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Feature: 100th anniversary of a notorious Glasgow murder
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The National
Archives of Scotland (NAS) is the principal repository of original
documents relating to the case of Oscar Slater which has intrigued
researchers for a century. Interest continues to this day.
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It is now 100 years since the murder in Glasgow of a wealthy 82-year
old lady, Miss Marion Gilchrist, who had been living a quiet life
with her one young maidservant, Helen Lambie, in a large 1st floor
flat at 15 Queens Terrace, West Princes Street. She was murdered
shortly after 7pm on 21st December 1908 after Helen had gone out
to buy the evening newspaper and do a few errands. She was found
bludgeoned to death in the dining room. |
Opinion from the doctors' report, NAS ref. AD21/5/28
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Sketch of the stolen brooch, NAS ref. JC34/1/32/9/2
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Miss Gilchrist
obviously knew her attacker as there was no sign of a forced
entry to her flat, and he was presumably aware of their routine.
The motive appears to have been robbery although only one item
from her large jewellery collection, a crescent-shaped diamond
brooch, was found to be missing. |
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Helen painted a picture of their life when she was
examined by the Lord Advocate during the murder trial:
“Miss Gilchrist had not very many visitors.
There were some business gentlemen that came to the house…I
know that she had a great many jewels…she wore jewels every
day, usually a ring and a brooch…when she went out to tea
and to dinner she wore more jewels.
…It was the usual practice for me to go out errands in the
evening. I usually went out on my errands about six o’clock
and sometimes a little later…”
Photographs of the interior and exterior of Miss Gilchrist's house
and an inventory of her jewellery give an impression of her life.
Photographs of interior and exterior of Miss Gilchrist's house
(NAS ref. AD21/5/53 & 63) - Acrobat PDF, 320KB, new window
Inventory
of jewellery (NAS ref. JC34/1/32/8) - Acrobat PDF, 636KB,
new window
Miss Gilchrist’s downstairs neighbour, a Mr Adams, hearing
a disturbance, had gone out of his flat to investigate and
passed a man hurrying down the staircase. Helen Lambie passed
the same man heading down the stairs as she re-entered the
building. A 14 year old girl, Mary Barrowman, who was in the
street at the time, had also spotted a man hurrying out of
the building. Although their descriptions of this fleeing
person did not match, the police immediately suspected Oscar
Slater as the murderer. They knew him as a disreputable foreigner
and an associate of prostitutes, thieves, burglars, and resetters.
They also had reason to believe he was an illegal gambling-den
operator. He had already been prosecuted for malicious wounding
and assault in London, and disorderly conduct in Edinburgh
prior to his arrival in Glasgow.
Oscar Joseph Slater (originally Leschziner)
was born in 1872 in Upper Silesia, Germany, to Jewish parents.
In 1893 or 1894 he travelled to London, possibly to evade
military service, and worked as a bookmaker there prior to
setting himself up as a dealer in precious stones.
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Once settled in Britain he used various surnames – Sando,
George, Anderson, Schmidt and Slater. It was the latter he appears
to have used for official purposes. By 1899 he had moved to
Edinburgh. He at various times claimed to be a gymnastics instructor
and a dentist, although his business interests in jewellery
continued. At the time of Marion Gilchrist’s murder he
was living only a few blocks away from her street in Glasgow. |
Oscar Slater's business card, NAS ref. JC34/1/32/17
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Slater seems to have done himself few favours in the
days following the murder, leaving Glasgow almost immediately.
On Christmas Day he signed in at the North Western Hotel in
Liverpool with a female companion, before boarding the ocean
liner the Lusitania, bound for New York, the next day. Tickets
for the crossing had been booked with Cunard Line through
Thos. Cook & Son in Glasgow on 23rd December in the name
of Mr & Mrs Oscar Slater but, curiously, they were issued
in the name of Mr & Mrs Otto Sando.
Oscar Slater's signature on the North Western Hotel's signing
in sheet, NAS ref. JC34/1/32/43
Application form for contract tickets, NAS ref.
AD21/5/39.
The police were waiting for him on his arrival in New York and
he was taken straight to Tombs Prison from where he penned an impassioned
letter to his friend, Hugh Cameron.
Oscar
Slater's letter from Tombs Prison (AD21/5/43-44) - Acrobat
PDF, 503KB, new window |
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Oscar Slater's indictment, NAS ref. AD21/5/7
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Slater was found to be in possession of a pawn ticket
for a brooch which further served to incriminate him
in the eyes of the Glasgow police. They applied for
his extradition but, in the event, Slater returned
to Scotland voluntarily hoping to clear his name,
only to be charged with murder upon his return to
Glasgow.
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innocence from the outset.
Following his trial in the High Court of Justiciary in Edinburgh
in May 1909, Slater was found guilty of murder by a majority
verdict and he was sentenced to execution. This was commuted
to penal servitude for life. He was transported to Peterhead
Prison in the north-east of Scotland, where he remained for
the next eighteen and a half years.
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Oscar Slater's declaration, NAS ref. AD21/5/22
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Newspaper cutting NAS ref. HH16/111/37/23 |
The entry for Oscar Slater
in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography describes him
as ‘victim of miscarriage of justice’. There was an
immediate outcry after the guilty verdict was pronounced, and
much campaigning to have him cleared during the following two
decades, most notably by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who published
The Case of Oscar Slater in 1912. Slater’s supporters claimed
that aspects of the investigation and the trial had been mishandled,
with too much emphasis having been placed on his unsavoury character
and former misdeeds, and on the statements of the key witnesses
which later turned out to be unreliable. Also, Slater’s
alibi was never disclosed and the ‘incriminatory’
pawn ticket was found to relate to a transaction which had taken
place several weeks before the murder. As early as 1910 The
Trial of Oscar Slater appeared, in which William Roughead examined
worrying aspects of the trial. This was published in the Notable
British Trials series. And in 1914 John Thompson Trench, one
of the detectives involved in the original investigation, disclosed
information implicating one of Miss Gilchrist’s relatives,
which had allegedly been concealed by the police in 1909. Trench
was dismissed from the police force following this disclosure.
The publication of The Truth about Oscar Slater by a Glasgow
journalist, William Park, in 1927 raised fresh doubts about
the reliability of the verdict and Slater was released on licence
(but not granted a pardon) towards the end of that year.
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Somewhat surprisingly,
Oscar Slater returned to Glasgow but shortly afterwards moved to Ayr.
Not content with his release on licence, and still asserting his innocence,
in March 1928 he petitioned the Secretary of State for Scotland for
an appeal hearing before the recently constituted Court of Criminal
Appeal.
Oscar Slater's petition to the Secretary of State for Scotland
(NAS ref. JC34/1/32/34/1-6) - Acrobat PDF, 1.87KB, new window.
However, the appeal did not have the outcome he had hoped for. |
Legal opinion about appeal NAS ref. HH16/111/37/59
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Continuing to live quietly in Ayr, he married his second wife,
Lina Wilhelmina Schad, in 1936. Both were briefly interned as aliens
at the start of World War II but he went on to apply for naturalisation
in 1946. He died at 25 St Phillan's Avenue, Ayr, on 31 January 1948,
described as ‘retired baker’ on his death certificate.
Newspapers were greatly preoccupied with the case of Oscar Slater
as it unfolded over 40 years. You can see a selection of newspaper
cuttings about Oscar Slater (NAS ref. HH16/111/37/21, 27, 35, 48,
54, 57) - Acrobat PDF, 2.63KB, new window.
The extensive collection of papers relating to the trial of Oscar
Slater, principally papers from the Lord Advocate’s Department
(AD21/5, AD21/6), the Scottish Office Home and Health Department
(HH15/20, HH16/109-112) and the High Court of Justiciary (JC34/1/32)
may be examined in the public
search room in West Register House, Charlotte Square,
Edinburgh. |
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