An excellent documentary (first shown on BBC4 on 25th December, 2005) explores the lesser-known side of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who solved real crimes as chilling and baffling as those investigated by his creation Sherlock Holmes. His two most infamous cases involved tracking down a madman who mutilated horses and the brutal murder of a wealthy Scottish spinster, which led Doyle to expose corruption at the highest levels at the heart of Britain's justice system. The first case is about the son of an Indian-born vicar in rural Staffordshire, George Edalji. He was sentenced to seven years' hard labour for the horrific mutilation and killing of horses. It is a tale of substandard forensics, poison-pen letters and institutional racism, which intrigued Conan Doyle, especially as it touched on events earlier in his own life when he was a practising doctor: a young man died in his care and the circumstantial evidence pointed towards his guilt. The second case tells of Oscar Slater, a German Jew, sentenced to hang for the brutal murder of elderly Glasgow spinster Marion Gilchrist. Conan Doyle desperately fought for Slater … and meticulously researched the case for the defence … Doyle revealed a high-level cover-up and conspiracy by the Scottish authorities to attempt to convict and hang a man they knew to be innocent … in order to protect an extremely well-connected family. Both these cases contributed to the passing of the Appeal Court Acts in England and Scotland.