22 Mind-Blowing Facts About Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

12. Doyle Was A Real-Life Sherlock Holmes... And Helped Oscar Slater To Be Freed From Prison

After helping George Edalji have his injustice corrected, Doyle later aided Oscar Slater to have his incorrect prosecution overturned. Slater - a German-speaking Jew, or Yekke - was a gambling-den operator who had been imprisoned for supposedly bludgeoning an 82-year-old woman in Glasgow in 1908. Conan Doyle became so fascinated with Slater's injustice - particularly with the inconsistencies in the prosecution's case - that he paid the majority of the costs of the successful appeal in 1928.