur has written a foreword. Mr Park is able to give some new matter, including Slater’s own story (which the defence did not see fit to put before the jury), but nothing that adds materially to the facts as stated in the second editions of Mr Roughhead’s “Trial of Oscar Slater’’ (Notable British Trials). The trouble about a controversial case is that, after a while, one can hardly see the wood for the trees. This is particularly true of the Slater case, in which the evidence bristles with discrepancies and contradictions. It may be useful, therefore, to set out as simply as possible the broad facts. The Victim. Miss Marion Gilchrist was an old lady of eighty-two, who for many years had occupied a first-floor flat in Queen’s I Terrace, West Prince’s Street, Glasgow. She was in good circumstances, which enabled her to indulge a passion for jewellery. She kept her jewellery lin her flat, most of it concealed in garments stored in a spare bedroom. Her 'habits were retired. She had relatives 'in Glasgow, but went out little, received few visitors, and was suspicious of strangers. She kept one servant, a girl of twenty-two, named Helen Lambic. The Murder. At seven o’clock in the evening of Monday, December 21, 1908, Misg Gilchrist, according to her custom, sent Lambie out to fetch an evening newspaper. When Lambie returned, about ten or fifteen minutes later, she found on the landing outside the door a Mr Adams, who occupied the ground-floor house below. He said he had heard suspicious noises in Miss Gilchrist’s flat. The servant opened the door with her latchkey, and as they were about to enter, a well-dressed man came out of the spare bedroom, walking calmly towards them with a pleasant smile, then suddenly darted past them out of flw flat and down the stairs. A few rjAnutes later Lambie found the body <)£ her mistress in the dining-room, in front of the fireplace. The head had been smashed to pulp. The Mott vie. It was presumed that the murderer’s purpose was robbery. In the spare bedroom a box containing private papers had been ransacked, but jewellery of considerable value was left lying on the dressing-table. Lambie however, alleged that a diamond brooch was missing; The Pursuit. On Christmas Day (four days after the murder) the police got information that a man named Oscar Slater, who lived within a few minutes’ walk of Miss Gilchrist’s house, had been trying to sell a pawn-ticket for a diamond brooch; Detectives went to Slater’s house at midnight, but the bird had flown. A few hours earlier he had left Glasgow, bag and baggage. Subsequently it was ascertained that he had travelled to Liverpool and had sailed for New York by the Lusitania on December 2 under the name of Otto Sando. When the Lusitania arrived off Sandy Hook, Slater was arrested by the New York police. The Accused. The accused man was a Silesian Jew, aged thirty-eight. His real name is believed to be Leschziner. He appears to have left Germany to avoid military service about 1888, and thenceforward to have led a vagrant underworld life on the Continent, in Great Britain, and in the United States. He first came to Glasgow in 1901, and married there, but soon separated from fils wife. He was again in Glasgow in 1905. On both occasions he was known as Oscar Slater. In the late autumn of 1908 he came to Glasgow for the third time. In the name of Anderson, and describing himself as a dentist, he took a good flat on the fringe of the West End, where he lived with a young French woman with whom he had for some time associated in Paris and London. But Slater was still the name by which he was known in the billiard-rooms, gambling clubs, and public houses that he frequented. He was a professional gambler, and, when occasion offered, a “dealer in precious stones’’ —in other words, a receiver of stolen goods —but had always succeeded in keeping out of the hands of the police. The Evidence. While Slater was still on the Atlantic, the Glasgow police were suddenly checked by discovering that the brooch that had sent them on his track was not the missing article at all, but had been pawned by Slater long before the murder of Miss Gilchrist. Nevertheless, instead of dropping the case as one would have expected, they decided to proceed on other grounds. At the trial the Crown undertook to prove, first, that Slater was the man who was seen by Adams and Lambie in Miss Gilchrist’s house. If Adams and Lambie could swear to him beyond all doubt, the case was proved. Slater was the murderer. But though these witnesses did, after a fashion, identify Slater as the man, their evidence was not such as a jury could accept without something more. The police therefore sought further

to prove Slater’s identity with (a) a man who was seen running away from the scene of the murder; (b) a man who, a little later, entered the Kelvinbridge subway station in great haste; and (c) a man who, from time to time, had been seen loitering suspiciously near Miss Gilchrist’s house. On all these points the evidence of identity was extremely weak; and in regard to one—the man at the subway station—the police had conclusive information which they did not disclose that that man was not Slater. The suspicious circumstances of Slater’s departure for New York completed the police case. It will be noticed that the case involved the supposition that the police, following a wrong scent, had nevertheless found the right man—an improbability so great that only the very strongest evidence could overcome it. Let us turn to the other side. Weak as the Crown case was, the case for the defence was even weaker—indeed, it was damaging. Slater did not go into the box on his own behalf. The witnesses called to prove an alibi proved nothing. It was true that he had for some time announced his intention of going to America —which again proved nothing—but the suddenness of his departure had surprised his associates. No satisfactory explanation was given for his booking his passage under the name of Otto Sando. The Sequel. In April, 1914, on instructions from the Secretary for Scotland, the Sheriff of Lanarkshire held a private inquiry upon certain allegations made by De-tective-Lieutenant Trench, of the Glasgow police. Trench’s story was that two days after the murder, in the course of making inquiries, he visited Miss Birrell, a niece of Miss Gilchrist. Miss Birrell, he said, told him that on the night of the murder the servant Lambie told her that she had recognised the murderer as a certain A. 8., who was known to both of them and Miss Gilchrist. He reported this to his superior officers. Subsequently he saw Lambie, who confirmed Miss Birrell’s statement. But at the inquiry Miss Birrell, Lambie, and Trench’s superiors declared in the most emphatic terms that Trench’s story was absolutely false. On the other hand, a brother officer said that Trench at the time told him about Miss Birrell’s statement regarding A. B. There was no other corroboration of Trench’s story. Here are a few of the many questions that the discerning reader of the foregoing summary will want to ask: — How did the murderer gain access to the flat? Why, if robbery was his object, did he confine his attention to a box of private papers? Why, if Helen Lambie knew that she had left her mistress alone in the flat, did she not challenge the stranger? Why, if Slater was guilty, was no object found in his possession to connect him with the murder? Why, if Slater was innocent, did he not go into the witness-box? Why did Slater hasten his departure to America? Why did he try to cover up his tracks and travel in the name of Otto Sando? Why did Lieutenant Trench, who had paraded Slater for identification and gave evidence for the Crown at the trial, keep silence for five years, knowing all the time that Slater was innocent? But these questions and many more quite as baffling have never been, and probably never will be, answered.