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Shapurji Edalji
‐
Church of England clergyman and father of George Edalji
Place of birth
Date of arrival to Britain
Location(s)
WS6 6NT
United Kingdom
Place of death
Great Wyrley, Staffordshire
Date of time spent in Britain
1868–1918
About
Shapurji Edalji was a Church of England clergyman. Born into the Parsee faith in Bombay in 1841 or 1842, he converted to Christianity in 1856. In around 1868 Edalji travelled to England to complete his religious training and was ordained as a deacon in Oxford in 1869. Edalji then followed a career in the Church of England, holding positions at Holy Trinity, St Ebbe's, Oxford (1869–70), Farnworth, Bolton, Lancashire (1870–2), Toxteth (1872–3, 1874–5), St Levan, Cornwall (1873–4) and Bromley St Leonard (1875–6). In 1874 he married Charlotte Stoneman, the daughter of another Church of England clergyman, and together they had two sons and one daughter: George (born 1876), Horace (born 1879) and Maud (born 1882).
In 1876 Edalji took up the post of vicar at St Mark’s, Great Wyrley, Staffordshire, where he remained until his death in 1918. Already fairly notorious for being an Indian clergyman, his family became infamous following the arrest of his son George in 1903. From 1888 Shapurji Edalji had been sent anonymous letters and then between 1892 to 1895 was the target of further harassment that included the use of forged signatures, rubbish thrown on the family lawn and advertisements taken out in his name. In 1903, when livestock were mutilated in the area, George was accused and imprisoned. Shapurji Edalji campaigned tirelessly to publicize the case and defend his son. He campaigned against the Home Office and provided a sworn alibi. The Edaljis were supported later by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and George was pardoned in 1907. The case was clearly based on racial prejudice against the Edalji family.
Lectures on St Paul's Epistles to the Galatians (1879)
A Miscarriage of Justice: The Case of George Edalji (London: The United Press, 1905)
Davenport-Hines, Richard, ‘Edalji, Shapurji (1841/2–1918)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) [https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/57480]
Oldfield, Roger, Outrage: The Edalji Five and the Shadow of Sherlock Holmes (Cambridge: Vanguard Press, 2010)
1871, 1881, 1891, 1901 Census of England and Wales
CF/4/1/1/31, Petition to Bishop of Exeter, 1873, Kresen Kernow, Cornwall Centre Archives, Redruth
Tait 152 ff 274-81, Shapurji Edalji, Indian Candidate for Orders, Lambeth Palace Library, London
Report of Home Office departmental committee on papers relating to the case of George Edalji (session 1907, Cd 3503)
Letters to Rupert Simms, Staffordshire and Stoke on Trent Archive
Papers relating to the George Edalji Case, Staffordshire Record Office, Stafford
Image credit
© Remaking Britain: South Asian Connections and Networks, 1930s – present
Entry credit
Archival information from Chloe Phillips
