May 26, 2021
“That is very fortunate” [SCAN]
Sherlock Holmes didn't believe in superstition, the supernatural, or random guesses. He was a detective who dealt in facts and data.
And yet, the canon of Sherlock Holmes stories is littered with coincidences (happy or otherwise) and instances of luck. How did these play into the...
May 19, 2021
“the whole story concerning the politician, the lighthouse, and the trained cormorant” [VEIL]
There is one scant mention of a cormorant in the Sherlock Holmes stories — in one of Watson's enticing throwaway lines of a case which we'll never read. In "The Veiled Lodger," he tells us about the case involving a...
May 12, 2021
“I stooped to the eyepiece and focussed for my vision.” [SHOS]
Given Arthur Conan Doyle's training in the field of eye medicine, it's no surprise that we find a number of Sherlock Holmes characters who wear glasses.
In fact, an entire story is named after a set of eyewear. Who were some of the bespectacled band in...
May 5, 2021
“the sending of general messages” [VALL]
Sherlock Holmes was an inveterate message sender and receiver. The many notes, letters, telegrams, cryptogram, and other forms of communication that passed by his view made for key clues in some cases.
We wondered how things might have turned out differently in certain...