A follow-up to Richard Wilson's article in last Saturday's Weekender
FEW causes celebres are as durable as the Oscar Slater murder case,
largely because of the histrionic challenge that it has presented these
80 years to the genius of the Glasow story-teller.
It will not go away. The reason is that apart from the fact that the
wealthy old woman was done to death in her own dining-room there are no
longer any hard facts to go on. Nobody knows, nor will ever now know,
who killed her. There may even be speculation about the man who didn't
kill her. As for the rest anybody's guess will do.
Of one thing one may be sure, that no significant number of years will
pass before another twist in the tale will give us the opportunity to
regurgitate all the guesswork and fiction that has become, and is likely
to remain, Glasgow's favourite parlour game.
Now and again one little fairytale gets itself discredited but there
will always be another to take its place. The latest ''anniversary''
allows one to re-examine the touchy case of Detective Lt. John Thomson
Trench, who dedicated himself to righting a miscarriage of justice and
suffered at the hands of his vindictive colleagues for his presumption.
His misjudgment was to point the finger of accusation in a direction
distasteful to the mores of the West End of Glasgow; not to mention to
the amour-propre of what in its day was the most ineffectual and
vindictive congregation of senior detectives on record.
By absolving Oscar Slater, Trench indicted another innocent. This was
a mystery that we lived happily with for more than half a century during
which time Glasgow created for itself a fascinating mythology and
invented a villain who informed the conversation even of such apparent
authorities as the late Professor John Glaister, on whom we rely for the
last word in forensic medicine.
On one social occasion he drew us to one side to inform us from behind
his hand of the true identity of the man who murdered Miss Gilchrist.
The confidence was couched in the established form of such
communications in these parts: ''Of course you know who really did it.''
And at that time we didn't really know but subsequent events have
demonstrated that we still don't know.
The prime suspect since 1914 was the late F. T. Charteris, an emeritus
professor of materia medica at St Andrews University. Though he was
probably the last person to be aware of what surrounded him, it was
Professor Charteris that Lt. Trench put the finger on.
This did nothing to diminish the good stories and rumours that
continued to decorate the Slater saga. The only saving grace was that
for 50 years it never occurred to any of our fellow media personnel to
put the crucial question to the man himself.
In 1964 our own wee brother, then a tactless reporter on the Daily
Mail, came across the case for his first time, along with all its
fictional adhesions. Not content to be fobbed off with the hearsay that
had satisfied the rest of us for so long, he simply went straight to St
Andrews and spoke directly to the professor who said, unembarrassed,
''Of course I was AB.''
The trouble was that up to that point Lt. Trench's precognition and
the evidence that he gave to the secret inquiry which was ordered by the
Secretary of State for Scotland in 1914 categorically named Professor
Charteris as the fleeing murderer whom the servant Nellie Lambie
encountered in the hall of Miss Gilrchrist's flat.
His guilt was formally discounted, but in an access of fine feelings
the official report of the inquiry was subedited and filled with
asterisks. The name of the professor was abbreviated to the random
initial AB.
This was generally identified as a gesture on behalf of the good name
of a Glasgow professional family of doctors, lawyers, and pillars of the
church.
This superficial discretion delayed the straight answer that
eventually emerged from that visit to St Andrews, in which the professor
set straight some of those points which were, and have ever since,
remained obscure or improbable in the statement which in the end cost
Lt. Trench his reputation and his career when he was dismissed from the
force with ignominy.
Helen Lambie was reported at second hand to Lt. Trench of having gone
in a state of hysteria and agitation to the house of one Miss Birrell, a
niece of the murdered woman, when she said: ''Oh Miss Birrell, Miss
Gilchrist had been murdered. She's lying dead in the dining-room. I saw
the man who did it... I am sure it was AB.''
The professor had no hesitation in identifying himself and explaining
not only his presence at the scene of the murder but the conversation
which took place between himself, Helen Lambie, and the police.
There was an indirect family connection between Charteris and Miss
Gilchrist, his mother having been the widow of one of Miss Gilchrist's
brothers. News of the murder was transmitted by the police to Dr
Charteris with the advice to break it gently to his mother. As a young
medical practitioner who had no previous experience of murder cases his
curiosity induced him to go to the house.
Arriving there he found the police in the process of trying to elicit
from an hysterical Helen Lambie some description of the murderer whom
she had met in the hall. Confused and seeking an answer, the maid
blurted out: ''Oh he was kind of like Dr Charteris there.''
It was this which Miss Birrell reported as a direct quotation to Lt.
Trench.
Although we may exclude the late professor from the remaining gallery
of suspects we still have another story which over the past half century
has improved in the telling. One circumstantial theory improved upon the
bald initials AB of the official report to provide them with a full
name and detailed identitiy.
Some comprehensive research has demonstrated that there never was any
such person, but we have long enjoyed a delightfully detailed personal
history of one Austin Birrell, a ''nephew'' of Miss Birrell and an
indigent relative of the victim. There were those who were prepared to
report meetings (over luncheon we believe) with him. To this from time
to time there has been added such relevant detail as that he was also an
alcoholic drug taker, an epileptic, and the owner and manger of three
brothels in Garnethill. They say that facts chiels that winna ding
but we will be reluctant to think that we have heard the last of Oscar
Slater.
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