He would later write of his regret that, “to the deep disgrace of the British Administration”, he was unable to secure compensation for Edalji, telling Anson: “Your letter is a series of inaccuracies mixed up with a good deal of rudeness.” Conan Doyle eventually demanded through his solicitors that Anson should not contact him again unless through legal channels.Īnson’s growing anger is also revealed. The letters, from a private collection that Bonhams put up for auction on 18 March, reveal the breakdown in the relationship, and show Conan Doyle’s increasing frustration with the situation: “I never thought my case was good enough for a prosecution, but … to say there is ‘absolutely nothing’ against a man who exhibited a weapon and said it was the sort of one which did the outrages is a statement which makes me feel rather hopeless about the use of getting evidence.” Despite being two British gentlemen, they ended up locking horns like two mad, rutting stags.” He was obviously a very self-confident man, which is partly why he and Doyle fell out so badly. “But to go as far as fabricating evidence. “You could see would have been incredibly irritated by this case, which had been long solved,” said Barnes.

The novelist believed Edalji, and was convinced that “colour was involved ,” said Barnes, adding that “we would now use ‘institutional racism’ as the way to describe the Staffordshire police constabulary.” Conan Doyle bombarded Anson with almost daily letters between August and October 1907, providing new forensic evidence and offering alternative suspects, petitioning the Home Office, and speaking out publically about the conviction – no small thing, from the creator of the world’s most famous sleuth. When he was released after three years of his sentence, he asked for help from Conan Doyle to prove his innocence. Son of an Indian father and English mother, the solicitor had been given seven years’ hard labour in 1903 for animal mutilation and anonymous letter writing.

The twists and turns of Edalji’s case were complicated enough as it was. Martin Clunes as Arthur Conan Doyle in ITV’s Arthur and George.

Arthur and george novel