THE SLATER CASE.
It may be useful to recall the facts. Miss Marion Gilchrist, an old maiden lady, lived in a fiat on the first floor of No. 15 Queen's Terrace, Glasgow, where she was attended by a single maidservant, Helen Lambie, aged twenty-one. She was of independent means, and her hobby was a collection of jewels, valued at £3,000, which she kept among the clothes in her ward- robe. She was nervous about burglars, and the door of her flat, besides being furnished with the ordinary lock and chain, was fastened with two patent locks. On the evening of December 21st, 1908, Helen Lambie, following her usual custom, went out a minute or two before seven to buy her mistress an evening paper. She shut the flat door and the house door behind her. At about seven Mr. Arthur Adams and his two sisters, who lived in rooms on the floor immediately below Miss Gilchrist, beard a heavy fall, followed by three sharp knocks. It had been arranged by Miss Gilchrist with the Adamses that if at any time she wanted help she was to knock on the floor; so Mr. Adams rushed out by the street-door which belonged to his part of the buildings, went in by the street-door belonging to Miss Gilchrist's flat, and ran up to the first floor. The flat door was shut, and be rang the bell hard three times. He got no answer, but beard a sound from within as if someone were breaking up sticks. Since he could got no answer, he went back to his sisters, who urged him to go back again. He did so, and as he rang the bell again he beard Lambie coming op the stairs. She opened the door and went in; as she did so a man came forward from the bedroom door on the right of the ball, passed the girl and Mr. Adams, and ran downstairs "like greased lightning." Lambie went first into the kitchen, then into the bedroom, and found that "it was all right there"; then she went into the dining-room, saw her mistress lying on the floor with a rug over her head, and called Mr. Adams. He saw what had happened, and rushed out to try to catch the man who had passed him ; the girl went downstairs and told the Misses Adams. When Miss Gilchrist's body was examined, it was found that she had been battered to death. Almost every bone in her bead had been smashed, and one eye driven into the brain. The dining. room was spattered with blood. In the bedroom the jewels in the wardrobe bad not been touched, but a box containing papers had been forced open, and a diamond brooch worth £4.0 or 250 was missing from the toilet-table. No weapon was found in the flat, and there were no traces of blood in the bedroom.
On Tuesday, December 22nd, the police circulated a description of the murderer, as described to them by Adams and Lambie. On December 25th they circulated another description, different in details; they altered it on account of evidence supplied by Mary Barrowman, a girl of fifteen, who said that she had seen a man rash from the house on the night on which the murder was committed. Following the publication of this description, and the statement that a diamond brooch was missing, the police received what they supposed to be a clue. They were told that a man named Oscar Slater had been trying to sell a pawnticket for a diamond brooch- They went to his lodgings, where they found that he and the young woman with whom be was living, Andrea Antoine, bad left Glasgow that night; they subsequently dis- covered that the two bad sailed on December 26th for New York on the • Lusitania.' The police therefore cabled to New York to have Slater arrested and searched. This was done, and the pawnticket which he had been trying to sell was found on him ; but it turned out to be merely a ticket for a brooch belonging to the girl Antoine, which had been pawned some time before the murder. The police clue, therefore, was proved to be worthless; nevertheless, Slater was detained, and Adams, Lambie, and Barrowman were sent out to identify him if possible. Lambie and Barrowman occupied the same cabin on the way out, and Barrowman subsequently stated in evidence that, though the voyage lasted twelve days, she never once discussed the appearance of the murderer with Lambie, although no one had told her not to do so. In New York, in any case, Lambie and Barrowman (the latter of whom had been shown a photograph of Slater, and both of whom had previously seen him brought into Court by an official wearing a badge) identified Slater as the man they had seen in Glasgow; Adams was less positive. Slater was extradited, and at his trial in Scotland these three witnesses repeated their evidence; another witness said that at five minutes to seven on the evening of the murder she had seen a dark, clean-shaven man leaning against a railing at the street entry to Miss Gilchrist's house (Slater was proved to have had a short black moustache a day or two after the murder), and that she thought this man was Slater, but might have been mistaken. Another witness, a girl ticket clerk, said that at 7.30 on the same evening a man, whom she identified as Slater, rushed past her office without waiting for a ticket. These were the only witnesses called by the Crown to identify Slater with the murderer. No evidence, from first to last, was brought to show that Slater ever knew, or had ever heard of, Miss Gilchrist or her house. The Attorney-General, however,
Lid stress on the fact that he bad left hurriedly for America, and papers for the blind. Unfortunately, the people who are
though the facts show that he had made open preparations for doing so days before the murder was committed ; as to this point, Slater's explanation was that he had heard that his wife was trying to find him ; and as to travelling under the false name of Otto Sande, he had used other aliases before, and meant further to cover up his tracks from his wife. As regards other points, nothing to incriminate him was found in his boxes. No blood was found on any of his clothes. A bad impression, no doubt, was caused at the trial from the fact that his counsel did not put him into the witness- box, though Slater was anxious to give evidence ; his counsel, however, thought that if he were questioned on his admittedly shabby antecedents, it would do him no good. The fact remains that there is nothing to show that, if he had not committed the perfectly legal act of pawning his mistress's brooch, he would ever have been connected with the case by the police or by anyone else.
As the case is now to be reopened, these and other points will receive fresh consideration. It may be that some com- pletely fresh theory as to the crime will be brought forward; for instance, the perfectly tenable theory that the robbery and murder were carried out not by one man but by two. This would account for the otherwise inexplicable fact that, although the murderer presumably was covered with blood, no marks of blood were found in the bedroom, in which the box was broken open, and from which Lambie and Adams saw the man come. It may be, on the other hand, that fresh evidence has been discovered which still further disconnects Slater from the crime, but which leads no nearer to the discovery of the criminal. Whichevek it may be, one point, let us hope, will be borne in mind throughout. It is that, whether or not there has been a miscarriage of justice, it is probable, and indeed almost certain, that nobody has been to blame; that everyone connected with the trial did their best, and according to the right as they saw it; that nobody needs to be justified or upheld in the course they took, from any sense of false pride or determination not to "let down" another who may bare made a mistake. If a mistake has been made, such mistakes have been made in the past and will be made again. If there has been a miscarriage of justice, it is certain that there can be no justice without occasional miscarriages. If an innocent man has been found guilty, other innocent men have been convicted before now, and others will be convicted in the future. That is an unhappy certainty, but it is a certainty. One plain and unchanging duty yet remains. If a man is found to have been wrongly condemned and imprisoned, he must be released, and he must be compensated, so far as compensation can be given him. Society must use every effort to repair its error. We, the community, cannot wholly restore the past, but we can redeem something from the past for the future. That is our duty, and that way alone lies justice.
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