The downfall of a man called Trench

after a farcical secret inquiry, Scottish Secretary McKinnon Wood told

the Commons that no case had been established to justify any

interference with the now-infamous conviction of Oscar Slater for the

murder of an old lady in Glasgow, Slater wasn't the only victim of the

Great Whitewash. Another was Scotland's top detective, John Thomson

Trench, who lost his job, pension and spirit because he dared, albeit

belatedly, to challenge the conviction. RICHARD WILSON traces the

downfall of a Glasgow policeman once hailed by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle as

''heroic.''

A MOUSTACHIOED, square-jawed man of considerable presence who wore a

bowler hat and carried a brolly, John Thomson Trench might have looked

more like a city gent than a policeman; but a policeman of some

achievement he most certainly was. He had not been promoted to

detective-lieutenant, nor awarded the prestigious King's Medal on the

recommendation of the chief constable of Glasgow, for nothing.

His reputation had yet to grow to legendary status, however, when he

was called into work on the shocking murder of 83-year-old spinster

Marion Gilchrist. On the evening of December 21, 1908, the old lady was

found bludgeoned to death in her flat at 15 Queen's Terrace, near

Glasgow's Charing Cross.

She had been brutally attacked while her maid, Nellie Lambie, was out

of the house buying an evening newspaper. The maid returned to find an

agitated neighbour at the door, Arthur Adams, who had been alarmed by

''chopping noises'' from within. They entered the house to be almost

bowled over by a ''gentleman'' who swept past them ''like greased

lightning''; and when Lambie found the battered corpse of her mistress,

Arthur Adams raced down the street to give chase but could see the man

nowhere.

Adams later said that Lambie had not seemed surprised by the

intruder's presence and he therefore thought that she must have known

him.

Involved in the case virtually from the start, Trench came to share

this conclusion and, what's more, claimed to have early statements that

could back it up. But his colleagues and superiors rapidly became far

more interested in another line of inquiry prompted by Lambie, which set

them off on the trail of someone she did not know.

The only valuable item missing from the house, she claimed, was a

diamond crescent brooch which had been part of Miss Gilchrist's #3000

collection secreted among clothes in her bedroom. And when it came to

light that Oscar Slater, a German Jew of dubious repute, had been trying

to sell such a brooch around the gaming houses he frequented, the heat

was on. This was surely their man!

Not only had he lived near the murder scene, but he had been known to

use several different names and had also ''suddenly'' left Glasgow for

New York aboard the Lusitania. Not to be deflected by mere logic, they

simply brushed aside the inconvenient facts that the brooch, when

recovered, did not resemble the ''stolen'' one and that it had been in

Slater's possession long before the murder.

The hapless gambler was detained in New York and there ''identified''

by Lambie and 14-year-old Mary Barrowman, who claimed she had seen a man

rushing from Miss Gilchrist's house at the time of the murder. No matter

that the two women's descriptions had originally varied significantly

(giving rise to early thoughts that there might have been two killers),

their ideas appeared to have been skilfully massaged into one by the

time their shared cabin reached New York.

In an absurd identity parade, both were said to have pointed at the

squat foreign-looking man between two large detectives and declared:

''That's the man.'' A small price to pay for such an exciting luxury

cruise, a cynic might say! And one of the tall American detectives later

claimed that they had been asked: ''Is that the man?''

Slater willingly agreed to return to Glasgow, but his rather touching

faith in Scottish justice must have received quite a blow when, on

arrival, he was subjected to another charade of an identity parade. With

the exception of the more cautious neighbour, Arthur Adams, witnesses

who had already seen Slater's very ''foreign'' image in newspapers

picked him out from a group of 10 non-Jewish policemen and he was duly

charged with Miss Gilchrist's murder.

The considerable impact of these so-called identification procedures

on the increasingly-perplexed Trench could only be judged by his later

actions. But for now, no-one was interested in his reservations -- nor

in Slater's protestations of innocence. When the case went to trial at

Edinburgh Crown Court, Lord Advocate Alexander Ure chose to circumvent

any evidence in Slater's favour in his summing up, as he charged on in a

tour de force of questionable assumptions such as the accused's

''concealing his escape to effect his flight with perfect safety'' --

when, in fact, Slater had made no secret of his impending departure for

America.

As the poorly-defended prisoner heard to his astonishment, on May 27,

1909, that he was being sentenced to hang, he cried out: ''My lord, I

know nothing about the affair. You are convicting and innocent man.''

The public, at least, appeared to believe him and the subsequent outcry

was probably partly responsible for his sentence being commuted to life

imprisonment two days before it was carried out; but the bewildered man

was still compelled to languish in Peterhead Prison where, as Convict

No. 1992, he would spend nearly two decades begging for justice.

Although several distinguished pens fought doughtily to expose the

many scandalous flaws in the prosecution's case -- including those of

the famous criminologist William Roughead, journalist William Park, and

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle -- nothing was done in high places for Oscar

Slater as the early years of his incarceration passed. He was not to

know that his best and bravest champion was to be a Glasgow policeman

who would put his distinguised career on the line for him . . .

John Trench, meanwhile, had been battling hard with his conscience.

Not only did his keen policeman's instinct tell him the conviction was

wrong, he was nursing facts and theories he still believed to be

pertinent -- and which pointed to the involvement of a group, perhaps

including the maid and relatives of Miss Gilchrist, with a very

clear-cut motive for the break-in: this being the removal of her will,

recently changed to their disadvantage.

But the catalytic moment for Trench was not to come until November

1912, when, as Scotland's top detective, he was called in to help

baffled local police investigate a remarkably similar case at Broughty

Ferry, near Dundee, where another old lady, Miss Jean Milne, had been

found battered to death at her large house in Grove Road.

He quickly established, by the finding of a cigar butt in the ashes of

a fireplace, that the favoured theory of a female killer was false. But

it was when a #100 reward offer opened the floodgates to dozens of

''witnesses'' -- who came forward to assert that Miss Milne had been

enjoying the attentions of at least one handsome stranger -- that the

floodgates of his own conscience also began to open. He started to see

the striking similarities between their obviouslyunreliable responses

and those of the Gilchrist witnesses.

Among the many confusing elements of their disparate and incomplete

descriptions was the question of accents: German, Scots, English, and .

. . from the overflowing post in Miss Milne's letter-box (mostly begging

letters), the local police had retrieved something that prompted them to

contact Scotland yard about the whereabouts of ''a dashing American.''

This was almost certainly a factor in the near-downfall of a certain

Charles Warner, of 210 Wilton Avenue, Toronto.

When the hue and cry reached the police at Maidstone, Kent, Warner

happened to be in their custody; he also happened, more or less, to fit

the descriptions supplied. No matter that he had been detained for

nothing more serious than non-payment of a 7s restaurant bill, Maidstone

police were convinced that they had Miss Milne's murderer on their hands

and sent what was later described as an ''exceptionally bad'' mugshot of

him to Scotland for identification.

On the strength of a general consensus of recognition among them, the

chosen five -- a gardener, a maid, two local sisters, and a dustman --

were dispatched to Maidstone to nail the man ''in the flesh.''

Grateful no doubt for the hospitality extended to them, which included

a sightseeing tour of London, the witnesses were most co-operative at

the identification parade and, with the exception only of the maid who

had doubts about his ''too grey'' hair, they all boldly pronounced the

prisoner to be ''the man.'' A warrant for his arrest was obtained from

the Dundee Sheriff and Lieutenant Trench, with the document and a set of

handcuffs in his pocket, travelled south . . .

It is not difficult to imagine what the fair-minded Lieutenant Trench

must by now have been thinking, in view not only of his growing general

unhappiness about the reliability of recognition sworn by so-called

witnesses but especially considering the revealing conversations he had

had with Warner on their long train journey from London to Dundee's Tay

Bridge station. There had been plenty of time to hear the case for the

defence in the greatest of detail.

Even before he began to study the incognito ''Mr Brown'' with whom he

was travelling literally in tandem, Trench found himself resisting that

post-arrest triumphant feeling many officers might have yielded to; for

he was simply not satisfied that this was a fair cop.

Indeed, Warner protested that he had never been to Scotland in his

life, and that his avoidance of the restaurant bill in Tonbridge had

been prompted merely by hungry desperation after he had miscalculated

his budget on a tour of France, Holland, Belgium, Antwerp, and England.

So where, asked Trench, had he been on the crucial date of October 16?

''Antwerp,'' said Warner.

''How long had you been there?'' asked Trench, warming to the young

Canadian who was handling his misfortune with an easy, almost jaunty

air. Trench no doubt hoped this optimism was not ased on a misplaced

faith in himself or, worse, in Scottish justice . . .

Warner replied that he had lived in the Flemish city for a week before

the murder date and had left on the 17th, arriving in London on the

18th.

''Can you prove it?'' asked Trench.

Warner shook his head negatively: he had been sleeping rough in parks

and public places. Then he suddenly remembered that, on the relevant

date, he had pawned a waistcoat in an Antwerp pawnshop for one franc.

Did he still have the ticket? Yes! He handed it over to Trench and knew,

in a way, that he was also handing over his fate to him . . .

Aware that already, with statements from no fewer than 100 witnesses,

Dundee's procurator fiscal was submitting his prepared case to the Crown

in Edinburgh and framing the indictment on which Warner would be brought

to trial, Trench knew what he had to do -- and quickly.

Soon, he was on a train again, returning south; then travelled east by

ship to Belgium's Flemish capital-of-the-north. And there, his

detective's natural enterprise undeterred by the confusing network of

sixteenth-century step-gabled buildings, he quickly found Warner's

secluded little pawnshop.

He redeemed the waistcoat, allowed himself a little

self-congratulation this time -- and immediately headed home again with

Warner's perfect alibi tucked under his arm in a brown paper parcel. The

effect, on his return, was dramatic and immediate. With the

prosecution's guns so effectively spiked, the Crown Office could hardly

allow the case to go ahead. It thus sent the following telegram to the

Fiscal:

CHARLES WARNER . . . MURDER . . . CROWN COUNSEL HAVE CONSIDERED

PRECOGNITIONS AND DECIDED EVIDENCE INSUFFICIENT . . . PLEASE LIBERATE.

Though he was never to bring the true culprit to justice, the

experience had proved to Trench that a false trail could be corrected.

And perhaps that could still be achieved, however belatedly, for the

wrongly convicted Oscar Slater? In that case, too, there had been

nothing whatsoever to connect the accused to the crime but the doubtful

''identification'' of witnesses. And the Milne affair had confirmed for

Trench that such evidence, while clearly worthless, could nevertheless

condemn an innocent man to the gallows. Now his conscience simply would

not rest.

Having long realised that to challenge his police superiors directly

would be perceived as an unforgivable professional sin -- as would an

approach over their heads to a higher authority -- it was a straight

choice. And calculating that the first course would find stony ground in

any case, what he had to do was pursue the latter course with safety

guarantees attached if possible. But how to go about it?

Eventually, he persuaded a prominent lawyer, David Cook, to persuade

in turn a prison commissioner to discreetly put his plea to Scottish

Secretary McKinnon Wood. The rather encouraging response -- ''If the

constable in question will send me a written statement of the evidence

in his possession, I will give this matter my best consideration -- led

the detective to believe that he could impart his information with

impunity.

He was utterly and naively wrong.

Though Cook pressured the Scottish Secretary into setting up the

notorious secret inquiry into the Slater case -- held before the Sheriff

of Lanarkshire in the County Buildings, Glasgow, at the end of April,

1914 -- this was commonly seen as a crass white-washing exercise.

''Probably in the history of criminal jurisprudence,'' wrote William

Park, ''no such judicial farce was ever staged.''

When McKinnon Wood's meaningless statement to the Commons was followed

by the publishing of a parliamentary paper on the subject, this was

riddled with asterisks where evidence had been deemed inconvenient and

the key name of the alleged man-in-the-hall first given by Lambie

appeared only as initials . . .

Trench recalled how a niece of Miss Gilchrist quoted Lambie thus, just

after the murder: ''Oh, Miss Birrell, I think it was AB. I know it was

AB.'' and he mentioned a visit to Lambie when he ''touched on AB,''

asking if she really thought this was the man she saw. ''Her answer was:

'It's gey funny if it wasn't him I saw'.'' Yet both Birrell and Lambie

now denied ever having made such statements and, to compound Trench's

predicament, one Glasgow policeman after another came forward to

discredit his evidence.

Who was AB? Several published accounts of the case, including one by

Glasgow writer Jack House, have contended that this was Austin Birrell,

a respectable local businessman who did the dirty work in collusion with

a nephew of the old lady. But House now says emphatically: ''There was

no such person as Austin Birrell.''

In any case, as the inquiry farce ended, Trench's troubles really

began. With no action being taken on Slater's conviction, the detective

was suspended from duty three months later, the case going before the

Glasgow magistrates along with this statement from his Chief Constable:

''It is contrary to public policy and to all police practice for an

officer to communicate to persons outside the police force information

which he has acquired in the course of his duty, without the express

sanction of the chief officer of his force.''

Trench defended himself and his altruistic motives robustly, but even

production of the Scottish Secretary's letter asking for his information

failed to save him. He was dismissed with ignominy from the Glasgow

police on September 14, 1914. And a desperate appeal to McKinnon Wood

had no effect -- the Scottish Secretary did not even bother to respond

to his letter.

So surely his evious enemies in the force were satisfied now? Not so,

it appeared. Although he enlisted in the Royal Scots Fusiliers to start

building a new career for himself, his ex-colleagues were not yet

finished with John Thomson Trench. As a parting shot they mounted what

was later described as a ''vindictive'' prosecution against him and

lawyer Cook, accusing them of receiving stolen goods while Trench was

with the force. But this time they were thwarted. The Judge dismissed

the case, saying that the men, who had been concerned with returning the

goods to their rightful owners, had actually acted with ''meritorious

intention.''

Yet the once-great detective never recovered from the double-shock.

Though he served his regiment well throughout the Great War with the

rank of quartermaster-sergeant, he died at the age of 50, on the fourth

anniversary of his arrest. He did not, therefore, live to see Oscar

Slater released some 10 years later . . . when the then-Scottish

Secretary Sir John Gilmour finally gave in to a new and relentless

pressure from the media to authorise Slater's release, already overdue

in terms of the average span of ''life.''

* Richard Wilson is author of Scotland's Unsolved Mysteries to be

published by Robert Hale in September.

'They simply brushed aside the inconvenient facts that the brooch,

when recovered, did not resemble the ''stolen'' one . . .'

'Grateful no doubt for the hospitality extended to them, the witnesses

were most co-operative at the identification parade . . .'

'To compound Trench's predicament, one Glasgow policeman after another

came forward to discredit his evidence . . .'