WALK 8
At A Glance – the following stories, plays and novels are highlighted in this chapter:
LONDON: north of the river: The Stock-broker’s Clerk. The Adventure of the Engineer’s Thumb. The Boscombe Valley Mystery. Silver Blaze. The Adventure of the Red Circle. A Scandal in Bohemia. The Adventure of the Priory School. The Adventure of the Three Students. LONDON: south of the river: A Study in Scarlet. A Case of Identity. The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax. The Five Orange Pips. The Adventure of the Dying Detective. Micah Clarke. The Sign of Four. Berkshire: The Adventure of Shoscombe Old Place. Cambridgeshire: The Adventure of the Missing Three- Quarter. The Adventure of the Creeping Man. The Adventure of the Three Students. Cornwall: The Adventure of the Devil’s Foot. Devon: Silver Blaze. The Hound of the Baskervilles. The Adventure of the Norwood Builder. Hampshire: The Adventure of the Cardboard Box. The Adventure of the Copper Beeches. The Problem of Thor Bridge. Herefordshire: The Boscombe Valley Mystery. Kent: The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez. The Adventure of the Abbey Grange. The Adventure of the Veiled Lodger. Midlands and North: The Adventure of the Stock-broker’s Clerk. The Red-headed League. The Adventure of the Three Garridebs. The Adventure of the Priory School. The Adventure of the Copper Beeches. Norfolk: The ‘Gloria Scott’. The Adventure of the Dancing Men. The Hound of the Baskervilles. Surrey: The Adventure of the Speckled Band. The Adventure of the Solitary Cyclist. The Five Orange Pips. The Reigate Puzzle. Sussex: The Adventure of Black Peter. The Adventure of the Second Stain. The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge. The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire. The Musgrave Ritual. The Adventure of the Lion’s Mane
London: north of the river
South Kensington is where Holmes and Watson sometimes go, if time and crime permit, to listen to opera. In The Adventure of the Retired Colourman, Holmes refers to music as a ‘side door’ by which to escape the wearying world and sets out to see Carina sing at the Albert Hall.
‘Do you remember what Darwin says about music? He claims that the power of producing and appreciating it existed among the human race long before the power of speech was arrived at. Perhaps that is why we are so subtly influenced by it.’
A Study in Scarlet
The Adventure of Shoscombe Old Place opens with Holmes bent over a microscope and discussing the St Pancras case, which involved Merivale of the Yard. Holmes had provided crucial information by identifying zinc and copper filings in a man’s cuff.
‘Shortly after my marriage I had bought a connection in the Paddington district’, Watson writes at the beginning of The Stock-broker’s Clerk. One of the unusual features of the tale is that it is Holmes who goes to see Watson, rather than the other way around, after three months when they had seen little of each other. Holmes asks Watson if he is interested in a trip to Birmingham on a case, an offer that is enthusiastically accepted.
A year earlier – 1892 – Conan Doyle had also begun a tale at Watson’s Paddington medical practice, in The Adventure of the Engineer’s Thumb. We learn that Watson lived ‘no very great distance from Paddington station’ and sometimes received patients courtesy of the station staff; on this occasion a guard, ‘my old ally’, had brought a Mr Victor Hatherley, hydraulic engineer, who had had his thumb torn off. Watson suggests that they both take a cab to see Sherlock Holmes where, with the aid of the almost ubiquitous glass of brandy and water, Mr Hatherley explains his predicament which started when he took a train from Paddington station to Eyford in Berkshire.
There are a few other cases where a trip from Paddington station is required, one being at the start of The Boscombe Valley Mystery when Watson, sitting at breakfast with his wife, receives a telegram from Holmes asking that he come down by the 11.15 from Paddington. Another is in Silver Blaze when Holmes and Watson take a train from the station bound for King’s Pyland in Dartmoor. The ensuing tale is especially interesting because Conan Doyle was never a ‘man of the turf’ and admitted that his ignorance was glaring. One sporting paper wrote a strongly worded critique of racing as depicted in the tale but this was OK because, although sometimes accurate details are essential, in this story they were not. The story, he declared, was ‘alright’.
‘There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.’
The Boscombe Valley Mystery
Hampstead features in three stories. In The Adventure of the Red Circle, Hampstead Heath is where Mr Warren comes to, having been mysteriously bungled from Tottenham Court Road (outside Morton and Waylight’s, as mentioned in Walk 4) into a cab. It is also where Mr Hall Pycroft has his diggings – 17 Potter’s Terrace – at the beginning of The Stock-broker’s Clerk.
Most famously, perhaps, Appledore Towers is located here, the home of one of Holmes’ most villainous foes, Charles Augustus Milverton: ‘there are hundreds,’ Holmes tells Watson, ‘who turn white at his name.’ Conan Doyle may have discussed this idea with his brother-in-law, E.W. Hornung, as a similar plot unfolds in the 1909 full-length novel Mr Justice Raffles. This novel bears another link to Sherlock Holmes as it marked the resurrection of Raffles due to public demand. Fans were divided in their opinion as the old carefree Raffles had now developed a darker side. It was filmed in 1977 with Anthony Valentine as Raffles, Christopher Strauli as Bunny Manders and a young Charles Dance as a cricketing friend. In this production, Raffles effectively murders an unscrupulous money lender in a most gruesome way – by setting his room and safe ablaze and locking the door by turning the key from the outside.
One of the most famous opening storylines in literature is ‘To Sherlock Holmes she is always the woman.’ This refers, of course, to Irene Adler who, in A Scandal in Bohemia, lives in Briony Lodge, Serpentine Avenue, St John’s Wood. Unfortunately, if you try to pay a visit you will end up in Hyde Park; the avenue exists but not where Conan Doyle says it is. However, the general setting of the affluent St John’s Wood is perfect for a mission undertaken by Holmes for the very grand-sounding Wilhelm Gottsreich Sigismond Von Ormstein, Grand Duke of Cassel-Felstein, hereditary King of Bohemia. That Holmes does not have everything go his way makes the story even more interesting.
The area is also home to Lord’s Cricket Ground (nothing to do with the aristocracy, many people are surprised to learn, but named after its founder, Thomas Lord in 1814) in which Conan Doyle spent many happy hours as cricket was the sport which he said gave him most pleasure, something he shared with his brother-in-law and creator of the cricketing genius, Raffles, E.W. Hornung. Conan Doyle’s greatest sporting feat, however – taking the wicket of the finest cricketer of the age, W.G. Grace – was in Crystal Palace although the incident when he was set on fire happened at Lord’s: both are discussed in Part 1.
Perhaps surprisingly, cricket is barely mentioned in the canon – it is briefly referred to in The Adventure of the Priory School and The Adventure of the Three Students – but then again, neither is spiritualism, Conan Doyle’s greatest interest in life.
A favourite of many, The Adventure of the Six Napoleons takes place in different parts of London including Kensington, Stepney, Kennington Road and Chiswick. The plot bears resemblances to The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle in that a valuable gem has been hidden – in a bust of Napoleon here as opposed to a goose – and an exciting chase ensues to locate it. Lestrade is satisfyingly wrong all along and the ending sees Holmes at his dramatic best as he smashes a bust of Napoleon to reveal the famous black pearl of the Borgias. It is moving also to witness Lestrade’s heart-felt praise of Holmes after the case is solved: ‘We’re not jealous of you at Scotland Yard. No, sir, we are very proud of you, and if you come down tomorrow, there’s not a man, from the oldest inspector to the youngest constable, who wouldn’t be glad to shake you by the hand’.
It is also famous for Holmes’ reference to parsley sinking into butter, something that has launched hundreds of stories, pastiches and comedy sketches: ‘You will remember, Watson, how the dreadful business of the Abernetty family was first brought to my notice by the depth which the parsley had sunk into the butter on a hot day.’
London: south of the river
Holmes’ adventures take him south of the river sometimes, and one location which features often is the Camberwell area. In A Study in Scarlet it is the location of Madame Charpentier’s boarding house – Torquay Terrace – and Sally Dennis’ lodgings at 3 Mayfield Place, Peckham. Several other characters in the canon also live here; in A Case of Identity, the unfortunate Miss Mary Sutherland resides at 31 Lyon Place, Camberwell, as does Miss Dobney, governess, in The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax; most memorably, perhaps, Miss Mary Morstan, future wife of Dr Watson, shares a house with Mrs Cecil Forrester in Lower Camberwell.
The Camberwell poisoning case, mentioned at the start of The Five Orange Pips, is one of those cases that Watson says ‘I may sketch out at some future date’, along with adventure of the Paradol Chamber, of the Amateur Mendicant Society, the loss of the British barque Sophy Anderson and the singular adventures of the Grice Pattersons in the island of Uffa.
Rotherhithe is briefly mentioned in The Adventure of the Dying Detective as it is the perceived source of Holmes’ terrible illness when he is apparently forced to take to his bed. The area has had a totally mixed history – once it was the northernmost part of the affluent county of Surrey; it was inhabited – and still is – by many people of Scandinavian descent; the Mayflower sailed from here to America in 1620, picking up people from Southampton en route; Conan Doyle mentions ‘the cherry orchards at Rotherhithe’ in Micah Clarke (1889) which is set in 1685; in Holmes’ day it was an area of desperate poverty, while today it is being gentrified apace, helped by the extension of the underground system.
Among other areas south of the river and mentioned in the canon are Brixton, Croydon, Lee, Lewisham, Lower Norwood, Norbury, Beckenham, Penge and Streatham. The most famous use of this area, however, is in the very funny chase by Toby the dog in The Sign of Four when Holmes and Watson are led a merry dance in their pursuit of Jonathan Small: ‘we had traversed Streatham, Brixton, Camberwell and now found ourselves in Kennington Lane.…’ They end up in Nine Elms before they both realise that the dog has been on a false trail upon which they both look blankly at each other before bursting simultaneously ‘into an uncontrollable fit of laughter.’
Other Holmesian locations in the UK
Berkshire
The Adventure of Shoscombe Old Place is the last of the fifty-six short stories, first published in 1927 and centres around a stables in Berkshire. It is half horror and half detective story featuring a crypt, a hidden dead body, debt, a horse and a bizarre impersonation. It was originally to have been called The Adventure of the Black Spaniel. The Granada TV version features a very young Jude Law in a small but vital part; he was later to play Watson to Robert Downey Jr as Holmes in controversial but popular and financially successful films of the tales. This 1991 TV production starring Jeremy Brett and Edward Hardwicke is seen as one of the most successful of the Granada series, using humour to great effect as a foil to the more grotesque aspects of the story.
Cambridgeshire
The Adventure of the Missing Three-Quarter was first published in 1904 and begins with the arrival of Mr Cyril Overton from Trinity College, Cambridge, who is seeking Holmes’ help to locate a missing member of his rugby union team (the man who plays at the three-quarter position). It is, at the end, a sad tale as the missing man’s wife has died of consumption. Rugby was one of Conan Doyle’s favourite sports.
The Adventure of the Creeping Man is a tale first published in 1923. It takes place in Camford, a portmanteau of Oxford and Cambridge. It is a very powerful tale but has been dismissed by some as second-rate science fiction.
A 1904 tale, The Adventure of the Three Students is a simple and appealing tale where Holmes is set to find a cheating student. It is set in one of the great university towns in a college called St Luke’s which, as above, sounds like it is part of Camford or Oxbridge.
Cornwall
The tale The Adventure of the Devil’s Foot is set in Poldhu Bay, Cornwall, and is ninth in Conan Doyle’s ‘favourites’ list. It is noteworthy as far as the present writer is concerned for several things. First, Holmes and Watson travel there because Holmes’ usually iron health has broken and Dr Moore Agar of Harley Street orders a complete rest. Then it is unusually a horror story involving people being driven mad with suggestions of the supernatural. Third, Watson saves Holmes from almost certain madness or death by dragging him out of a room full of deadly fumes. Fourth, although this is not unique in the canon, it is a case where Holmes clearly operates outside the law – Holmes acts as police, judge and jury in letting the killer of Mortimer, Dr Sterndale, return to his work in Africa. Finally, it has Holmes comment on love: ‘I have never loved, Watson, but if I did and the woman I loved had met such an end, I might act even as our lawless lion-hunter has done. Who knows?’
Conan Doyle would undoubtedly have known of Poldhu Bay as it was the location of Poldhu Wireless Station which in 1901, nine years before the story was published, was the location of Marconi’s transmitter from which the first transatlantic radio message was sent.
Devon
Silver Blaze from The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, set in King’s Pyland in Devon, was first published in 1892 and centres around the disappearance of a valuable horse. As discussed above, it is set in a world that Conan Doyle said he knew little about and one in which he had little interest. He said: ‘I never could look upon flat racing as a true sport. Sport is what a man does, not what a horse does.’ It has nonetheless become one of the most popular stories and usually features in the ‘top 20’ of all manner of surveys that constantly appear. It combines a mix of genuinely cruel skulduggery (mutilation of a horse’s sinew) with the clever (using curry to disguise the taste of poison – in the Russian TV version this was substituted with a garlic sauce as this was more familiar to viewers) to the fantastical (disguising a horse from all who knew it by utilising dye). Holmes is assisted by one of the more efficient of official detectives, Gregory (except, of course, like all the others he lacks imagination). It also has one of Conan Doyle’s most exciting and famous plot points as Holmes directs Gregory towards the curious incident of the dog in the night-time:
Gregory: The dog did nothing in the night-time.
Holmes: That was the curious incident.44
The first film version was in 1923 starring Eille Norwood as Holmes and Hubert Willis as Watson and at the time of writing can be seen on YouTube.
‘Mr Holmes, they were the footprints of a gigantic hound!’
Dr Mortimer, The Hound of the Baskervilles
Probably the most celebrated of the stories and one of the most famous ever written in the English language, The Hound of the Baskervilles, was first published in monthly instalments in The Strand Magazine. Set on the eerie and vast open space of Dartmoor, Conan Doyle said that his original idea was to produce a ‘Victorian Creeper’. It was the first new Holmes adventure since his ‘death’ at Reichenbach and the public clamoured to get hold of it. Conan Doyle’s American publisher had the idea of whetting people’s appetite – not that this proved necessary – by putting a single isolated page of the tale up in bookshops and libraries; of the original approximately 195 sheets, only thirty-six are known to exist, each worth a fortune (one sold at auction in 2012 for $158,000).
The origins are disputed (see Part 1 for Norfolk’s claim to fame here). A journalist, Bertram Fletcher Robinson, is sometimes credited with the original concept of a throat-ripping hound and is known to have explored Dartmoor with Conan Doyle. Bertram Fletcher, who wrote a series of his own featuring a detective called Addington Peace, undoubtedly developed a warm friendship with Conan Doyle, beginning on a ship during the long voyage from South Africa to Southampton, and certainly helped with the plot – he also contributed ideas to The Adventure of the Norwood Builder – but to what extent is still disputed.
An interesting aspect of the tale, given Conan Doyle’s unshakeable belief in spiritualism, is the treatment of the supernatural element – is the hound a ghost-dog? In the story, many people are said to believe this, mainly the working class who are presented as not very bright (the believers, including at one point Watson himself who, as previously mentioned, Conan Doyle did not create to display imagination or humour) and it takes Holmes to prove that the tale belonged firmly in the here and now; the supernatural is debunked.
The book was immediately loved and received rave reviews from all and sundry, one national newspaper saying that it was a mix of a good melodrama and a skilful puzzle, that the excitement never flags from start to finish and that it would sharpen the wits of whoever read it.
There are literally hundreds of films and radio versions of the book, some plays and video games, and even a book arguing that Holmes got it wrong.45 One of the most delightful ways it is used is by children and adults from all over the world who produce their own versions of part of it for artistic reasons or as a language-learning aid, and if you are a member of any of the Sherlock Holmes societies online you will see these pop up almost daily.
Hampshire
Conan Doyle’s youthful adventures setting up a medical practice were in Southsea and it is not surprising that when he yearns for relief from a blazing hot summer that he thinks of the ‘shingle of Southsea’ at the start of The Adventure of the Cardboard Box.
‘Crime is common. Logic is rare. Therefore it is upon the logic rather than upon the crime that you should dwell.’
The Adventure of the Copper Beeches
The Adventure of the Copper Beeches is set five miles outside Winchester, the capital town of Hampshire and was first published in 1892, as usual in The Strand Magazine. It is an unsettling, melodramatic tale with a high ‘horror’ quotient. Miss Violet Hunter comes to Holmes as she has been offered an excessively generous salary to become a governess but she must agree to have her hair cut and, it subsequently emerges, to wear clothes provided by her employer and to sit in a certain window for various lengths of time. She is to be governess to a small boy with a penchant for cruelty and the other servants are chilly, one of them, Toller, is often drunk. A mastiff, kept hungry, roams the grounds at night. There is also a mysterious wing of the house, always locked. Holmes comes down and sorts out the mystery which involves money and a denied love affair.
It is hardly surprising that the story was selected in 1912 by Warner Features to become one of eight silent film adaptations which, as it says at the beginning of the film itself, was ‘Produced under the personal supervision of the Author, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.’ It stars Georges Treville as Holmes (he wears a trilby hat, not the deerstalker as was later generally the case, and there is no Watson) and is viewable on YouTube; the whereabouts of all the others in the same series is unknown.
The Problem of Thor Bridge, one of the later stories first published in 1922, is set in a substantial estate in Hampshire and legal matters are subsequently dealt with in the Assizes in Winchester. It begins with the legendary declaration that there is a tin despatch-box with the name John H. Watson painted on it at the bank of Cox and Co, Charing Cross, which contains the notes to many cases, as yet unpublished, that had been investigated by Sherlock Holmes.
This statement is part of the conceit, also promoted by references to other tales (such as The Giant Rat of Sumatra, and see quote below under ‘Kent’) within the stories as they actually exist, that there is a wonderful world of more Holmes adventures ‘out there somewhere’. Hundreds of pastiches inspired by this thought have been, and continue to be, written by everyone with a love for Holmes from schoolchildren as an essay assignment, to novels by celebrated authors such as Anthony Horowitz, whose two novels The House of Silk (2011) and Moriarty (2014) are exciting and highly regarded by Sherlockians.
The tale itself centres around the passion of unrequited love in which a suicide is designed to look like murder which simultaneously frames the rival in love. It involves an ingenious deception featuring a revolver, strong twine and a stone. Holmes demonstrates the mechanics of the suicide; this has been replicated using a fake gun by several groups of fans and it apparently ‘works’, which is not always the case in Conan Doyle’s writings.
A 1968 adaptation starring Peter Cushing has mysteriously been lost. Elements from the tale were used in You Do It to Yourself (2012), written by Peter Blake in the first series of Elementary.
Herefordshire
In The Boscombe Valley Mystery (1891), although Holmes tells Watson that they are going to a country district near Ross in Herefordshire, to Boscombe Valley specifically, some Sherlockians are of differing opinions as to where the story takes place.
‘Why does fate play such tricks with poor, helpless worms?’
Sherlock Holmes, The Boscombe Valley Mystery
It is a tale of murder, greed and blackmail beginning in the Australian colonies, and is one more example of Holmes finding the killer only to keep the knowledge to himself, this time as the man is dying anyway and, as he tells him on release, ‘will soon have to answer for your deed at a higher court than the Assizes.’
Kent
As I turn over the pages, I see my notes upon the repulsive story of the red leech, and the terrible death of Crosby, the banker. Here also I find an account of the Addleton tragedy, and the singular contents of the ancient British barrow. The famous Smith-Mortimer succession case comes also within this period, and so does the tracking and arrest of Huret, the Boulevard assassin – an exploit which won for Holmes an autograph letter of thanks from the French President and the Order of the Legion of Honour.
The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez (1904)
The ingenious tale, The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez, takes place near Chatham in Kent which associates itself particularly with Charles Dickens who lived a short distance away and featured several of the town’s buildings in his novels.46 Holmes solves the seemingly motiveless murder of young Willoughby Smith, cooperating with Hopkins from Scotland Yard. In the well-known Granada TV episode starring Jeremy Brett as Holmes, Watson is replaced by Mycroft and the plot differs slightly also (for example, instead of scattering cigarette ash on the floor in order to catch footprints of the murderer, Mycroft upsets his snuff box).
In The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez, both the professor and his estranged wife are Russian and both had, years previously, been involved with Nihilists. The rise of eastern gangs was the real-life backdrop against which Conan Doyle wrote this tale. There were an estimated 120,000 Jews alone, persecuted in Russia and elsewhere, who settled in England 1895–1914. Some of these were revolutionaries and formed into violent rival criminal gangs in parts of London, especially Whitechapel and the East End. Happenings such as the Houndsditch Robbery (see above), and the so-called Tottenham Outrage of 1909 when two self-proclaimed Russian revolutionaries attempted to rob a payroll van with the loss of two lives, stoked a xenophobia in sections of the population to which the Alien Act of 1905, which limited immigration, was in part a response.
The affluent area of Chislehurst is the setting for The Adventure of the Abbey Grange which once more sees Holmes partner with Inspector Hopkins to solve the murder of the odious Sir Eustace Brackenstall. Hopkins is, as you would expect, on the wrong scent altogether believing it to be part of a robbery-gone-wrong perpetrated by a local gang. The story is remarkable for the final scene in which Holmes acts as judge (this idea is discussed further in various parts of this book) and pardons the real murderer, Crocker. Here, however, he additionally involves Watson as the jury whose ‘Not Guilty’ verdict secures Crocker’s release.
‘Come, Watson, Come. The game is afoot.’
Adventure of the Abbey Grange
Margate in Kent receives a mention in The Adventure of the Veiled Lodger when it is revealed that Leonardo drowned while bathing there. This is a late tale – 1927 – and quite bloody, notable additionally for Holmes’ actions and kindness in saving someone – Mrs Ronder – from committing suicide.
Midlands and North
The Stock-broker’s Clerk, set in London and Birmingham, was published in 1893. The primary feature of the plot – removing a man from his usual place of activity so that a crime can be committed – had previously been used by Conan Doyle two years earlier in The Red-headed League and was to be revived in 1924 for The Adventure of the Three Garridebs. The chap being deceived here, Mr Hall Pycroft, is a little brighter than his counterparts in the other two stories as he is suspicious from the outset and eventually understands the deception.
The Adventure of the Three Garridebs is also remarkable for the rarest of features – a display of emotion from Holmes and, at long last (it was written in 1924), an admission of the bond that existed for Holmes regarding Watson. We also learn that Holmes is quite prepared to commit murder if the cause (by his own standards, naturally) is justified. In the fight at the end, Watson is shot. Holmes crashes his gun onto the villain’s head and begs Watson to say that he is not hurt. Watson tells the reader that it is worth a wound, many wounds, to have a glimpse of the love that lay behind Holmes’ cold façade. Holmes then tells the assailant – Killer Evans – that he would not have got out of the room alive if Watson had been killed.
Holmes travels to Mackleton in the north east of England for The Adventure of the Priory School and ends up a very rich man, indeed, by accepting a cheque from the Duke of Holdernesse for £6,000. The reason he demanded this was undoubtedly at least partial annoyance at the Duke’s attempt to deceive him, as normally he was not at all concerned with money and even waived fees altogether for deserving cases. The tale, with a fast-moving investigation spread over a vast and inhospitable terrain with a murder, strange animals and ‘odd’ locals, shares a similar excitement to The Hound of the Baskervilles, albeit at the other end of the country.
One other interesting aspect of the tale is that Conan Doyle says that he had many remonstrances about the impossibility of deciding which way a bicycle was heading by looking at the bicycle track upon a damp piece of ground, so many, in fact, that he took his own bicycle on to a similar stretch of ground to that featured in the story and had a look. He found that his correspondents were right; however, as the wheels made a deeper impression going uphill than down, Holmes was correct in his assumptions anyway.
Walsall in the West Midlands is the last place we hear of Miss Violet Hunter from The Adventure of the Copper Beeches, as Watson informs us at the last, in throw-away fashion, that she ‘is now head of a private school at Walsall, where I believe she has met with considerable success’.
Detective Jerome: another candidate for a real-life Sherlock Holmes?
Jerome Caminada (1844–1914), often called ‘Detective Jerome’ by felons who found it difficult to pronounce his last name, has been called ‘the real-life Sherlock Holmes’.47
His most famous case was The Manchester Cab Murder when 50-year-old John Fletcher was found slumped in a cab late at night, dying shortly afterwards. Although, when found, the victim had no money on him and his gold watch was missing, there was no sign of physical violence, the coroner pronouncing that he had died of alcohol and chemical poisoning – gin or beer mixed with choral hydrate, which was often taken to ward off sleep. Caminada, however, was able to further link chloral hydrate with the boxing community where it was used to drug fighters in order to fix the betting. A chain of clues involving a stolen bottle of the drug in Liverpool, a description of a young man from that area seen with the victim that night, and two victims who claimed to have been drugged in public houses before being robbed, led to the sensational arrest only three weeks after Fletcher’s death, of 18-year-old Charlie Parton. The coup de grâce was locating a witness who actually saw Parton pour a substance from a phial into Fletcher’s drink on the night in question. Parton was duly found guilty and sentenced to death, subsequently commuted to life imprisonment.
The above took place in the first half of 1889, when A Study in Scarlet had been out for just over a year, and it was all very Sherlockian. Immediately, the press began to refer to Caminada as ‘Manchester’s real-life Sherlock Holmes’. The parallels are striking – Caminada was brave, creative, extremely astute, not averse to using a gun if necessary, utilised a wide range of informers, and often went undercover; his results were also unprecedented – he is said to have sent 1,225 criminals to prison – and he was subsequently appointed Manchester’s first CID superintendent. He retired in 1899 and became – among several other things including a Manchester City councillor – a private detective. He had no ‘Boswell’ or Strand Magazine, but he detailed his own exploits in two sets of memoirs, the first anonymously and the second under his own name, published in 1895 and 1901 – Twenty-five years of Detective Life, published in Manchester by the firm of John Heywood.
The ‘Gloria Scott’ is based in Donnithorpe, ‘a little hamlet just to the north of Langmere, in the county of the Broads’, and is chronologically the earliest of the stories, narrated by Holmes himself. It has been adapted in several forms, including being an episode in the animated series Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century, where the ‘Gloria Scott’, in the original a convict ship, becomes a spaceship travelling to the moon.
Conan Doyle liked to go motoring, a new and thrilling activity in the early 1900s, and this included trips around Norfolk, sometimes much to the terror of horses. Conan Doyle recounts one such trip down a narrow Norfolk lane when the horses pulling a cart-load of turnips panicked on coming into sight of his car – in which also sat his mother, knitting – and darted off up the bank. Conan Doyle rushed out to assist the furious farmer who was driving the cart and now saw his turnips all over the place. He looked back to witness his mother continuing to calmly knit. He writes that it was like a dream.
On one of the Norfolk motoring trips, he is reputed to have stayed at the Hill House Hotel in Happisburgh (pronounced ‘Haisbro’) and, while signing a lady’s autograph book he saw some drawings by her children, Edith and Gilbert Cubitt, that seemed to be ‘dancing men’ and were, in fact, a coded language. The result was one of the most ingenious tales, The Adventure of the Dancing Men, parts of which he composed in the hotel. He uses the Cubitt name in the story. Norwich also features briefly as it is here that Abe Slaney is tried and found guilty of murder.
‘I’m Sherlock Holmes and I always work alone ’cause no one can compete with my massive intellect.’
Watson, shouting out to Holmes in frustration as he tries
in vain to gain entry to a crime scene in The Blind Banker,
an episode in BBC’s Sherlock. The production is based on
The Adventure of the Dancing Men
Cromer’s claim to fame, not universally accepted, as the possible inspiration behind The Hound of the Baskervilles is discussed in Part 1.
Conan Doyle also played golf in the region; the most famous club in the area is the Royal Sheringham Golf Club which at the time had a member named Moriarty.
Surrey
Conan Doyle’s favourite story, discussed previously, The Adventure of the Speckled Band (1892), places the Roylotts in Stoke Moran, Surrey. The Adventure of the Solitary Cyclist (1903) is centred around Farnham: apparently it was initially rejected by The Strand Magazine as it had too much Watson and not enough Holmes, and Conan Doyle was never completely happy with it. At the time of its writing, Conan Doyle was living in Surrey, at ‘Undershaw’, which he had built specially to cater for his wife’s health needs.48
The events of The Naval Treaty take place in Woking, north-west Surrey. This is a long story and was originally published in two parts. The conclusion sees Holmes at his theatrical best, the long-lost naval treaty being served up to a dumbfounded Percy Phelps and Watson at breakfast, literally on a platter. The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge sees Holmes travel to a house which is situated between Esher and Oxshott: Garcia had been found dead on Oxshott Common.
As he lived in the area for a long part of his life, it is perhaps surprising that Surrey does not feature more often in the canon; however, Portsdown Hill receives a mention in The Five Orange Pips and Watson’s friend, Colonel Hayter, has a house in Reigate in The Reigate Puzzle.
Sussex
Sussex is used extensively by Conan Doyle. The Adventure of Black Peter, notable in part for featuring Stanley Hopkins, a detective regarded with respect by Holmes, is centred in Forest Row. The plot was used as the basis for the episode ‘Dead Man’s Tale’ in the US series Elementary.
The macabre Adventure of the Sussex Vampire sees Holmes set off to Mr Ferguson’s house in Sussex. It is in this tale that we hear of The Giant Rat of Sumatra, a tale for which the world is not yet prepared, and which has since inspired many pastiches.
The Manor House of Hurlstone in western Sussex is the scene of the solving of The Musgrove Ritual; T.S. Eliot adapted part of his 1935 play Murder in the Cathedral as homage to the tale.
The Adventure of the Lion’s Mane is a later tale (1926), based in Sussex, and was highly rated by its author. It is unusual for several reasons: first, it is written by Holmes himself.49 Conan Doyle later remarked that these stories were hampered by the absence of Watson’s pen; second, it was published in Liberty Magazine in the United States prior to appearing in The Strand Magazine in the UK; third, it features no Watson at all; fourth, it is the only adventure set after Holmes’ retirement,50 and finally it is solved, not through Holmes’ deductive powers, but his knowledge (of jellyfish).