by Bruce Wexler
London’s Fleet Street in the 1890s.The photograph instantly conveys what a crowded, bustling place London was at the time of the Holmes stories.
A knife grinder. He is one of an army of street traders providing services to better-off Londoners.
The familiar chimney sweep, complete with brushes, as characterized by Bert in Mary Poppins. At a time when coal fires were the only source of heat for millions of Londoners, sweeps were in constant demand.
A Flower Girl offers her posies to a passer by. In reality this profession was often a “front” for an even older one!
When Holmes began his career as the world’s first consulting detective in 1878, the great metropolis was exactly as Charles Dickens, Jr. catalogued it in Dickens’s Dictionary of London (1879). The streets were filled with a revolving cavalcade of London characters, including street doctors, “nomades” (hawkers of cheap ornaments), ice-barrowmen, pickpockets, dustmen, costermongers, water-cart pushers, advertising board men, knife-grinders, chimney sweeps, chair-caners, apple women, flower girls, footpads, ginger-beer vendors, Italian street singers, shoeblacks, prostitutes, and crossing sweeps. But the human drama of this street life tended to belie the fact that London was starting to undergo a gradual but dramatic change, just beginning its evolution into a modern city.
A market porter in front of London’s Covent Garden Market.
The barrel organ provided street entertainment and added to the roaring hubbub of the Victorian streets.
As well as being the hub of the British Empire, London was a hugely important manufacturing and financial center that was powering its way to massive wealth. This wealth was to usher in great social change and create a vast new “middle” class. Despite this, the London poor continued to suffer grave social injustice, coping with extremely dangerous and unhealthy conditions in which to live and work. London’s poorest areas were hotbeds of filth and vice, besmirched by “filthy cesspools and privies,” putrefying garbage, and rotting dung-heaps. This vicious cocktail fouled the air and spread cholera and typhus, both of which were rife. On top of this, the industries in which the urban poor were employed often relied on fatally dangerous chemicals and processes and many workers were killed or disabled in the course of their labors.
Indeed, the poor were taken advantage of in every way imaginable. Virtually all the foodstuffs on which they relied were adulterated: bread with alum, milk with chalk and water, sausages with horsemeat, gin with vitriol, and sugar with Plaster of Paris. The very “butter” they were sold was actually lard colored with turmeric.
The social divide between London’s rich and poor was immense. While the poor struggled to survive, the middle classes and gentry (like the Holmes family), enjoyed an increasingly civilized and sophisticated way of life. Elegance, etiquette, refined social interaction, and personal hygiene all became increasingly important during this period, and many luxuries and traditions that we still enjoy were introduced. Family photographs, days at the seaside, trips abroad, visits to (free entry) museums and art galleries, and restaurant meals all became a typical part of middle class life.
As the middle classes became more affluent, luxuries like a day at the seaside, and a family photograph recording it, fell within reach for more people.
Early gas lighting helped to stamp out crime in London. The lamps were individually tended to on a nightly basis.
Life was hard for the inner city poor. Large bands of children were left to roam the streets, while their parents drank in the many alehouses.
The first beginnings of a “modern” way of thinking also became apparent in the 1880s, just as Holmes and Watson were setting up home in Baker Street. Although British women were not to receive the vote until 1918, they did begin to enjoy more protection under the law. The Married Women’s Property Act, for example, was passed in 1882, which meant that married women could now own property outright. The welfare of children and animals also became a cause for general disquiet and prosecutions mounted against the cruel and abusive. The writings of that other great Londoner, Charles Dickens, had greatly stimulated this concern for the unfortunate.
Rich Victorians were less shielded from people of other classes than wealthy people are today. They interacted with the “lower” classes both in the streets and in their own homes (through the servants they employed).
A group of female servants. They represent the thousands of working class Victorian women who lived “in service” to upper class families. This meant that the social classes mingled on a daily basis.
The Underground railway was part of the rapidly growing public transport system in Victorian times. Cheaper travel greatly expanded the opportunity for working people to travel more widely. Public transport also led to the expansion of the London suburbs. The Underground network was particularly influential, allowing office workers to travel into the City much more quickly.
Many modern conveniences also became more widespread during this decade: running water, flushing lavatories, the omnibus, range stoves, steam trains, gaslight, typewriters, and early automobiles. Despite this, a comfortable middle class life relied on having domestic staff.
Some negative aspects of Victorian life were borne by every social class. Infant mortality continued to be extremely high and infectious diseases took victims from every social background, even the Royal family. During most summers, a great miasma of stench and filth hung over the capital and necessitated a general exodus to the country. Many Victorians were also locked into bitterly unhappy marriages (a regular theme in Holmes’s cases and other literature of the period), as divorce continued to be almost impossible to obtain. An Act of Parliament was required to dissolve a marriage, which effectively limited this option to a very privileged few.
London itself was an enormous melting pot, where men and women of every social class were obliged to rub shoulders. In many ways, rich Victorians were less “shielded” from people of other classes than wealthy people are today. The legions of men and women that worked “in service” to middle and upper class families meant that the social classes met and mingled on a daily basis. They were interdependent, and the fabric of their lives became complexly interwoven.
The ethos of Sherlock Holmes’s chosen profession of Consulting Detective was simple: “I listen to their story, they listen to my comments, I pocket my fee.”
The trio of Holmes, Watson, and Mrs. Hudson at Baker Street are a classic example of this mingling. Holmes is a member of the gentry, being the third son of an English country squire. His lack of interest in money denotes a secure, though not necessarily lavish, background. But far from being men of leisure, he and his elder brother, Mycroft, must both earn their “bread and cheese.” Evidently, Sherlock studied chemistry at university (probably Oxford or Cambridge, or both), so it is likely that Mycroft received a similar education to prepare him for the working world of the upper classes. Eventually, Mycroft Holmes becomes a senior civil servant, a classic career choice for sons of the gentry. The less conventional Sherlock invents his own profession, that of a “consulting detective,” which he describes thus: “I listen to their story, they listen to my comments, I pocket my fee.”
A barefoot urchin selling matches. A potential recruit for Holmes’s Baker Street Irregulars?
Watson’s background is very similar to Conan Doyle’s. He hails from the professional middle classes. Like Conan Doyle, Watson attends a minor public school (Wellington College in Hampshire) and studies medicine (entering London University in 1872, and working in surgery at St. Bartholemew’s Hospital). After receiving his medical degree, he too travels abroad to practice his profession. In 1878, Watson enrolls as an assistant surgeon in the British Army in India. But in 1880, he is wounded at the Battle of Maiwand, and is “demobbed” after contracting a life-threatening illness at the age of thirty-eight. At the time of his 1881 meeting with Holmes, Watson’s only income is his army pension of eleven shillings and sixpence a day, but (like Conan Doyle) he later buys and sells several m
edical practices to provide himself with a living.
The prospect of “nice rooms” in a genteel area, with a partner to share the expense, was an attractive proposition to Sherlock Holmes at the beginning of his career. The interior of 221b is recreated at the Sherlock Holmes Museum.
It is rather more difficult to determine Mrs. Hudson’s social class. She is not Holmes and Watson’s housekeeper but their landlady, as it is she who owns the lease on 221B Baker Street (the Portman Estate was the freeholder, retaining ownership of the land on which the house is built). She is a businesswoman rather than a domestic servant (from the stories, we deduce that a cook and maid also live-in at 221B). Holmes and Watson confirm her higher status by referring to her as “Mrs. Hudson,” rather than the more familiar “Hudson” they would use to address a servant. Despite this, Mrs. Hudson fulfills several housekeeper-like roles for her tenants. She “shows up” Holmes’s more important clients to the sitting room. She also prepares coffee and at least some of their meals. (Holmes rudely describes her “cuisine” as being “a little limited.”) She is probably a member of what would then have been referred to as the “lower middle classes.” Despite their class differences, Mrs. Hudson’s discreet presence becomes necessary to Holmes in particular and she is clearly devoted to him.
Through the Baker Street Irregulars (around a dozen street urchins recruited by Holmes to help him in his detective work), Holmes is also intimately connected with the rough life of the London streets. He refers to their leader, Wiggins, as his “dirty little lieutenant,” and asserts that Wiggins’s followers are his “eyes and ears on the streets.” It is certainly true that his “Baker Street division of the detective police force” can get into places the great detective never could. But Holmes’s unsentimental attitude to these children is quite illuminating. Although he pays them generously for their help and information, he does not seem to find their unescorted and un-parented state at all worrying or unacceptable. Quite the contrary, he appears to admire their independence and street-smart toughness.
Elizabeth Chalmer’s beautifully evocative watercolor of 221b Baker Street.
During Queen Victoria’s long reign, a comfortable domestic life became increasingly central to the British way of life.
Home Sweet Home
“Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam, Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home.”
JOHN HOWARD PAYNE
“It was pleasant to Dr. Watson to find himself once more in the untidy room of the first floor in Baker Street which had been the starting-point of so many remarkable adventures. He looked round him at the scientific charts upon the wall, the acid-charred bench of chemicals, the violin-case leaning in the corner, the coal scuttle, which continued of old the pipes and tobacco.”
“THE ADVENTURE OF THE MAZARIN STONE”
The presence of Madame Tussaud’s famous “Wax-works exhibit and Chamber of Horrors” in the vicinity of Baker Street brought many pleasure seekers to the area.
During Queen Victoria’s long reign (1837-1901), domestic life became increasingly central to the British way of life and a sentimental attachment to hearth and home, combined with the concept that “an Englishman’s home is his castle,” became a national credo. A massive house-building boom in the second half of the nineteenth century certainly made the goal of home ownership possible for many middle class families. But single gentlemen like our heroes usually preferred to live in lodgings where their housekeeping needs would be taken care of. Indeed, Holmes and Watson meet through their mutual desire to inhabit comfortable, modestly priced lodgings. Watson is recovering from the enteric fever to which he fell victim in India, and needs a convivial home for his “shaken” nerves. Holmes also values the prospect of “nice rooms” and needs a tolerant partner to share the expense. When Holmes and Watson meet to view the apartment at 221B Baker Street, they immediately agree to rent the two “comfortable bedrooms and a single large airy sitting-room, cheerfully furnished and illuminated by two broad windows.” The niceness of the rooms and the “moderate” nature of the rent are attractive to both parties.
At the time of their occupation (intermittently between 1881 and 1903), Baker Street was situated in Marylebone, a respectable area of London just north of the city center. The street partly overlooked the large open space of the Regents Park, which had been landscaped by John Nash in the early 1800s. The crescents and terraces that Nash built around the Park were some of the most fashionable addresses in London and they contained some of the city’s most opulent residences. Slightly removed from the Park itself, Baker Street was not quite so fashionable or desirable. But throughout the eighteen century, it could claim a smattering of notable residents. These included William Pitt the Younger (Britain’s youngest-ever Prime Minister), Edward Bulwer-Lytton (Member of Parliament and famous writer), The Right Hon. Henry Grattan (Irish parliamentarian), and Mrs. Sarah Siddons (the supremely famous tragic actress).
Baker Street Underground Station opened in 1863, so it would have been a useful transport link for residents of Baker Street during Holmes’s residence.
The tiled walls of the “tube” station feature a ghostly silhouette of the famous detective. Baker Street station today is as busy as ever.
The character of the area was quite lively. Madame Tussaud’s “Wax-work Exhibition and Chamber of Horrors” had been located at the Baker Street Bazaar since 1835 (admission, one shilling, Chamber of Horrors sixpence extra). The presence of the wax-works brought pleasure seekers of every kind into the area, and Baker Street itself became famous. Conveniently, the nearby Baker Street Station (one of the world’s first underground stations) had been opened in 1863, built by the Metropolitan Railway Company. The modernized underground station commemorates the area’s most famous resident with wall tiles featuring silhouettes of the great detective.
Most of the houses lining Baker Street were built in the late Georgian period. They were constructed as in terraces, in the highly symmetrical neo-classical style. Conan Doyle describes 221B as having four stories and being two window bays wide. As such, it would probably have been classified as a “third-rate” house, with an annual ground rent of between £150 and £350. Aristocratic families owned almost all the land that central London was built on and many followed the famous maxim of the fabulously wealthy Grosvenor family: “Always lease, never sell.” This meant that vast family fortunes were founded on the ground rents of innumerable leaseholders like Mrs. Hudson.
The landlord of Marylebone was (and still is) the Portman Estate. In 1755, Portman (which had been established in the thirteenth century) leased land to a builder, a certain William Baker, upon which he laid out his eponymous thoroughfare.
221b Baker Street today is the location of the Sherlock Holmes Museum, where Holmes’s living rooms and paraphernalia are on display to visitors.
This system of property ownership continues to announce itself on any street map of London. Whereas the highways and byways of many other cities are named for royals, political leaders, artists, scientists, and other notables, London streets testify to the influence of landlords, builders, and architects. The Duke of Westminster (head of the Grosvenor family), for example, owns London’s American Embassy building, which is built on his property in Grosvenor Square. Portman Square, Street, Mews, Close, and Towers commemorate the freeholders of Marylebone.
From the beginning of the Holmes/Watson tenure at 221B, the apartment is the starting point for many of their adventures, and the layout and appearance of their “rooms” is gradually revealed through Conan Doyle’s writing. Almost from the start, the apparent “reality” of the house (although 221B never actually existed), seemed to fascinate contemporary readers of the Sherlock Holmes stories. In response to this, the Strand published a floor plan of Watson and Holmes’s second floor sitting room. It is immediately striking that the room served many different functions. Both men had their own desk (actually, Holmes seems to have two) and fireside chair (on either sid
e of the bearskin rug). They share a dinner table. Holmes also has an “acid-charred” chemistry bench, while Watson lays claim to a large freestanding bookcase positioned between the windows. According to a Paget illustration for the Naval Treaty, the walls of the sitting room are lined with further bookshelves. Presumably, the pair share equal rights to the drinks table, pipe rack, and curtained recess. The Strand drawing also details a telephone. The famous lumber-room, a bathroom, and doors to the “two comfortable bedrooms” also appear on the plan.
The second floor sitting room is where Sherlock indulges in his rather eccentric indoor target shooting, amid the “litter of pipes, tobacco-pouches, syringes, penknives, revolver-cartridges, and other debris.” In a rather modern sounding complaint, Watson describes Holmes as “one of the most untidy men that ever drove a fellow-lodger to distraction.”
The Holmes/Watson living quarters continue to exert the same allure they did to contemporary readers. This fascination has led to a number of recreations of the famous study and bedrooms. The most famous of these is undoubtedly the Sherlock Holmes Museum at 221B Baker Street, London NW1, the world’s first museum dedicated to a fictional character. The house dates from 1815, and the correct number of steps (seventeen) lead up to the bachelors’ apartment. Their rooms are recreated in meticulously authentic detail. In fact, nothing is displayed that is not mentioned in the stories, so the wonderful collection of Victoriana is highly evocative and authentic. The visitor feels that the famous duo may return to the beguilingly cozy sitting room at any moment, and that Mrs. Hudson will bring in the tea tray.
