Conan doyle investigates - The Adalji Case - BBC - Radio - 1972 - Carleton Hobbs

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• published: 06 Sep 2014
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Here's a very rare radio dramatisation starring Carleton Hobbs as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Conan Doyle investigates - The Adalji Case - BBC - Radio - 1972 George Ernest Thompson Edalji (March 1876 – 17 June 1953) was an Anglo-Indian solicitor and son of a vicar in a West Midlands village who served 3 years hard labour after being convicted on a charge of injuring a pony. He was pardoned after a campaign in which Sir Arthur Conan Doyle took a prominent role. The difficulty in overturning the conviction of Edalji was cited as showing a better mechanism for reviewing unsafe verdicts was needed, and was a factor in the 1907 creation of a court of appeal for England. Present day commentators on the case see it as demonstrating pervasive racial prejudice and resentment toward incomers by highly placed traditionalists in provincial England. Edalji was the eldest of the three children, his mother was Charlotte Edalji (née Stoneham), the daughter of a Shropshire vicar. His father was the Reverend Shapurji Edalji, a convert from a Bombay Parsi family. He had served as the curate in several parishes before being given the 'living' as vicar of St Mark's, Great Wyrley. The right to make this appointment lay with the bishop, the Reverend Edalji obtained the position though the previous incumbent, his wife's uncle, who arranged it as a wedding present. 'Livings' were scarce, conferred valuable emoluments and were much sought after.[1] The Reverend Edalji moved into the vicarage, a large house with its own grounds, in late 1875; George, the first child, was born there soon after. The Reverend Edaji was more assertive than his predecessor and was sometimes involved in controversy about parish business.[2] Many modern writers on the case express the opinion that rural English society was infected with backward racialist attitudes, and that this would have been particularly true of a village like Great Wyrley.[3] An aristocratic former army officer, Captain the Honorable G. A. Anson, was the Chief Constable of Staffordshire during the case. He is widely seen as having expressed a racist attitude toward the Edaljis Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, then second only to Kipling as a celebrated English writer, was to become the most influential supporter of the public campaign for Edalji to be given a pardon. The weight Conan Doyle's opinion on the case carried with the public stemmed from the appeal of his fictional master detective, Sherlock Holmes, which associated the author with Holmesian traits of close attention to detail and drawing logical inferences; these were valid principles that outlined the scientific method, according to Maria Konnikova