Part II
WALK 1
At A Glance – the following stories, plays and novels are highlighted in this walk:
The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet. A Study in Scarlet. The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle. The Sign of Four. The Yellow Face. The Hound of the Baskervilles. The Adventure of the Devil’s Foot
Distance: If you wish to visit Marylebone Road, Baker Street and perhaps the Sherlock Holmes Museum, having a quick look in Regent’s Park before proceeding to Upper Wimpole and Harley Streets you will only walk three kilometres (1–2 miles) at the most. However, Regent’s Park is vast and has its own 10km walk as well as London Zoo, so this trip can be extended in both space and time almost as much as you like. There are wonderful picnic spots in the park.
Time to allow: A complete morning or afternoon for the shorter trip but a complete day – or more – if you also wish to explore the attractions of Regent’s Park, including the zoo or maybe take in a play in the open-air theatre in the evening.
Walking conditions: Fairly easy and flat but visitors need to be mindful of heavy traffic in Marylebone Road and Baker Street. There are some unique photo opportunities, especially of Baker Street itself.
Route
• Baker Street tube station
• Marylebone Road
• Baker Street
• Regent’s Park
• Upper Wimpole Street
• Harley Street
Arriving at Baker Street8
This walk begins at Baker Street tube station, which is in Zone 1 and served by five lines – Metropolitan, Circle, Hammersmith and City, Bakerloo and Jubilee – and is one of the world’s first underground stations, opened in 1863. It is worth a linger on the platforms to see the custom-made tiling celebrating Sherlock Holmes. Numerous buses also stop at Baker Street – a very popular route for tourism purposes is the 139 which travels via Waterloo, Trafalgar Square, Piccadilly Circus and Oxford Circus to Baker Street and beyond.
Baker Street tube station rarely features in the stories as potential clients are more often dramatically observed from the front window of 221B, arriving either on foot or in a cab, allowing for some pertinent deductions to be made prior to a face-to-face meeting with Holmes. An exception, however, is at the beginning of The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet when the portly figure of Alexander Holder announces on his arrival ‘puffing and blowing’ that he has chosen to travel by underground from Threadneedle Street on account of the snow making cab travel very slow.
Immediately outside the station, on Marylebone Road, is a metre-high statue of Holmes by John Doubleday. There has been a campaign, on and off, for a memorial close to Baker Street since G.K. Chesterton had the idea in 1927. This bronze, with deerstalker and pipe which were originally made famous by the illustrations of Sidney Paget in The Strand Magazine, was unveiled in 1999; it now has a message for visitors, written by the best-selling author, Anthony Horowitz, which is accessed by scanning a QR code. It was located here as there was no room in Baker Street and it was funded by the Abbey National Building Society whose premises, 215–229 Baker Street, once encompassed 221B.
There are other statues to Holmes: one at Meiringen, Switzerland, also by John Doubleday: at Karuizawa, Japan; Edinburgh, and one of both Holmes and Watson near the British Embassy in Moscow. One of the most successful television series of all time on Russian television has been the superb series The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson, which began in 1979 and starred Vasily Livanov as Holmes and Vitaly Solomin as Watson. Livanov was to receive an honorary MBE (Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire) in 2006 for his portrayal of Holmes and for many fans his interpretation is unsurpassed. This series, with English subtitles, is available to buy on DVD today and clips are available on YouTube.
What did Sherlock Holmes look like?
Conan Doyle was to write late in his life that all the drawings in various publications and impersonations of Holmes ‘were very unlike my own original idea of the man’. Conan Doyle saw him as a man with a thin razor-like face and what he called ‘a great hawks-bill of a nose’ with two small eyes set close together. He said that when he gave the commission to Sidney Paget, the talented artist, who was to tragically suffer a premature death, decided to model Holmes on his handsome younger brother, Walter, and thus was produced a less lean, more handsome but not so powerful conception than his own.
Similarly, there is no mention in the stories of the deerstalker hat, this, too, becoming synonymous with Holmes through Paget’s artwork and subsequently by the actors playing Holmes on stage, who loved its dramatic appearance. It is also true that probably the most famous rejoinder in the books – ‘Elementary, My Dear Watson’ – was never uttered by Holmes: ‘Elementary’ yes, as well as ‘My Dear Watson’, but never the two together. Thus, Holmes the fictional creation almost instantaneously entered public consciousness as quite different in important ways from the vision of his creator.
On whom was he based?
There is no doubt about this – Conan Doyle makes it quite clear that he was at least partly based on one of his teachers at the Edinburgh Infirmary, the surgeon Joseph Bell, whose looks, as outlined by Conan Doyle, were not unlike Conan Doyle’s original idea. We must be forever grateful that Joseph Bell took Conan Doyle as his outpatient clerk which entailed the marshalling of the patients into a room, taking rough notes on their ailments and then showing them into the great man who appraised them surrounded by admiring students. Conan Doyle was thus to see the most remarkable deductions which Joseph Bell made of the patient’s life just by observations (which may have been the origins of Holmes’ later common lament to ordinary mortals: ‘you see but you do not observe’). Sometimes these would include correct facts about a person’s job and where they lived. He told his students to note whether a man removed his hat or not, how he stood, and his general demeanour as these observations could very well lead to preliminary thoughts as to the patient’s medical condition. Conan Doyle readily admitted that he used these traits, amplified and refined, in his depiction of Holmes. Bell kept in touch with Conan Doyle for many years, supporting him in his political ambitions and taking an interest in Holmes which included sometimes making suggestions for the stories.
Joseph Bell was modest about his contribution to Sherlock Holmes, declaring that the credit must go to the ‘genius’ of Conan Doyle. Any patient, he said, was bound to have more confidence in a doctor’s ability to cure him in the future if he sees that the doctor knows much of his past, and the trick was much easier than it appeared.
‘I thought of a hundred little dodges, as you may say, a hundred little touches by which he could build up his conclusions.’
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle9
Conan Doyle was also very aware of two famous literary figures – Edgar Allan Poe’s C. Auguste Dupin, who made his first appearance in print in 1841 and Emile Gaboriau’s Monsieur Lecoq, a detective employed by the French Sûreté; they are both discussed by Holmes and Watson at the beginning of A Study in Scarlet. Another French author, Henry Cauvain published a novel in 1871 about a detective with some characteristics not unlike those of Holmes – depressed sometimes, anti-social and opium-smoking. He is called Maximilien Heller. It is not known if Conan Doyle was aware of him but he was fluent in French, so well could have been.
Holmes: for all ages and every era
‘My name is Sherlock Holmes. It is my business to know what other people do not know’
The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle
Holmes has, somewhere in the world, and in differing art forms, been portrayed for every age from junior to elderly. The current Baker Street Elementary comic strip, on the back of the newsletters of the Dallas Sherlock Holmes Society, features Holmes and Watson as young children in adventures such as ‘The Red-Freckled League’ and ‘A Scandal in Casserole’.10 Young Sherlock Holmes, featuring Holmes as a teenager, is a series of books by Andrew Lane, while the 1985 film Young Sherlock Holmes, a cross between the works of Conan Doyle and Raiders of the Lost Ark, was written by Chris Columbus and received mixed reviews.
Then, of course, there is the canon itself which takes Holmes from a young university student to elderly bee-keeper on the Sussex Downs; his last imaginary case from here is superbly portrayed by Sir Ian McKellen in the film Mr Holmes, directed by Bill Condon and based on a 1985 novel by Mitch Cullins, A Slight Trick of the Mind.
He has also time-travelled, especially into the future from Victorian London, saving the world from tyranny in the Second World War, courtesy of the much-loved films starring Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce which many fans still regard as the pairing. In America CBS’ Elementary, and in England the BBC’s Sherlock reinvent Holmes and Watson in the present day, and he solves crimes (at the moment of writing) in Japan in shows such as Sherlock: Untold Stories from Fuji Television and Miss Sherlock where Holmes and Watson are both women and operate principally in Tokyo. The British/American production of Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century is a cartoon version of heavily amended tales directed by Paul Quinn – all twenty-six episodes were released on DVD in 2018.
Baker Street
A few yards away from the statue is Baker Street, named after the builder, William Baker, who laid it out in the eighteenth century; it originally housed Madame Tussauds but this subsequently moved to Marylebone Road, a short walk from where you are standing. This is also the home of The Sherlock Holmes Experience, an interactive walk-through exhibit where you are invited to ‘find’ Sherlock Holmes as he has gone missing. Details at www.madametussauds.com
Just a few yards along Baker Street, on your right, is a block of flats – Chiltern Court – and here are two plaques, one to H.G. Wells (1866–1946) who lived here from 1930–36, and the other to Arnold Bennett (1867–1931) who lived here for the last year of his life.
‘History is a race between education and catastrophe’
H.G. Wells
While based here H.G. Wells, already world-famous as the author of many books including War of the Worlds, The Time Machine and The Island of Dr Moreau, travelled extensively, visiting President Franklin D. Roosevelt and interviewing Joseph Stalin – the interview reputedly lasted three hours and was enjoyed by its subject – for the New Statesman. He predicted a world war before 1940 and was critical of Hitler, which resulted in his books being banned in public libraries in Germany from 1933. He said: ‘The man who raises a fist has run out of ideas.’ He was on the list of people subject to immediate arrest in the event of a successful Nazi invasion of Britain.
Conan Doyle knew and very much liked another Roosevelt – Theodore (26th American President 1901–9). For Conan Doyle he occupied a prominent place among all the great figures of the time, of whom he knew a good few. He is described by Conan Doyle as not a big or powerful man, but one who had ‘a tremendous dynamic force and iron will’. He had ‘the simplicity of real greatness, speaking his mind with great frankness and in the clearest possible English’, and ‘a quick blunt wit’. On one occasion, Conan Doyle recounts, when Roosevelt was awoken to address some people who had assembled at a wayside railway station, his assistant remarked that they had travelled sixty miles to see him. ‘They would have come a hundred to see a cat with two heads,’ Roosevelt replied.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle knew Wells for many years, preceding his knighthood by a long way, and remarked that he must have often entered the draper’s shop in which Wells was employed at Southsea. He regarded Wells as ‘one of the great fruits which popular education has given us’, but observes that ‘his democratic frankness and complete absence of class are occasionally embarrassing’.
Arnold Bennett was a prolific writer and journalist, his most convincing works highlighting the lives of working people in the Staffordshire Potteries. He famously remarked that he was not just concerned with art for art’s sake, but in ‘pocketing two guineas a piece’ for magazine stories which he was better able than many to compose. Of his novels, Riceyman Steps, published in 1923, is possibly the most renowned. His work as a whole was controversial during his lifetime with critical acclaim often eluding him until half a century after his death. He died of typhoid in the Baker Street flat on 27 March 1931 having returned from Paris where he is reputed to have drunk a glass of infected tap water.
What of the literary scene during which Sherlock Holmes was created? Conan Doyle was aware that the London press was not impressed with the crop of authors that followed Dickens and Thackeray. Conan Doyle, however, considered the current batch when he began writing his Holmes stories to be as talented and varied as at any other time in Britain’s history. He admired Oscar Wilde, Rudyard Kipling – he wrote later in life how in the Southsea days, despite being an impecunious young doctor he nevertheless bought and loved Kipling’s first book, Plain Tales from the Hills – Hall Caine, Anthony Hope, James Stephen Phillips, Bernard Shaw, Grant Allen, Barrie, H.A. Jones, Pinero, Marie Corelli, Stanley Wayman, Winston Churchill and H.G. Wells. Ironically, the preservation of his home ‘Undershaw’ was later in doubt (although saved from being demolished to make way for flats in the end – see Walks and Trips 8) as the authorities expressed the view that Conan Doyle was not quite in the same literary league as Dickens.
He was subsequently a great fan of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, writing to the author on 20 August 1897 congratulating him on sustaining such a high level of excitement over such a long period – a feat for which Conan Doyle himself would be celebrated following the publication of The Hound of the Baskervilles.
People from all over the world come to see the Sherlock Holmes Museum which is on your left about three quarters of the way along – often it is easily visible at the head of an uncharacteristically chatty and happy queue snaking back down the street. There is usually a ‘policeman’ outside who will lend you his helmet for a photo before ushering you in. The house is a recreation of the home that Holmes occupied from 1881–1904 and is open every day except Christmas Day from 9.30am to 6pm. Try to arrive as soon after opening time as possible for a quicker entry. Tickets are not available from the internet but must be bought at the door; at the time of writing they cost £15 per adult and £10 for a child under 16. (www.sherlock-holmes.co.uk). There are some interesting videos on YouTube, worth checking out before you come, from fans who have visited the house.
221B Baker Street
We are introduced to the rooms at 221B Baker Street in A Study in Scarlet. Watson, returned from the 2nd Afghan war, has gravitated to London, ‘that great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly drained’. He stays for a while at a private hotel in the Strand and finds that his income of eleven shillings and sixpence a day to be woefully inadequate. He meets Holmes – as detailed in Walk 7 – and agrees to share rooms. They comprised a couple of comfortable bedrooms and a large airy sitting room ‘cheerfully furnished’ with two broad windows overlooking the street. They were so desirable that Watson moved his things in the evening of the same day.
‘I’ve written a good deal more about him than I intended to do, but my hands have been forced by kind friends’
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, talking of Holmes
A perfect Sherlock Holmes adventure?
For many fans, the perfect Sherlock Holmes story should either start or end at 221B (or preferably both). Perhaps to begin with the wind is howling outside, shaking the windows; maybe the snow is falling or there is a pea-souper so bad that Watson, gazing from the inside of the front room warmed by a roaring fire, can hardly see the houses opposite. The doorbell will clang, there will be a clatter of footsteps and a perplexed client will almost fall into the room to be revived by a glass of medicinal brandy and water. Or at the end of a case a grateful Lestrade, or maybe Hopkins, will call and over drinks, or while Mrs Hudson prepares a fine English roast dinner which includes roast potatoes and all the trimmings, Holmes will hold court explaining the finer points of his latest triumph. In 1942 Vincent Starrett wrote a famous poem, incorporating these features, entitled ‘221B’. It ends with the lines:
Here, though the world explode, these two survive,
And it is always eighteen ninety-five.
Of the fifty-six stories and four novels, over two thirds start at 221B, and almost half end there.11 Some of the most memorable both begin and end there and a favourite in this category for many, especially at Christmas time, is The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle, published in The Strand Magazine in January 1892. It has all of the classic features of a thrilling Holmes adventure. It begins with Watson calling upon Holmes two days after Christmas to wish him the compliments of the season. There is a sharp frost outside and a crackling fire within and Homes is ‘lounging upon the sofa in a purple dressing gown’. A master class in deduction follows, featuring a battered billycock hat, before a tale unfolds about the robbery of a fabulous gem, the Countess of Morcar’s Blue Carbuncle. A man has been – unjustly – accused and Holmes must find the real culprit. This entails a rush to track a particular goose through the centre of London, an area which Conan Doyle knew in detail, featured in this study in Walks 2, 3 and 4 – Wimpole Street, Harley Street, Wigmore Street, Oxford Street, Covent Garden and Holborn – and brilliant deductions from Holmes along with the outwitting of an angry and suspicious market trader. The villain is tricked into coming to Baker Street where he is exposed. In this particular tale, Holmes acts as both judge and jury letting the man go saying: ‘I suppose that I am committing a felony, but it is just possible that I am saving a soul’, as the man is terrified and unlikely to commit any further crimes. The reader is left to imagine the wonderful meal and festive good cheer that seals this latest triumph as Watson is asked to ‘have the goodness to touch the bell, Doctor’, so as to begin another investigation ‘in which a bird will also be the chief feature’.12
221B is also where we are noisily introduced to The Baker Street Irregulars, a group of street-wise young urchins led by Wiggins, originally introduced in A Study in Scarlet in 1887. They also appear elsewhere in the stories, notably in The Sign of Four where they have a chapter to themselves. Here they invade 221B and clatter up the stairs in their bare, dirty feet causing Mrs Hudson to raise her voice ‘in a wail of expostulation and dismay’. Henceforth, Holmes decides that they can report to Wiggins and then he only will in turn report to Holmes. In The Sign of Four they are dispatched to find the steam launch Aurora as Holmes explains that they are able to mingle almost unobserved among sections of the population where others would stand out. They have gone on to have several of their own spin-off television series and the name ‘The Baker Street Irregulars’ is used by the prestigious literary society founded in the United States by Christopher Morley in 1934.13
Life for the young poor in Victorian and Edwardian England, often portrayed in novels as lovable ragamuffins like the Artful Dodger in Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist, was generally brutal and short. If a child managed to survive infancy, he or she may well not reach 20. Cholera, TB and Smallpox were rife. Many believed that disease was carried in putrid air, which largely accounts for the panic caused by the Great Stink of 1858, discussed in Walk 5. The law that made smallpox vaccination compulsory was often flouted and public opposition led to a new Act in 1907, after which parents were no longer forced to have their children vaccinated. There was a great fear as to the side effects of being vaccinated and Conan Doyle wrote to the press on several occasions opposing such fears, pointing out on one occasion when he wrote to the local newspaper in Portsmouth and Southsea, where he was a young doctor, that some parents erroneously attributed any illness whatsoever in their children to the prick of a pin.
Holmes as a living being
Conan Doyle was aware that Holmes was seen by many as a living being. He found this a little silly and said that it initially struck home when a group of schoolboys from France visited London and were asked what they would like to see first; they replied that they wished to see Sherlock Holmes’ lodgings in Baker Street. He also found it strange, when on retiring Holmes to the Sussex Downs to keep bees, he received a letter from a lady applying to become Holmes’ housekeeper as she was an expert in ‘segregating the Queen’ (‘Whatever that is’ continued Conan Doyle).
Letters addressed to Sherlock Holmes have arrived at 221B since his creation. They come from people all over the globe, seeking help and guidance. It is said that a member of staff of the Abbey National Building Society – the HQ of which for some years incorporated the number 221B – was employed to answer the letters and would sometimes say that Sherlock Holmes had now retired to Sussex to keep bees, or perhaps reply using quotes from the stories. Many were from schoolchildren, some tongue-in-cheek but others seemingly not so; Holmes has been asked his opinion on everything from Watergate to Coronavirus. Any that arrive now are directed to the Sherlock Holmes Museum.
Conan Doyle remarked that these letters came to Holmes from the very beginning. They would sometimes be addressed to him with the request that he forward them on to Sherlock Holmes. A great many came from Russia. Others he remembered well included those from a young lady correspondent who began all her letters ‘Good Lord’. On one occasion, a touching letter from Warsaw pleaded for some Sherlock Holmes books as they were the chief pleasure of a bedridden invalid. Touched by this, Conan Doyle packed up a set for posting but ran into a fellow author to whom he told the story. The fellow author, with a cynical smile, produced an identical letter from his pocket, leaving Conan Doyle aghast and wondering at the extent of the self-proclaimed lady invalid’s library if she had also committed this fraud on other writers. Apparently Watson, too, had letters which were requests for Holmes’ autograph. An agency, specialising in press cuttings of the rich and famous, also wrote to Watson asking if Holmes might find it worthwhile to subscribe.
From a study at the National Archives in Kew, it is apparent that letters, primarily from Russia, Romania and Czechoslovakia were also sent to Scotland Yard from the very beginning of Holmes’ fame, usually asking if Sherlock Holmes existed and what might be his address. Copies of replies from the Yard can still be seen stating that Sherlock Holmes exists in fiction only and thus regretfully his address cannot be supplied.
An interesting incident occurred following Conan Doyle’s knighthood when he was surprised to receive a bill from a tradesman addressed to ‘Sir Sherlock Holmes’. He was irate at first, but upon tackling the tradesman could not help bursting out with laughter as the poor man really thought that he was entitled to take that name on the awarding of the honour.
That Holmes is a real person, Watson his biographer and Conan Doyle merely a literary agent who ensured publication is called the Great Game, the Sherlockian Game, the Holmesian Game or simply the Game, and helps to some extent to explain why fact and fiction regarding Sherlock Holmes intermingle. The first essays on this subject saw the light of day in 1902. Dorothy L. Sayers, creator of Lord Peter Wimsey, writes that the Game ‘must be played as solemnly as a county cricket match at Lord’s; the slightest touch of extravagance or burlesque ruins the atmosphere.’14
The Clarence Gate entrance to Regent’s Park is literally a few minutes by foot from 221B. We know that Watson in particular liked his constitutionals here but one they both enjoyed together was for two hours, in silence mainly, ‘as befits two men who know each other intimately’, at the beginning of The Yellow Face. The park is one of the Royal Parks, named after the Prince Regent (1762–1830). A wonderful picnic spot, it has walkways and lakes and is home to over 100 species of wild bird – feeding them is now discouraged as this inadvertently does more harm than good. For the energetic there is a 10km sign-posted walk which you can pick up by crossing Clarence Bridge ahead of you and begins slightly to the left as you enter. The park also houses London Zoo and an open-air theatre featuring a range of plays from May to September; a favourite for many visitors is watching a Shakespeare play in the open air on a summer’s evening.
The first stories featuring … Sherringford Holmes
If you wish to see the area of London where Conan Doyle first took up a medical practice, leave Regent’s Park by the York Bridge exit – a little way along from where you entered (there are clear direction boards) – and make your way south past the Royal Academy of Music Museum and into Devonshire Place, which continues as Upper Wimpole Street and is parallel to the word-famous Harley Street. Conan Doyle wrote in his 1924 autobiography Memories and Adventures that his ophthalmic practice began at number 2 Devonshire Place. He was soon, he writes, to discover that they were both, in fact, waiting-rooms. It was here that he began to while away the hours by writing the adventures of a new kind of consulting detective whom he christened Sherlock Holmes. At first he favoured the name ‘Sherringford’ but changed it, possibly because he knew a cricketer called Shacklock (later in 1900, while mulling over the plot for The Hound of the Baskervilles and playing golf at Sheringham Royal Golf Club in Norfolk, it is likely he came across another club member who was called Moriarty). When writing these initial stories, like Holmes in the early days, Conan Doyle was living close to the British Museum. Every morning he would walk from Montague Place to the consulting rooms and sit there until three or four with absolutely no interruption by way of the receptionist’s bell.
The naming of Holmes and Watson happened like this; after he decided to change ‘Sherringford’ to ‘Sherlock’, he needed an educated but rather mundane name for his sidekick and Watson had about the right associations. Subsequently he was quite rude about Watson, calling him dull and humourless, but this rather bland template has enabled a fabulous array of interpretations, many – especially the more recent ones as outlined in various parts of this study – almost as quirky and sharp as Holmes himself. Once Conan Doyle had his two main characters named and had a broad idea of their function, he tells us that he was ready to begin A Study in Scarlet.
Was Holmes like Conan Doyle?
In the 1920s Conan Doyle was to answer the question that he was asked many times – how similar in personality was Holmes to himself? He said that while he cannot claim to be Holmes’ equal in problem solving, there must, of necessity, be some characteristics which transfer from author to fictional character and it is this which lends credibility to the creation. He jokes that this may be a dangerous admission for someone who had created so many criminals and quotes his own poem The Inner Room:
There are others who are sitting,
Grim as doom,
In the dim ill-boding shadow
Of my room.
Darkling figures, stern or quaint,
Now a savage, now a saint,
Showing fitfully and faint
Through the gloom.15
It is interesting that Joseph Bell, who Conan Doyle himself regarded as the main influence on the character of Holmes, thought he could detect Holmes in Conan Doyle himself.
Conan Doyle as Holmes: 1. The incredible Edalji case
Was Conan Doyle able to act as Holmes in real life? There are two celebrated cases where he tried to and the Edalji case is the first in which he did, indeed, prove the innocence of a man accused of shocking cruelty to animals.
George Edalji was brought up in Great Wyrley, north of Birmingham and, despite struggling with racial prejudice – his father was a Parsee Indian who had converted to Christianity and become a vicar – was a conscientious student at Walsall Grammar School and became a successful solicitor. In 1901 he published a well-regarded book (still available on Amazon and elsewhere): Railway Law for ‘the man in the train’: chiefly intended as a guide for the travelling public on all points like to arise in connection with the railways.
He was by all accounts an excellent solicitor and gained many local people and businesses as clients. He was also a lonesome individual who liked to take long solitary walks, upon one of which he was badly beaten up by a gang of roughs; he had no connection to them and racial prejudice was probably involved. In 1903 he was convicted of a terrible crime. Sheep, cows and at least one pony were being mutilated and, slashed with a razor across their stomachs, left to bleed to death. The crimes became known as ‘The Great Wyrley Outrages’. George Edalji was convicted and sentenced to seven years’ prison with hard labour. However, many people were not convinced of his guilt, a petition was started and, after three years, without any explanation or apology, he was released.
While happy to be released, Edalji was unable to continue in his profession as a solicitor and thought he was entitled to some compensation. He published his story in the press. It was now 1906 and Conan Doyle, reading about the events of the prosecution, saw what seemed to him an innocent man condemned. He felt compelled to help. All appeared clear; the razors found in the Edalji household were merely rusty and could not be linked to those used to mutilate the animals; the soil found on Edalji’s clothes and boots was of a different type to that where the last mutilations occurred; a key expert witness on handwriting – taunting letters had been sent after the crimes – was found to have made a serious error of judgement in a former trial which resulted in an innocent man going down; and, damningly one would have thought, the killings and letters continued after Edalji had been accused.
All straightforward so far, but what completely convinced Conan Doyle of Edalji’s innocence was a classic Holmesian observation. He had arranged to meet the man at a hotel in 1907 but was late. When he arrived, he noticed when approaching that Edalji had picked up a newspaper to pass the time and was reading it in an unusual way – he held it very close to his eyes and slightly sideways, a clear sign that he suffered from myopia and astigmatism. It was patently absurd to think that such a man could roam the fields at night seeking animals to slaughter, all the while, at least in the later stages of the crimes, avoiding the policemen – at least six sometimes – who had been sent to keep an eye on Edalji at his home and prevent him from venturing out.
Conan Doyle wrote of his observations and conclusions in detail and sent them to the Daily Telegraph, making it plain that they were copyright-free so that anyone could use the material. He said that the case amounted to a national scandal.16 The result was that, although no procedure existed at the time for a retrial, a committee was set up to consider the case afresh. Edalji was cleared of the killings but still found guilty of writing the letters. The Law Society, more wisely, looked at the newly presented facts and permitted Edalji to resume his practice as a solicitor.
This case was one of the factors that resulted in the Court of Criminal Appeal being established in 1907.
Conan Doyle continued his investigations into who the genuine guilty party might be and made the case that it was a man, now a butcher, who had been at school with Edalji; no one, however, was ever charged.17
Conan Doyle as Holmes: 2 The Oscar Slater case
Conan Doyle remarked that this case came about as he was generally held responsible for the exoneration of George Edalji and could not refuse to assist in such a grave injustice. Despite all, there was a marked sense of bitterness at the end between Oscar Slater and the famous author.
On 21 December 1908, Glasgow witnessed the gruesome murder of 83-year-old Miss Marion Gilchrist. Her maid had stepped out for a newspaper and when she returned found her employer bludgeoned to death; her papers had been rifled through and a diamond brooch stolen. Five days later the police announced that they were looking for a man who lived nearby: Oscar Slater. He had recently pawned a diamond brooch and, damningly, had left for America under a false name. He was subsequently located in America and agreed to return and face trial, convinced that a misunderstanding had occurred and would quickly be cleared up.
Despite the fact that the diamond brooch he had pawned did not match the one stolen and that he had an alibi for the time of the murder, his previous many criminal activities counted against him18 and in 1909 he was found guilty and sentenced to be hanged. Two weeks prior to his execution and after a public petition, his sentence was changed to life imprisonment with hard labour.
Slater’s lawyers contacted Conan Doyle who at once saw that the evidence did not stack up. With his legendary energy, Conan Doyle found the time to compile a book The Case of Oscar Slater which he published in 1912. It refuted the evidence in true Sherlock Holmes style, point by point. One interesting observation was that Slater travelled to America under an assumed name as he was travelling with his mistress and was fearful of his wife, not the police; the world-renowned author was also able to point out as a medical man that the weapon that was found in Slater’s possession and which the prosecution alleged caused Miss Gilchrist’s death, a light hammer, was far too small to have inflicted the extensive bloody injuries sustained and these were probably caused by something much larger, like a chair leg. It also seemed that the lady opened the door to her murderer and allowed him/her to enter (suspicion later fell on her nephew who was never convicted). Yet another witness testified that Slater was elsewhere at the time of the murder. Conan Doyle was outraged that the authorities refused to reopen the case. Years went by and Conan Doyle continued to press for a retrial when he had an opportunity.
In 1925 a message, smuggled out of prison by Slater courtesy of a released inmate, who hid the message under his tongue, begged Conan Doyle not to forget him and this resulted in a new flurry of letters and pleadings. In 1927 a new book, The Truth About Oscar Slater by journalist William Park, changed everything. On 8 November 1927 Slater was released and following a reopening of the case, for which Conan Doyle contributed £1,000 towards costs, Slater was cleared of all charges and awarded £6,000 in compensation.
Conan Doyle was horrified when Slater refused to repay those, including himself, who had contributed money towards his legal fees. It was not the money itself but the lack of honour involved. It was incomprehensible to him that anyone could act in such a manner and be so ungrateful. He wrote a scathing letter to Slater. Slater died in 1948 at the age of 78.
Further contemporary details are available in a file held in the National Archives at Kew: Oscar Slater. Correspondence including with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle on case and on mediums’.
A question of quality
‘Ah, what a dusty answer gets the soul when hot for certainties in this our life!’
George Meredith.
Conan Doyle was fascinated by writers and what separates the good from the great. One who interested him all his life was George Meredith19 and on 20 November 1888 he gave a talk about him to The Portsmouth Literary and Scientific Society in Portsmouth Guildhall. One of his fellow speakers, by chance, was a Dr Watson. He considered George Meredith admirable at his best, but so bad at his worst that he feared this would drag down his work in the opinion of posterity. There are three things, Conan Doyle believed, which render a story very good – the first is that it is intelligible, the second that it is interesting and the third that it is clever. Dickens and Thackeray fulfil all three conditions but Meredith, alas, only the third. He also said that precise thought makes for precise writing and muddy thought will never do.
As regards the quality of the Sherlock Holmes stories, there is an oft-quoted story, told to Conan Doyle, of a Cornish boatman remarking that when Sherlock Holmes went over the Reichenbach Falls he may not have died but he must have injured himself in some way as the stories thereafter were not quite as good as before. Conan Doyle’s belief, however, was that he kept up the standard and that any unprejudiced person, reading them backwards in their entirety, would agree that the last was as good as the first. It is true, though, that some share the same plot idea, notably The Red-headed League (1891), The Stock-broker’s Clerk (1893) and The Adventure of the Three Garridebs (1924), all of which involve the removal of a person from his usual haunts to somewhere else so that a crime can be committed.
A Study in Scarlet was the first Holmes story to be written and Conan Doyle was pleased with it, having made it the best he could (unlike previous half-hearted attempts at stories). He was disappointed when it took what he called ‘the circular tour’ back to his home having been rejected by several publishers. There was one left, however, who specialised in cheap and sensational works – Ward, Locke and Co. – and off to them it went. They accepted it, offering a paltry £25 for the copyright and it finally appeared in Beeton’s Christmas Annual 1887.20
The final location in this walk is Harley Street and, famous then and now for medical matters, it features in one of the tales. It was in the spring of 1897 that Holmes’ health was critical and he consulted Dr Moore Agar of Harley Street, ‘whose dramatic introduction to Holmes I may someday recount…’, adds Watson. Holmes had not the slightest interest in his state of health but was nonetheless persuaded to take a complete break. This led to a trip to the West Country and the ‘Cornish horror’ as Holmes put it: The Adventure of the Devil’s Foot.