George Edalji

Who was George Edalji?

George Ernest Thompson Edalji 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.