Arthur & George

George’s mother had been able to withstand her son’s wrongful humiliation.
    The
Daily Telegraph
published Arthur’s findings over two days, the 11th and 12th of January. The newspaper laid it out well, and the compositors were on their best behaviour. Arthur read his words through again, all the way to their thundering conclusion:
    The door is shut in our faces. Now we turn to the last tribunal of all, a tribunal which never errs when the facts are fairly laid before them, and we ask the public of Great Britain whether this thing is to go on.
    The response to the articles was tremendous. Soon the telegram boy could have found his way to Undershaw blindfold. There was support from Barrie, Meredith, and others in the writing profession. The correspondence page of the
Telegraph
was filled with debate about George’s eyesight and the defence’s dereliction in failing to introduce it. George’s mother added her own testimony:
    I always spoke to the solicitor employed for the defence of the extreme short sight of my son, which has been from a child. I considered that sufficient proof at once, if there had been no other, that he could not have gone to the field, with a so-called ‘road’ impossible even to people with good sight, at night. I felt this so much that I was distressed that no opportunity was given me when giving evidence to speak on his defective sight. The time allowed me was very short, and I suppose people were tired of the case … My son’s sight was always so defective that he bent very close to the paper in writing, and held a book or paper very close to his eyes, and when out walking he did not recognize people easily. When I met him anywhere I always felt I must look for him, not he for me.
    Other letters demanded a search for Elizabeth Foster, anatomized the character of Captain Anson, and dilated upon the prevalence of gangs in Staffordshire. One correspondent explained how easily horse hairs might work themselves loose from inside the lining of a coat. There were letters from one of George’s fellow passengers on the Wyrley train, from Onlooker of Hampstead NW and from A Friend to Parsees. Mr Aroon Chunder Dutt MD (Cantab.) wished to point out that cattle maiming was a crime entirely foreign to the Eastern nature. Chowry Muthu MD of New Cavendish Street reminded readers that all India was watching the case, and that the name and honour of England were at stake.
    Three days after the second
Telegraph
article appeared, Arthur and Mr Yelverton were received at the Home Office by Mr Gladstone, Sir Mackenzie Chambers and Mr Blackwell. It was agreed that the proceedings should be considered private. The conversation lasted an hour. Afterwards, Sir A. Conan Doyle stated that he and Mr Yelverton had met with a
courteous and sympathetic reception
, and that he was
confident
the Home Office would do all it could to clear the matter up.
    The waiving of copyright helped spread the story not just to the Midlands, but across the world. Arthur’s cuttings agency was overburdened, and he grew used to the repeated headline, which taught him the same verb in many different languages: SHERLOCK HOLMES INVESTIGATES . Expressions of support – and occasional dissent – arrived by every post. Fantastical solutions to the case were proposed: for instance, that the persecution of the Edaljis had been conducted by other Parsees as punishment for Shapurji’s apostasy. And of course there was another letter in a handwriting which had now become very familiar:
    I know from a detective of Scotland Yard that if you write to Gladstone and say you find Edalji is guilty after all they will make you a lord next year. Is it not better to be a lord than to run the risk of losing kidneys and liver. Think of all the ghoolish murders that are committed why then should you escape?
    Arthur noted the spelling mistake, judged that he had got his man on the run, and flipped the page:
    The proof of what I tell you is in the writing he put in the papers when they loosed him out of prison where he ought to have been kept along with his dad and all the black and yellow-faced Jews. Nobody could copy his writing like that, you blind fool.
    Such crude provocation merely confirmed the need to push forward on all fronts. There must be no slackening of effort. Mr Mitchell wrote to confirm that Milton had indeed been on the syllabus at Walsall School during the period that interested Sir Arthur; though begged to add that the great poet