6 - Guildhall

Emma:  

So we’re stood in front of the Portsmouth Guildhall, which back in the day was the Town Hall when Conan Doyle was here, and it was the place of the law courts, and we're going to imagine what it would have been like. So cast your mind back then to 1882 when Doyle turned up in Portsmouth, and he would walk around the town, he would go most places on foot, as opposed to a bicycle, because he wouldn't have had a car in those days. And he would come to the law courts, and possibly, possibly would come here and look at trials. Because any member of the public could do that.  

Anne: I would have thought so. 

Emma: Yeah. 

Debbie: Well, public gallery... 

Emma: Yeah, the public gallery. And later on, when he'd actually achieved fame and notoriety, he actually was well known for defending...  well for challenging miscarriages of justice. And perhaps the most famous case was the George Edalgi case, a young chap called George Edalgi who was mixed race, who would have been called ‘half caste’ in the times. He was half Parsi and half English, had an English mother and a Parsi father and was wrongly convicted of maiming horses in a gross miscarriage of justice. And would you like to read, Phil, what he said about that? 

Phil: It was late 1906... [Fade out]

Emma: So, England rang with the wrongs of George Edalgi. 

Anne: Something like that.  

Emma: Yes, yes. 

Anne: I rather like that. It is a spectacular building, though, so he must have been impressed when he came. Although Plymouth had its own Town Hall and that. I think this one, architecturally, I think it is probably stronger, especially with the lions.... [Fade out].