• 2 months ago
Oscar Slater faced one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in Scottish policing history. It is commonly believed that London was the first place in the world to have a police force but it was actually Glasgow.
Transcript
00:00It's an incredibly complex and murky case of bad policing, bad forensic science.
00:08A lot of people think that Robert Peel invented policing in 1829 in London,
00:13but Glasgow had a police force in 1800 when Robert Peel was a 12-year-old schoolboy,
00:19and there was another 18 police forces set up throughout the UK before Peel's police.
00:25So it's one of these historical myths that Peel was in fact the inventor of policing.
00:30This is Alistair Dinsmore, founder of the Glasgow Police Museum.
00:34He worked as an inspector of Strathclyde Police from 1965 before retiring in 1998.
00:39The contents of the museum were acquired by Dinsmore's own personal efforts,
00:44from scouring the internet to local libraries.
00:46He tells the story of Britain's first police force over the course of 175 years
00:52through artefacts, stories and images.
00:55Alistair told us a bit about the history of Glasgow policing from his records
00:59and introduced us to some of the most famous cases in Glasgow.
01:02Once things are put into books, they become fact in people's eyes,
01:07and a lot of the history etc in bygone days, especially in the 19th century,
01:15was published in England, London particularly,
01:19where all the people doing that sort of stuff lived.
01:24So the research north of Watford was non-existent,
01:28so they really just thought this was where things started and accepted it.
01:34It's commonly believed that the first police force was founded in London,
01:37but it wasn't, it was actually founded here in Glasgow.
01:39Scottish policing dates back to 1617,
01:42when the first constables were appointed,
01:44though borough police forces were not established until the 19th century.
01:48The role of these earliest police officers
01:50was to replace the town guards of citizens or old soldiers.
01:53The first Police Act was passed here in Glasgow in 1800.
01:57Glasgow appointed their first detective in 1819.
02:03His name was Peter McKinley.
02:04He had been promoted to lieutenant, which was a supervisory role,
02:08but he was one of three at that time made lieutenants,
02:12but he was appointed criminal officer,
02:15and that meant that he had one of his responsibilities
02:18was to deal with the crime and to interview the people and investigate.
02:24Two years later, he got an assistant in 1821,
02:29and they formed the Glasgow Criminal Department,
02:32and that was a forerunner of what we know today as the CID,
02:36and they gradually grew into quite a formidable force,
02:45and they were able to deal with a lot of crimes,
02:51a lot of criminals as well,
02:53because they had to be controlled too,
02:57and surveillance put on them if they were suspected,
03:01et cetera, so they needed numbers.
03:03And in the 1930s, there was a forensic department opened in Glasgow
03:10which dealt with the scientific side of things,
03:14fingerprints and all these kind of things,
03:17and they moved through the Second World War.
03:22Now, women were brought into the police,
03:26there was a woman appointed as a policewoman in 1915,
03:30Emily Miller, and after the First World War,
03:34the numbers of policewomen gradually grew,
03:37and by 1924, they had 11 policewomen,
03:41but they were always in plain clothes,
03:43and they were attached to the CID
03:45and to investigate crimes involving women and children,
03:50and it was a very successful way of doing it,
03:53and by the time the Second World War ended,
03:57there was some of the policewomen were given uniforms
04:01and put out to divisions to do similar work there,
04:04but also as a way of having a woman officer available
04:10for interviewing women and children.
04:13So it's an evolution rather than an instant idea.
04:17You know, everything takes time in most big organisations,
04:21and although the 19th century was,
04:24sort of remained the same pretty much,
04:27the 20th century certainly brought in change,
04:30and we are seeing the benefits today.
04:34In 1811, there were three English criminals
04:38who came up to Glasgow,
04:40and they took a room in a boarding house,
04:43and they would go out at night
04:45and break into the Paisley Union Bank in Ingram Street,
04:49where the locked boxes,
04:52there's no big safes in these days,
04:54and it was big strong boxes,
04:56and they had blank keys
04:58and tried to work out how to get into them,
05:00and then they would send the keys down to London
05:02to a blacksmith who filed pieces off them
05:05and sent them back up by coach,
05:07and they did this for about three or four weeks
05:09until they had the keys that fitted,
05:11and on the 13th of July, 1811,
05:14they decided to break in and steal the money.
05:18So they did that,
05:19and they got away down to London,
05:21and it was 45,000 pounds in gold, silver, and banknotes.
05:25Now that's the equivalent to 12 and a half million today.
05:29So they got down to London,
05:31and the Glasgow police didn't know who had broken in
05:35until the lady who had rented the room to them
05:38said that one day she had been sent to the coach house
05:42with a package by one of the men
05:44to send by coach to London.
05:47So they looked at the register in the coach house
05:49and found that it went to the blacksmith as the addressee,
05:54and they contacted the Bow Street runners
05:59who were court officers down in London
06:03who did warrants, et cetera,
06:05and they arrested them,
06:07but unfortunately, they paid them money to get away.
06:12So that meant that the three men were on the loose again,
06:15but in 1819, one of the men, James McCool,
06:19came to Edinburgh,
06:21and he was trying to bank some of the banknotes from the robbery,
06:25and the chief of police at Leith,
06:28who had been a Bow Street runner,
06:31heard he was in town and arrested him for the robbery,
06:34and he was tried at Edinburgh High Court
06:37and found guilty and sentenced to death,
06:40but unfortunately, he took poison a few days before
06:44and cheated the hangman.
06:46Yeah, interesting.
06:49We've had various other crimes.
06:51We've had bombings in Glasgow.
06:531883, we had bombings.
06:55An Irish group wanted to do political bombings,
07:00and Archie Carmichael at that time
07:03was a detective inspector,
07:05and he was highly thought of and very clever,
07:09and he was known as Glasgow's Sherlock Holmes.
07:11So when the bombings took place,
07:14an expert had told the police
07:16that it had been chemicals
07:17that had been used to cause the explosions
07:20because they had blown up a gas tank
07:22over in the south side of the city,
07:25and they had put a bomb on the aqueduct
07:28trying to blow the bridge
07:30that would carry the canal and flood the city.
07:33So it was a serious incident.
07:35So Archie Carmichael was told
07:37that the chemicals would have come from Europe
07:41because there was nobody made
07:42these volatile chemicals in Britain.
07:45So he went over to Europe
07:46and he found the factory in Antwerp in Belgium
07:50which had made the chemicals
07:51and supplied them to Glasgow.
07:53So he followed the paper trail back to Glasgow
07:56and arrested six men for the bombings,
07:59and they all got life imprisonment.
08:01And Archie Carmichael got a medal
08:04and a financial 20 pounds as a reward from the city,
08:09along with other officers,
08:11to thank them for ridding the city of the bombers.
08:15The police are important.
08:18They were more important perhaps in the early days
08:22because that was the only people,
08:24it was one of the only people
08:25that the residents of the area could turn to.
08:30Nowadays there's so many different organisations
08:33that take responsibility for various aspects
08:36of social care and social life.
08:39But the police is important
08:41because it's got to be there
08:43and be able to respond to crimes, etc.
08:49And we're seeing new ideas coming in with Police Scotland
08:53which I don't necessarily agree with,
08:56but they make their decisions.
08:59But the way it was done,
09:02probably me being a bit of a dinosaur
09:05as far as policing is concerned,
09:07at least the public were getting a service
09:10that they appreciated.
09:12And we see that here in the museum.
09:14We get people of all ages coming in
09:16and even the older ones like myself,
09:21the older visitors always say,
09:24oh, I remember the policeman
09:25and my beat officer around the streets and that.
09:28And if you did anything,
09:29they would clip you in the ear
09:30and you wouldn't dare tell your parents
09:32you got a clip in the ear
09:34because they would give you another clip
09:36for getting it, for being in trouble.
09:38So it was a nice balance.
09:41It was a nice balance
09:42that families looked after their children.
09:45And it wasn't just the rich people or that.
09:48A lot of the poor families were really law-abiding
09:52and had a social conscience.
09:56That's when we talk about people
09:58being able to leave their doors open
10:00and things like that.
10:01And that was true in these days.
10:02But that's gone now.
10:04But the police is still important
10:06to respond to the needs of the community.
10:10And we try to show what it was like
10:14and hope that if you know what things happened before,
10:18that the same mistakes won't be made again.
10:21One of my first memories from when I was a child
10:23is learning how to dial 999 in an emergency
10:26and ask for the police.
10:27Personally, I can't really imagine a life
10:30without the police as an institution
10:32in the background somewhere.
10:33It's really interesting then to think of police
10:36as only part of recent history.
10:38The foundations upon which they work,
10:40the structures that are in place,
10:42how they operate,
10:43considering police are one of the most powerful forces
10:46in the country.
10:47It's all built on less than two centuries of practice.
10:50This is why some cases stick out
10:51and grab our interests more than others do.
10:54Occasionally, the police run into a situation
10:56where they have little or no prior experience.
10:58And it's usually only time that judges their response.
11:01And these anecdotes can be monumental
11:03in shaping the way things are run
11:05and how they approach future situations.
11:07One such case is that of Oscar Slater,
11:09who faced what some consider
11:11to be the biggest miscarriage of justice
11:13in Scottish policing history.
11:14A few years ago,
11:16I got pretty obsessed with the Oscar Slater case
11:21because it's a really interesting case
11:23that has loads of elements to it.
11:25Essentially, the case revolves around
11:30what was probably a murder-robbery
11:34that kind of went wrong in 1908 in Glasgow.
11:41And a woman called Marion Gilchrist
11:46was murdered in her front room
11:50in quite mysterious circumstances.
11:54On the 21st of December, 1908,
11:56an 83-year-old woman named Marion Gilchrist
11:59was brutally murdered in her first-floor flat
12:02in the West End of Glasgow.
12:05She was a rich woman,
12:06having been the sole inheritor of her father's will,
12:09despite having sisters who were passed down nothing.
12:11She was never married
12:12and lived only with her young housekeeper, Helen Lambie.
12:15Her murder took place when Lambie lived with her mother.
12:18She was a young woman,
12:20Helen Lambie.
12:21Her murder took place when Lambie left the flat
12:23following supper to collect a newspaper.
12:26Following a trial,
12:27Slater was found guilty of the murder in May 1909.
12:31He spent 17 years in Peterhead Prison,
12:34much of it in solitary confinement.
12:37If you read the trial transcripts
12:39and all the press reports,
12:41essentially she was locked in her apartment
12:46when the murder took place,
12:48as in, how did somebody get in?
12:50Suspicion fell on her maid that she had.
12:56The very fact that she had a maid in 1908
12:59kind of tells you a bit about what class she was.
13:01There was allegedly a couple of items of jewellery missing,
13:05but kind of later on,
13:06they weren't very sure if that was true or not.
13:08And the police were under a bit of pressure
13:11to find out who did this,
13:13and it was a horrible murder.
13:16This is number 49, Queen's Terrace,
13:18West Regent Street in Glasgow's West End.
13:21Inside the first floor flat
13:22is where Miss Gilchrist met her demise
13:24on the 21st of December 1908.
13:27She inherited the home from her father
13:29along with her wealth.
13:30She lived here with only her housemaid, Helen Lambie.
13:34Just down the street, some 200 yards away,
13:36is where Oscar Slater resided on George Street
13:39and left in the days following the murder.
13:42While they are in close proximity,
13:44Slater claims he never met Gilchrist,
13:46which is likely true as she was known
13:48to rarely leave the house,
13:50nor did they socialise in the same circles.
13:55The one thing about the Oscar Slater case
13:57is loads of mistakes were made as the case went along.
14:03Not just policing mistakes,
14:04there was mistakes in how the case was dealt with
14:08by forensic medical examiners, forensic officers.
14:13So there was lots of problems,
14:15lots of false information, false leads.
14:18But it was a grisly murder of an old lady
14:21who hadn't done anything wrong,
14:24so the police wanted to investigate it.
14:27They kind of put their ear to the ground
14:30in the Glasgow underworld
14:32and they learnt that a man called Oscar Slater
14:39had fled to America
14:43and they sort of did a little bit of digging
14:45into his background
14:47and they decided that he looked like a very good suspect
14:51and why would he flee all of a sudden to America
14:55when he didn't really need to do that
14:59and his business that he ran were in Glasgow.
15:04So they track him all the way to America
15:07and they even send a couple of supposed witnesses
15:14to America to do a line-up,
15:16but even that was flawed
15:17because the police, when they were in America,
15:21showed the witnesses a picture of Oscar Slater
15:24and then said, let's do a line-up.
15:25They already knew what to look for, if you like, in line-up.
15:29So I think they thought Oscar Slater
15:31wasn't a very nice person
15:33and they kind of tried to retrofit the evidence.
15:37What's fascinating about this case
15:39is how Slater was even convicted in the first place.
15:42He had no connection to Miss Gilchrist
15:44and there was nothing to suggest they'd even met.
15:47Even initial investigations suggested the murderer
15:50was someone the woman knew.
15:52Miss Gilchrist had been paranoid about burglars and intruders
15:55during the months previous to her death
15:58and so the door was always locked.
16:00There was no other entry point and no signs of break-in.
16:03Whoever came into the flat was let in,
16:05meaning they had to be familiar with the inhabitants.
16:08Slater was also seen walking near his home on George Street,
16:12calmly and casually, moments after it would have took place,
16:15from a witness who only knew him by acquaintance.
16:18They had no motivation to lie.
16:21Someone who had just committed a murder
16:23would likely be emotional.
16:25Nothing was stolen from the home
16:27apart from a brooch and some papers,
16:29despite the fact Miss Gilchrist
16:31had a large collection of valuable jewellery,
16:33which would be the only plausible motivation for Slater.
16:37The beating she took was so extreme,
16:39a doctor at the scene said
16:41it would have only took a tenth of the blow to have killed her,
16:44pointing to a scenario that the attack was personal,
16:47rooted in history between the murderer and victim.
16:51Oscar Slater was a Jewish German man
16:53who left his home country and moved to London
16:55during the early 1890s
16:58and many believe the motivation behind this
17:00was to escape mandatory military service.
17:03He then moved to Edinburgh and then Glasgow,
17:06also spending time in New York.
17:08On official documents,
17:10he declared himself as a dentist and dealer of rare jewels,
17:13though evidence does suggest
17:15he made an income as a gambler and a pimp.
17:18His unsavoury career choices,
17:21combined with his racial background,
17:23particularly during this period before the First World War,
17:26when antisemitism was brewing across Europe,
17:29our thoughts have contributed
17:30as to why he was treated as he was
17:33during the police investigation
17:35and why his character was up for debate.
17:38Even the move to the US in the days following
17:40did not seem suspicious
17:42once the circumstances around it were analysed.
17:45Slater was not native to Glasgow,
17:47he was there for work.
17:48However, work was not as lucrative as he had hoped,
17:51as he wrote in a letter to a friend in the States.
17:54He had been to New York before
17:55and for some time had been vocal on his ambition to return.
17:59He was offered some work,
18:01of which there was written evidence
18:02that police decided to ignore in their investigation,
18:05and so because he didn't really have anyone
18:07or anything that depended on him in Glasgow,
18:10he decided to set off as soon as he could.
18:12None of the three witnesses outrightly said
18:14that Oscar Slater was the man they saw
18:17on the night of the murder.
18:18At most, they said he resembled them.
18:20There were also circumstances around his move
18:22and how he approached it
18:23that on surface level may be considered shifty,
18:26but when you look into them more, they make sense.
18:29Slater had told the two women moving into his flat
18:32he was moving to Europe and not the US.
18:34However, he was subletting the property,
18:36which was illegal.
18:37Also, these women were sex workers,
18:40which would also be looked down upon.
18:42Slater had rented the furniture in the apartment
18:44from a local business,
18:46and it's clear he did not intend on returning it.
18:48It makes sense he didn't want it to be widely known
18:51where he was going.
18:52His morals may not have aligned
18:53with the society he existed within,
18:56and he may have bended the law on occasion,
18:58but it was not his character that was on trial,
19:00and these weren't motivations
19:02for the specific crime that was committed.
19:04And this meant they ignored a lot of stuff,
19:06they didn't investigate a lot of stuff,
19:09and slowly but surely things started to unravel.
19:14So eventually Oscar Slater is prosecuted
19:17and he's found guilty
19:18and he is sentenced to life imprisonment.
19:24And the key kind of detective leading the case
19:28was a man called John Thompson Trench,
19:31and he started to have doubts
19:35about whether Oscar Slater was essentially a patsy,
19:39which means someone put up to be guilty of something
19:43that he wasn't guilty of
19:44just because he fitted the bill
19:47of what kind of person the police were looking for.
19:50And of course the fact that Oscar Slater was Jewish
19:55and this was 1908
19:58probably added to the police's view of him.
20:04Over time, lots of quite famous well-to-do people
20:07like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,
20:09the writer of Sherlock Holmes,
20:12William Roughead, a famous Scottish legal person,
20:16campaigned to say,
20:18look, there's all this other evidence
20:19which shows that Oscar Slater couldn't have done the murder.
20:24So for instance, they timed how fast he could run
20:29or somebody could run from the victim's house
20:33to where Oscar Slater was last seen on the night in question,
20:38and everybody struggled to do the run.
20:41They thought it was impossible.
20:43And other evidence which actually pointed to members of her family
20:48to do the murder
20:49because of cutting them out of her will and so on and so forth.
20:53So there was at least some sort of motive
20:55rather than a random robbery.
20:59Then eventually, with pressure mounting,
21:04the Oscar Slater case was reviewed on appeal
21:07and it was one of the first, I think,
21:08if not the first case of its kind to be reviewed on appeal
21:12because the law changed to enable this to happen.
21:17A sort of panel of judges viewed the case
21:20and on a really flimsy technicality
21:24that really wasn't what it should have been
21:28in terms of disproving Oscar Slater's guilt,
21:32on some legal technicality, he was admonished.
21:36So he was let out of jail.
21:40An innocent man after serving a long time in prison
21:47and during that time he got quite ill and so on and so forth.
21:53And he was given next to no compensation for this.
21:57It's an incredibly complex and murky case of anti-Semitism,
22:03bad policing, bad forensic science.
22:08Thomas Tufhill's investigation on the case
22:10points to Gilchrist's nephew as the murderer
22:14due to an anonymous letter received by police
22:16from a woman who claimed she knew what happened.
22:18She told officers to look for a death notice
22:20of one of Gilchrist's relatives in the newspaper
22:23in the months following the crime,
22:25explaining the man had faked his own death
22:27and moved to New Zealand.
22:28There was a death notice that of Wingate Biddle,
22:31Gilchrist's late sister's son,
22:33who she had recently removed off of her will.
22:35He was on record for being questioned by the police
22:38on the crime within a London address
22:40in the days following,
22:41though it was later realised that the person
22:43they spoke to may have been posing as Biddle.
22:46The letter also claimed that Helen Lambie,
22:48the housemaid, was having an affair with Biddle
22:51and was the one who let him in the apartment
22:53under the impression he was going to speak to Marion
22:56and convince her to put him back on the will.
22:59Lambie had gossiped in social circles
23:01that her new man was about to get very rich
23:04and take her abroad.
23:05And there's a few sort of anecdotal pieces of evidence
23:10through conversations which point to the Biddle side
23:15of her family.
23:16They went with the intent of either
23:18to make her change her will
23:20or they went to rob her of,
23:23she had sort of costume jewellery
23:26and they were disturbed they ended up killing her
23:28and fleeing the scene.
23:29But also the nature of how she was killed.
23:32In a robbery you would do the minimum amount of violence
23:36to get away clean.
23:40You wouldn't inflict numerous blows to somebody.
23:44You'd do what you had to do
23:45and then you'd get out of there.
23:46This person took a long time
23:49to inflict violence on Mrs Gilchrist
23:51and usually that only occurs
23:54when the person knows the other person.

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