11 Facts About Oscar Slater

Oscar Joseph Slater was the victim of a miscarriage of justice in Scotland.

Oscar Slater was born Oskar Josef Leschziner in Oppeln, Upper Silesia, Germany, to a Jewish family.

Oscar Slater was prosecuted for alleged malicious wounding in 1896 and assault in 1897 but was acquitted in both cases.

In 1899, Oscar Slater moved to Edinburgh and by 1901 was living in Glasgow.

Oscar Slater was known to be a well-dressed dandy, who billed himself variously as a dentist and a dealer in precious stones, but was believed to earn his living as a gambler.

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Oscar Slater left for New York five days after the murder and came under suspicion, as apparently before the murder, a caller to Gilchrist's house had been looking for someone called "Anderson", and Oscar Slater had coincidentally previously been seen trying to sell a pawn ticket for a brooch.

However, Oscar Slater's lawyers organised a petition that was signed by 20,000 people, and the Secretary of State for Scotland, Lord Pentland, subsequently issued a conditional pardon and commuted the sentence to life imprisonment.

In particular, Oscar Slater was conspicuously contrasted with nine off-duty policemen in a rigged identification parade.

Oscar Slater received little support from within Glasgow's Jewish community, which was attributed towards concerns around drawing attention to Oscar Slater's Jewish identity in light of the case's notoriety and the potential for a rise in antisemitism as a result.

Oscar Slater's conviction was quashed in July 1928 on the grounds that Lord Guthrie had failed to direct the jury about the irrelevance of allegations relating to Oscar Slater's previous character.

Lessons of the Oscar Slater miscarriage were considered, as late as 1976, by the Devlin Committee review on the limitations of identity parades.