The Edalji five

A LIVING FAMILY

Bombay-born Rev. Shapurji Edalji; Charlotte Edalji (née Stoneham) and her family’s South Asian links; George, Horace and Maud Edalji, Anglo-Asians raised in an English mining village

There is much more to the Edalji family story than is contained in all the accounts based on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s writings.

Study of the family’s lives and experiences in the Great Wyrley community reveals rich insights into English economic and social life from the 1870s to the end of the First World War.

George’s father, Shapurji Edalji, had a remarkable career. Born a Parsi in Bombay, he rebelled as a boy against his family and his faith. His conversion to Christianity led, among other things, to a period alone as a missionary among the pre-literate Warali people. He came to England to train as a Church of England missionary, but stayed and became Vicar of Great Wyrley for 42 years.

George’s mother, Charlotte Edalji (née Stoneham) came from a family with a colourful history of involvement in what Salman Rushdie (also born in Bombay) once called the ‘400 hundred years of looting and conquest’ which have ‘left a stain on you all’. From the 17th century, generations of her ancestors produced merchants, sailors and soldiers involved in the forging of British domination of India.