Delphi Complete Works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Illustrated) (1230 page)
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Authors: SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE
STATEMENT OF THE CASE AGAINST ROYDEN SHAR
P
of Cannock, for the committing of those outrages upon Cattle from February to August, 1903, for which GEORGE EDALJI was condemned to Seven Years’ penal servitude at Stafford Assizes, November, 1903.
At the time of the outrages, roughly July, 1903, Royden Sharp had a conversation alone with Mrs. Greatorex, who is the wife of Mr. W. A. Greatorex, Littleworth Farm, Hednesford, who was appointed Trustee at the time of the death of Peter Sharp, the father, in November, 1893. To this gentleman, Mr. Greatorex, I owe much assistance in working out the case. In the course of the conversation referred to above, Royden Sharp — after alluding to the outrages — went to a cupboard, and produced a horse lancet of unusual size. He showed this to Mrs. Greatorex, saying, “This is what they kill the cattle with.” Mrs. Greatorex was horrified, and told him to put it away, saving, “You don’t want me to think you are the man, do you?” The possession by Sharp of this unusual instrument of so huge a size is to be explained by the fact that he served for ten months of 1902 on board a cattle boat between Liverpool and America. No doubt he took this lancet when he left the boat. I suggest that the instrument is still in the house, and could be secured in case of an arrest.
The fact that this was true, and that this actually was the instrument with which the crimes were committed is corroborated by the following considerations: —
That the wounds in all the earlier outrages up to August 18th were of a peculiar character, which could not have been inflicted by any other weapon. In even case there was a shallow incision which had cut through the skin and muscles, but had not penetrated the gut. Had any knife been plunged in and drawn along it must almost certainly have cut the gut with its point.
The blade in question is like this:
It is very sharp, but could not penetrate further than superficially. The witnesses who could testify most clearly as to the nature of the wounds are Mr. Sambrook, a butcher, who has now removed from Wyrley to Sheffield, but can, I understand, be easily traced, and Mr. Forsyth, a veterinary surgeon, of Cannock. I know that Mr. Sambrook was struck by the peculiarity of the cuts.
Royden Sharp was in all respects peculiarly fitted to have done these crimes, and there is, apart from this incident, much evidence both before the time of the crimes, during the time and after the time to cause him to be regarded with gravest suspicion. I will, for the moment, put on one side the persecution of the Edaljis (in which he was concerned with his elder brother Wallie in 1892-95) and confine the evidence entirely to that which bears upon the outrages and the anonymous letters of 1903. I will first trace his early career.
EVIDENCE OF HIS CHARACTER BEFORE THE CRIME
S
Royden Sharp was born in 1879. He very early showed marked criminal tendencies which took a destructive form. When he was 12 years of age he was found to have set a rick on fire at a Cannock Farm (Hatton’s Farm at West Cannock) and his father was forced to pay a considerable compensation. He was sent at the age of eleven to Walsall Grammar School, where his brother Wallie was an elder scholar at the time. His record at the school was as follows: this is an extract which I got from the school books through the courtesy of Mr. Mitchell, the present headmaster.
Xmas, 1890.
Lower 1. Order, 23rd out of 23.
Very backward and weak. French and Latin not attempted.
Easter, 1891.
Lower 1. Order, 20th out of 20.
Dull, homework neglected, begins to improve in Drawing.
Midsummer, 1891. Lower 1. Order, 18th out of 18.
Beginning to progress, caned for misbehaviour in class, tobacco chewing, prevarication, and nicknaming.
Xmas, 1891.
Lower 1. Order, 16th out of 16.
Unsatisfactory, often untruthful Always complaining or being complained of Detected cheating, and frequently absent without leave. Drawing improved.
Easter 1892.
Form 1. Order, 8th out of o.
Idle and mischievous, caned daily, wrote to father, falsified schoolfellows’ marks, and lied deliberately about it Caned 20 times this term.
Midsummer, 1892. Played truant, forged letters and initials, removed by his father.
It will thus be seen that forgery, which played a part in the anonymous letters of 1903 was familiar to him as a school boy.
Apart from the forgery which the school records show to have been done by him, the disposition to brutal violence was very marked, and so was that of foisting upon others, often with considerable ingenuity, the misdeeds of his own doing. Out of the anonymous letters which are certainly from his hand at this school period 1892-95, I take the two following expressions:
“I will cut your bowels out,”
“I will open your belly,”
showing curiously how his own thoughts were already turning. If he were left in a railway carriage he would turn up the cushion and slit it on the lower side, so as to let out the horse hair. This evidence is given by Mr. Wynne, painter, of “Clovelly,” Cheslyn Hay, who was at school with him. He adds the following anecdote illustrative of his destructiveness, of his bearing false witness, and of his writing vindictive anonymous letters, all of diem qualities which came out 10 years later in 1903.
During the time that the Edalji family had been deluged with anonymous letters from 1892 to 1895 (which letters I have good reason to believe were from the Sharps), another family in the same village, the Brookes, were plagued in the same way, and in the same handwriting, especially the young son, Fred Brookes. I had failed to find any cause, save colour hatred, in the case of the Edaljis, so I hoped I might get something more definite in the case of young Brookes. This is Wynne’s story: —
MR. WYNNE’S STATEMEN
T
“R.S.,” known as “Speck,” was a small built youth with sharp features. Generally in a sailor’s suit, he was the worst scholar in the school for about three years, and remained at the bottom of the first form. He was very fond of chewing tobacco, and I think it was in the Summer holiday of 1892
that he set a rick on fire near Hednesford... One evening we were returning by the usual evening train. F. G. Brookes and myself got in the train when Speck came running into the same compartment straight to the end of the carriage, and put his head through the carriage window smashing it all to bits. We all made our way into another compartment In a day or two after Brookes and myself were charged by one of the railway officials of breaking the carriage window. We found out that Sharp had told of us. that it was us. not himself Then we sought the station master, and told him how it happened, and Sharp had to pay for it, and he was also caught cutting the straps of the window, and had to pay, I think, more than once; his father was asked to take him away from the school as they could not do any good with him. He was always into mischief and getting others into trouble. The next I heard was he was sent to sea “If my memory serves me right the first letters that I heard of were sent to Mr. W H. Brookes, some time after the railway carriage incident, in a large school handwriting, saying that “Your kid and Wynn’s kid have been spitting in an old woman’s face on Walsall station.” and requesting monies to be sent to Walsall Post Office. The second one was threatening to prosecute if the money was not sent.
Thus the receipt of the anonymous letters by Brookes immediately followed a cause of feud between young Brookes and Royden Sharp.
Having been expelled from school Roy den Sharp was apprenticed to a butcher, thus learning to use a knife upon W. A. Greatorex, of Littleworth Farm, became Royden’s Trustee. This gentleman is an excellent witness, and ready to help the ends of justice in any way. It was to his wife that the implied confession was made. For two years, 1894 and 1895, this gentleman had much trouble with the lad. Finally he sent him to sea. He went to sea from Liverpool on December 30di in the ship “General Roberts,” belonging to Lewis Davies & Co., 5, Fenwick Street Liverpool. He went as apprentice.
From the time he left the letters, hoaxes, &c., which had kept the countryside in a turmoil, ceased completely, and were not renewed until his return in 1903. I may remark in passing that Edalji was at home all this time, and that this fact alone would, one would have thought, have awakened the suspicions of the police and shown them who was the author of the troubles. I am told, but have not verified the fact, that the last anonymous hoax on the Edaljis was an advertisement in a Blackpool paper, about the end of December, 1895 — Blackpool being the pleasure resort of Liverpool.
Royden Sharp does not, so far as my enquiries go, appear to have acted badly aboard ship. He finished his apprenticeship in 1900, and afterwards gained a third Mate’s certificate. He came home late in 1901, but shortly after got a billet on board a cattle ship to America, where his natural brutality was probably not lessened, and where he, no doubt, got the huge horse lancet which Mrs. Greatorex can depose to having seen in his hand.
The Wyrley outrages upon cattle were begun while Royden Sharp was at home, and he was in the district during the whole time of their continuance. Whoever committed the outrages must have been in a position to get into and out of his house at all hours of the night without being observed either by the police or by the other inmates of the house, if living miles away from him; but they belonged to the immediate group who surrounded the Sharp and Greatorex families. They lived two stations down the line from Edalji, whom everyone describes as a very retiring man who made no friends. How could he know these people? But they were put in by Sharp because they were the people whom Greatorex knew, and in putting diem in he really proved his own guilt, for he and his family were the only people who could know exactly the same circle. This piece of internal evidence alone must convince any independent and intelligent observer that Edalji could not have written these “Greatorex” letters, and that if Greatorex did not, which all admit to be true, then all the evidence points to the Sharps, who were accomplished forgers and mystifiers as already shown.
Apart from the letters bearing upon the crimes, other anonymous letters of an obscene description were circulating in the district at this period. I have seen a letter from one who was present dated August 3rd, 1903, saying that a conference was held as to the authorship of these letters that day in the presence of Mr. Greatorex, now dead (no relation of the other), who was a local bank manager, and Inspector Campbell, now living at Cannock. The letter wound up, “I believe that Royden Sharp will be arrested before evening.” From this I infer that the local police had evidence of Sharp’s writing anonymous letters at this time. This evidence should be available at the trial, and should show that this was a habit of his. I believe that August 3rd did mark a cessation of letters for some time.
There are many points of internal evidence in the letters (the so-called “Greatorex” letters) which point to Royden Sharp, apart from the fact that they appeared after his return to the district, and that they deal with a number of people well known to him (and unknown to Edalji). In all the 1892-95 letters there is, so far as I have seen, no mention of the sea. In the very first of the “Greatorex” letters in 1903 there are two or three allusions to the sea, most natural for anyone who had just left it. He advises in his letter that some boy be sent to sea as an apprentice which was, as I have shown, Royden Sharp’s own experience.
The writer uses the curious expression that a hook did the crimes. The instrument which Sharp showed to Mrs. Greatorex has a hooky appearance, and could be carried shut in the pocket, as the writer asserts that the “Hook” actually was. A sharp hook in the ordinary sense of a hook could not be so carried without cutting the cloth.
The writer says that he feels inclined to put his head on the rails where the train runs from Hednesford to Cannock. This is the actual stretch of rail near the Sharp’s [sic] house (and is some distance from Wyrley where Edalji lives).
In June,
The writer of this letter I identify as being the same as the former anonymous letters of 1895; which I also identify as having been done by Wallie Sharp. There would be no difficulty in getting expert evidence as to the hands being the same. Wallie Sharp was acting as apprentice to an electrical engineer at the time, and was much in the small neighbouring towns of which Rugeley is one. It is to be observed that in the letter in question occurs the phrase “you are not a right sort.” This phrase occurs also in one of the Greatorex letters.
This points to Wallie’s complicity in the Greatorex letters, or his brother’s phrase may have lingered in his mind. It could hardly be coincidence that the same phrase could occur in both letters. Wallie Sharp died in South Africa in November, 1906.
I now come to what I look upon as a very important piece of evidence, indeed, I think it is conclusive as regards the anonymous letters. Some time after Edalji’s arrest there began a series of anonymous letters, signed “G. H. Darby,” the writer claiming to be Captain of the Wyrley Gang. These letters — many of which I have seen — are all in the same writing and, though very roughly done, contain some of the characteristics of Royden Sharp’s writing, especially an r made like x and sometimes so exaggerated as to be almost x which occurs from boyhood in Royden Sharp’s writing. About November, 1903, some of these letters arrived from Rotherham, near Sheffield. The police, I think, had some, and others were received by a local paper, the Wolverhampton Star. The writer was evidently a Cannock man, and I should think few Cannock men would at any time visit Rotherham. Now, I have found the porter, whose name is A. Beenham, Drayman, near Baptist Chapel, Cannock Road, Chadsrnoor, near Cannock, who in November carried Royden Sharp’s box to the station, and observed that it was addressed to Rotherham. The Darby letters said that the Captain would return before Xmas, and I believe Sharp actually did so. This seems to me perfectly conclusive, as regards the identity of Royden Shaq) with G. H. Darby, and the latter boasted that he was the author of the outrages.
Another significant fact is as follows: — On September 29th, 1903, there was an anonymous notice that “it was decided to ‘slice up’ ten wenches between November 1st and 20th and 10 after Xmas,” repeating a threat which had already been uttered in the second “Greatonex” letter. The date s are curious in view of the fact that Royden Sharp would be away as already shown from November to Xmas The announcement caused much terror in the district, which was increased by the following incident — A woman and little girl (Mrs. Jarius Handley, Great Wyrley, is [the] woman’s name) were coming from Wyrley station one evening, soon after, where they had been buying some papers for sale. They met two men in the road. One of them caught the girl by the throat, and held in his hand something that gleamed. They both screamed, on which the man ran away, crying to his comrade who had gone on: “All right, Jack, I am coming. I suggest that this man was Royden Sharp, and that his companion was Jack Hart, a dissolute butcher, of the neighbourhood, and a friend of Sharp’s. The little girl declared to her mother that she had been stopped once before by the same young man, and proceeded to give a minute description of him. She said that he had a round face, no moustache, about 5ft. Sin. in height, a dark suit, and a shiny peaked cap, which was exactly Royden Sharp’s sailor-like costume. I suggest that after Sharp’s arrest this girl be allowed an opportunity of identifying him. I am informed that from the time that his description got about Sharp gave up wearing this style of dress.
There was another of the series of anonymous letters which came from London, and was said by the writer to have been written in a Lockhart’s coffee-house there. It was dated “
19th” (month can be found by further search )