| Event type: | Meeting |
| Date: | 17th July 2025 |
| Time: | 2:30 pm |
| Venue: | Kenilworth Methodist Church |
| Organiser: | |
| Cost: | Entry is free to u3a members. Non-members are welcome for a nominal charge of £1 |
Speaker: Alan Cutler
An Edwardian murder trial from over 100 years ago dramatised by our speaker Alan Cutler who plays judge, prosecuting and defence counsels using transcriptions of the trial.
The Audience – The Jury - will hear the evidence.
What will you decide in weighing the arguments presented by the prosecuting and defending counsels? Will you follow the judge’s guidance?
Alan is a cruise ship speaker who offers a unique style of presentation. He re-enacts a real-life murder trial of 100, or so, years ago. He plays the part of judge and both counsels, dressed in wig and gown, However it is the audience who play the most critical role, as they form the jury - does their judgement send an innocent defendant to the gallows, or set a murderer free?!
Review
Alan Cutler led us, in a most fascinating way, through the proceedings of an actual trial, conducted in Edinburgh High Court in May 1909, portraying the parts of the judge, the Honorable Lord Guthrie, the Prosecuting Counsel, Alexander Ure QC and the Defence Counsel A L McClure QC.
Wearing the judge’s wig, he read, verbatim, the summary of Lord Guthrie addressing the ‘15 gentlemen of the jury’. Asking all those in attendance to listen to the arguments with a view to giving their verdict, once all sides had been heard. This was to be by means of holding aloft either the red ‘guilty’ side or the green ‘not guilty’ side of a card.
Once Judge Lord Guthrie had delivered his summary, he discarded the wig and read first the closing remarks of the Prosecuting Counsel and then those of the counsel for the defence.
A man known variously as Oscar Slater, Otto Sando and Mr Anderson had been accused of murdering a Miss Marion Gilchrist in an attempt to steal £3,000 of jewellery. His arrest was secured in New York after travelling there on the Lusitania and his detention being requested by the Scottish authorities by transatlantic cable.
During the summaries details were given of the evidence of witnesses and doubt was cast on the identification of Slater, a pawn ticket for a specific piece of jewellery, supposedly owned by Miss Gilchrist and the doubtful validity of circumstantial evidence, as opposed to direct evidence, which had been presented.
Mr Cutler, once again donning the judge’s wig, invited all the ‘jurors’ to give their judgements and, upon holding up our cards, 93 of those present gave a verdict of not guilty with only 2 holding up the red face of the card.
Alan then explained that under the Scottish system of law, a verdict of ‘not proven could also be allowed and revealed, after a dramatic pause, that despite the obvious reservations that our ‘jury’ had exhibited, the original fifteen jurors, having heard exactly the same evidence, had voted 9 for ‘guilty’, 5 for ‘not proven’ and a single one ‘not guilty’. This produced a gasp of astonishment from the audience. Slater was sentenced to life imprisonment on the balance of the jurors’ decision.
In a postscript, Alan imparted that a cousin of the deceased, who had been suspected of the actual crime, was, in fact, in a relationship with a Miss Helen Landy, who worked for Miss Gilchrist and had given evidence to implicate Slater, and that they had separately emigrated to Australia to meet up there.
The original verdict was considered so unsafe by the public, once the press delved into the story, that a public petition was raised with over 10,000 signing it and after eighteen years in prison Slater was released and completely exonerated, receiving £6,000 from the public purse in compensation.
Alan’s presentation, well-researched from original material, held the audience throughout and was a lesson on the sometimes questionable verdicts of our legal system, relying as it does on the principle of trial by jury.