Arthur & George

respond.
    Sergeant Parsons continued with his evidence, and described the moment when the prisoner was put into the Newton Street lock-up in Birmingham. Edalji had turned to him and said, ‘This is a bit of Mr Loxton’s work, I suppose. I’ll make him sit up before I am done.’
    The next morning, the Birmingham
Daily Gazette
wrote of George:
    He is 28 years of age but looks younger. He was dressed in a shrunken black and white check suit, and there was little of the typical solicitor in his swarthy face, with its full, dark eyes, prominent mouth, and small round chin. His appearance is essentially Oriental in its stolidity, no sign of emotion escaping him beyond a faint smile as the extraordinary story of the prosecution unfolded. His aged Hindoo father and his white-haired English mother were in court, and followed the proceedings with pathetic interest.
    ‘I am twenty-eight but look younger,’ he remarked to Mr Meek. ‘Perhaps that is because I am twenty-seven. My mother is not English, she is Scottish. My father is not a Hindoo.’
    ‘I warned you against reading the newspapers.’
    ‘But he is not a Hindoo.’
    ‘It’s near enough for the
Gazette
.’
    ‘But Mr Meek, what if I said you were a Welshman?’
    ‘I would not hold you inaccurate, as my mother had Welsh blood.’
    ‘Or an Irishman?’
    Mr Meek smiled back at him, unoffended, perhaps even looking a little Irish.
    ‘Or a Frenchman?’
    ‘Now there, sir, you go too far. There you provoke me.’
    ‘And I am stolid,’ George continued, looking down at the
Gazette
again. ‘Isn’t that a good thing to be? Isn’t stolid what a typical solicitor is meant to be? And yet I am not a typical solicitor. I am a typical Oriental, whatever that means. Whatever I am, I am typical, isn’t that it? If I were excitable, I would still be a typical Oriental, wouldn’t I?’
    ‘Stolid is good, Mr Edalji. And at least they didn’t call you inscrutable. Or wily.’
    ‘What would that signify?’
    ‘Oh, full of devilish low cunning. We like to avoid devilish. Also diabolical. The defence will settle for stolid.’
    George smiled at his solicitor. ‘I do apologize, Mr Meek. And I thank you for your good sense. I am likely to need more of it, I fear.’
    On the second day of the proceedings, William Greatorex, a fourteen-year-old scholar of Walsall Grammar School, gave evidence. Numerous letters written over his signature were read out in court. He denied both authorship and knowledge of them, and could even show that he had been in the Isle of Man when two of them had been posted. He said that it was his custom to take the train every morning from Hednesford to Walsall, where he was at school. Other boys who generally travelled with him were Westwood Stanley, son of the well-known miners’ agent; Quibell, son of the Vicar of Hednesford; Page, Harrison and Ferriday. The names of all these boys were mentioned in the letters which had just been read out.
    Greatorex stated that he had known Mr Edalji by sight for three or four years. ‘He has often travelled to Walsall in the same compartment as us boys. Quite a dozen times, I should think.’ He was asked when was the last time the prisoner had travelled with him. ‘The morning after two of Mr Blewitt’s horses were killed. It was June 30, I think. We could see the horses lying in the field as we went by in the train.’ The witness was asked if Mr Edalji had said anything to him that morning. ‘Yes, he asked me if the horses that had been killed belonged to Blewitt. Then he looked out of the window.’ The witness was asked if there had been any previous conversation with the prisoner about the maimings. ‘No, no, never,’ he replied.
    Thomas Henry Gurrin agreed that he was a handwriting expert of many years’ standing. He gave his report on the letters that had been read out in court. In the disguised writing he found a number of peculiarities very strongly marked. Exactly the same peculiarities were found in the letters of Mr Edalji, which had been handed to him for comparison.
    Dr Butter, the police surgeon, who had examined the stains on Edalji’s clothing, stated that he had performed tests which revealed traces of mammalian blood. On the coat and waistcoat he found twenty-nine short, brown hairs. These he compared with hairs on the skin of a Colliery pony maimed the evening before Mr Edalji was arrested. Under the microscope they were found to be similar.
    Mr Gripton, who was keeping