by Bruce Wexler
In an attempt to stem the tidal wave of real life criminality that hit London in the 1880s and 1890s, an increased number of police officers were recruited to the force. By the end of the century, there were 16,000 serving men in the metropolis, whose job was to police a population of over 7 million Londoners.
A typical Victorian murder poster offering the princely sum of £200. This would have been equivalent to several years’ comfortable income.
Night duty at Marlborough Street Police Station. Reports of robbery, and the arrest of drunks and prostitutes, made this a busy time of day.
By the end of the nineteenth century, police recruitment standards were much more stringent. This resulted in a high caliber of policeman, as demonstrated in this photograph of a fine body of police officers, taken at the Canterbury police station in Kent, England.
Despite the pressures of policing a busy and crowded city like London, Victorian beat officers were not issued with firearms. This tradition persists to this day, despite the high level of gun crime in the city.
Selection procedures to join the force also became more demanding in an attempt to recruit men of a higher caliber. In 1894, potential policemen had to fulfil the following criteria before they could join the force: they had to be over 21 and under 27 years of age, at least 5 feet 9 inches tall in their stockings, able to read and spell, generally intelligent, and free from any bodily complaint. Physical “defects” that might lead to the rejection of a candidate included flat feet, joint stiffness, a narrow chest, or a facial deformity. But despite the improved standard of police recruits, there was unrest in the ranks, as officers began to demand better working conditions. The suicide rate among police officers was particularly high, and this was ascribed to the harsh discipline to which they were subjected. Dismissal and pay docking were commonplace for even minor offences, and the practice of working thirteen days in fourteen meant that officers became exhausted. Gradually, they were granted many of the benefits they requested, including ten days annual holiday, and a boot allowance.
Violence against police officers was also on the increase. Several officers, including Police Constable Baldwin, were murdered in the 1890s. Despite this, calls for the Metropolitan Police to be armed with revolvers were rejected, and “Met” beat officers remain unarmed to this day.
The reassuring police lamp was a common sight in every city district, town, and village in Victorian England.
CHAPTER SIX
“I have never loved, Watson, but if I did and if the woman I loved had met such an end, I might act even as our lawless lion-hunter has done.”
SHERLOCK HOLMES, “THE DEVIL’S FOOT”
“I am not a whole-souled admirer of womankind.”
SHERLOCK HOLMES,
“THE VALLEY OF FEAR”
“Should I ever marry, Watson, I should hope to inspire my wife with some feeling which would prevent her from being walked off by a housekeeper when my corpse was lying within a few yards of her.”
SHERLOCK HOLMES, “THE VALLEY OF FEAR”
“The good Watson had at that time deserted me for a wife, the only selfish action which I can recall in our association. I was alone.”
SHERLOCK HOLMES, “THE ADVENTURE OF THE BLANCHED SOLDIER”
Sherlock Holmes’s Women
Although Conan Doyle must have taken a conscious decision that his great creation should remain a single man, it would be quite wrong to assume that Holmes’s life is free from feminine influence. It seems likely that the author must have reasoned that, as a bachelor, Holmes would not only have the freedom to operate in his inscrutable, unhindered way, but that he would also be at liberty to develop his own personal habits and eccentricities, untrammeled by the molding nature of domestic life. In The Sign of The Four, Sherlock himself explains that, “I should never marry myself, lest I bias my judgment.”
A cameo of Dr Watson as a young man. Watson was to marry three times—in sharp contrast to Holmes, who felt marriage might impair his judgment.
In a nod to the “normal,” hearth-centered life of the period, Conan Doyle makes Watson the complete obverse of the perennial bachelor, Holmes. Thrice married, Watson admits that, from time to time, his domestic life comes between him and his friend: “I had seen little of Holmes lately. My marriage had drifted us away from each other. My own complete happiness, and the home-centred interests which rise up around the man who first finds himself master of his own establishment, were sufficient to absorb my attention.” This sounds very much like Conan Doyle himself speaking, whose two marriages and five children were the bedrock of his life.
Dorr Steele’s haunting illustration of the avenging noblewoman from “The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton.” Despite witnessing the crime, the chivalrous Holmes and Watson allow the guilty woman to escape.
Holmes’s closest ever brush with matrimony occurs in “The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton,” when he becomes engaged to Agatha, Milverton’s housemaid. Unsurprisingly, this ill-starred romance is actually a ruse to gain entry to the vicious blackmailer’s home, enabling Holmes to recover his client’s “imprudent” correspondence with an “impecunious young squire.”
Conan Doyle’s own mother was such a strong influence in his life, that it seems significant that Holmes is denied a maternal relationship.
The other female relationship that seems remarkably absent from Holmes’s life, but was of pivotal importance to his creator, is that with his mother. We learn from Holmes that his grandmother was the sister of the French artist, Vernet, but his mother herself is not mentioned in the Canon, and we never learn her name. This fits into a pattern observed by Watson; “I never heard him refer to his relations, and hardly ever to his early life.” Holmes’s gifted brother Mycroft is the only other member of his family to make an appearance, and they are hardly affectionate with one another. Mention of Holmes’s parents is so completely missing from the stories, that it seems safe to assume he is an orphan by the time we meet him. This is in stark contrast to Conan Doyle, whose exceptionally close relationship with his intelligent, artistic mother, “the Ma’am,” shaped his life, both personally and professionally. He began a lively correspondence with her when he was away at boarding school in England, and kept up the habit for all of her life. Although Arthur was in his early sixties when she finally died, he was devastated by her loss. Even then, he refused to relinquish their relationship, and kept up “contact” with her in the Spirit World.
Perhaps Conan Doyle deliberately eradicated Holmes’s mother to explain his lack of desire for female companionship. He himself was never without a female partner throughout his adult life.
But despite Holmes’s ambiguous attitude to women, there are many interesting female characters in the Canon. His female clients, in particular, seem to fascinate the great detective… at least for the duration of their “problem.” Watson takes this interest rather further, by marrying Holmes’s client Mary Morstam, who brings her dilemma to the attention of the great detective in The Sign of The Four.
Regardless of this, Holmes is often condemned as a misogynist, and many of his remarks do seem to support this criticism. Throwaway comments reveal his belief that women are fickle, trivial, unreasonable, and superficial: “Women are never to be entirely trusted – not the best of them;” “When a woman thinks that her house is on fire, her instinct is at once to rush to the thing which she values most… A married woman grabs at her baby – an unmarried one reaches for her jewel box.”
But these axioms do not reflect the serious consideration Holmes gives to the women with whom he becomes involved in his professional work. That he can also read their characters very accurately enables him to solve several cases. Indeed, although Holmes may consider women inferior to men, his empathy with them is surprisingly strong.
Holmes displays a “remarkable gentleness and courtesy in his dealings with women.”
In “A Scandal in Bohemia,” Irene Adler disguises herself as a man to wish Sherlock H
olmes “Goodnight.” She is the only woman in the Canon that seems to be of sexual interest to Holmes.
Regardless of Holmes’s reservations about women, Watson records that he has a “peculiarly ingratiating way with [them].” Although it seems as though Holmes is not attracted to women, he himself seems to exude a magnetic sexual charisma. Certainly, his behavior is almost always chivalrous, and both Watson and Mrs. Hudson remark on his “remarkable gentleness and courtesy in his dealings with women.”
One of several photographs thought to be likenesses of Irene Adler.
It would also be quite wrong to assume that Holmes is unappreciative of womanly charm and beauty. He describes the famous Irene Adler as “the daintiest thing under a bonnet on this planet,” and quite often refers to the appearance of women he meets in his work. He clearly warms to most of his female clients, such as Lady Eva Bracknell (“the most beautiful debutante of last season”), and the independent Vio let Hunter in “The Adventure of the Copper Beeches.”
Despite this, Adler is the only woman described in Holmes’s casebook who inspires anything like a romantic interest in the detective. Although Watson is keen to refute any romantic relationship, “It was not that he felt any emotion akin to love for Irene Adler,” Holmes certainly admires both her beauty and intelligence; “In his eyes she eclipses and predominates the whole of her sex.” Subsequent to their meeting in “A Scandal in Bohemia,” Holmes freely acknowledges that she is the only member of the fair sex ever to have outwitted him (though Adler herself defers to Holmes as “so formidable an antagonist.”). Recalling her simply as “The Woman,” Holmes continues to refer to her ability in the course of several other cases.
Holmes admired the independent Violet Hunter in “The Adventure of the Copper Beeches.”
In general, Holmes shows his strongest interest in women when they come to him as clients. The more fascinating the dilemma they bring him, the more they seem to arouse his interest. But once their mystery is resolved, they suffer the same fate as his client Violet Hunter. Watson remarks “my friend Holmes, rather to my disappointment, manifested no further interest in her when she had ceased to be the center of one of his problems.”
Holmes closest day-to-day relationship with a woman is undoubtedly that which he has with his landlady, the redoubtable Mrs. Hudson. Though, unsurprisingly, she finds him a rather troublesome lodger. His famous disregard for keeping regular hours, his rejection of her cooked meals, his legendary untidiness, the smells caused by his chemical experiments, and the “atmosphere of violence and danger which hung around him” all combine to make him the “very worst tenant in London.” Despite this, Mrs. Hudson demonstrates extraordinary tolerance, and becomes very fond of her wayward lodger. In “The Dying Detective,” Watson describes her “genuine… regard” for Holmes, although this is also compounded with a healthy respect for his “masterful” nature. “I didn’t dare to disobey him,” she says. Although their relationship starts out on a business footing, it certainly becomes far closer over the many years they live together in Baker Street. Indeed, Holmes retains his apartment in her house for over twenty years, even during the post-Reichenbach period of his supposed demise. One could say that she is almost a mother to him.
Of Mrs. St. Clair, Holmes remarks, “I have seen to much not to know that the impression of a woman may be more valuable than the conclusion of an analytical reasoner.”
Holmes welcomes Miss Mary Sutherland with the easy courtesy for which he was remarkable.
The fact that Mrs. Hudson had become far more than a landlady to Holmes is particularly evident in “The Empty House,” when she risks her life to help him flush out his would-be assassin, and henchman to Professor Moriarty, Colonel Moran. Indeed, her personal devotion to Holmes is such that Mrs. Hudson joins him in his 1903 retirement to practice bee keeping on the windswept Sussex Downs, on England’s south coast, far from the smoky comforts of Baker Street.
“Why can’t a woman be more like a man?
Why is thinking something women never do?
And why is logic never tried?
PROFESSOR HIGGINS, My Fair Lady
Perhaps Holmes basic “problem” with women is, put simply, that they are not like him. He certainly views the female mind as antithetical to his own. Rather than using the “cold clear reason which (he) place(s) above all things,” Holmes believes that women rely on their intuition and “emotional qualities.” Surprisingly, however, he is not universally critical of this tendency, and understands the value of womanly “instinct.” “I have seen too much not to know that the impression of a woman may be more valuable than the conclusion of an analytical reasoner.”
Despite his ferocious intellect, Holmes cannot avoid being a man of his times. Men of his generation were conditioned to think of women as weaker and more vulnerable than themselves, creatures who need the protection and guidance of men. Having been brought up to treat women with “gentleness and courtesy,” Holmes is particularly appalled by the ill treatment meted out to women at the hands of “bad” men, and is fully aware of the value of a women’s honor. Defying the conventions of the day, Holmes also deals directly with his female clients, without seeking a male intermediary or chaperone.
Although a woman governed Britain for most of the nineteenth century, and she was single for most of her adult life, the position of women was still heavily circumscribed in the decades covered by the Canon. As late as 1890, Florence Fenwick Miller, one of the first women to graduate from a British medical school, described the subjugated position of women in shocking terms:
Holmes interviews Miss Mary Holder in “The Beryl Coronet.”
“Under exclusively man-made laws women have been reduced to the most abject condition of legal slavery in which it is possible for human beings to be held… under the arbitrary domination of another’s will, and dependant for decent treatment exclusively on the goodness of heart of the individual master.”
Her description was not far from the truth. Even able and educated women of the privileged classes had no legal identity of their own. On marriage, women were not only obliged to promise to “obey” their husbands, but ownership of their property passed to them. This meant that virtually all wealth was in male hands. Husbands also had extraordinary rights over their wives, even having the legal right to imprison them if they attempted to escape the marital home. Men also had the right to take their children wherever they pleased, even if this was away from their mother. Inequality was everywhere, even in the divorce laws. A woman could not divorce her husband on the grounds of adultery, but he could divorce her if she was unfaithful to him.
High-status women had almost no career options or opportunities to live independently. Marriage was the only “profession” for which they were educated. Poor women, on the other hand, were often obliged to work, but even their meager wages belonged to their husbands. At this time, nearly all forms of well-paid employment were barred to women, so the lives of most workingwomen consisted of arduous drudgery in domestic service, dangerous factories, or the fields. Many others were forced to prostitute themselves to survive.
Alongside this stark reality of suppression, most men of the higher classes held a strangely idealized view of women. Women were put on a pedestal, almost worshipped, and considered to be made from far “finer clay” than their husbands. Delicate and susceptible as they were, it was considered a man’s duty to protect not only his wife, mother and sisters, but all of these feeble creatures. Even women’s clothing contributed to this patronizing view of womankind. The huge crinoline-skirted dresses and tight corsets of the late nineteenth century inhibited normal movement and stifled independence.
Holmes is particularly appalled by the bad treatment meted out to woman by depraved men like Enoch J. Drebber of Cleveland, Ohio.
Holmes certainly displays a protective instinct towards the women who come to him for help, and vigorously shields their interests. But he is also quick to recognize their strengths; Eugenia Ronder’s
extreme courage in “The Veiled Lodger,” and Violet Smith’s vibrant energy in “The Solitary Cyclist.”
Nearly all the women characters who appear in the Canon are defined by the men in their lives, and many are their victims. But there are exceptions, and several women of an independent stamp are also introduced. Irene Adler made a fortune through her work as a successful opera singer, while Violet Hunter becomes the headmistress of a private school in Walsall, “where I believe that she has met with considerable success.” There is also Martha, a “pleasant old lady” in the late-Canon story, His Last Bow, who works as his sub-agent in the house of the German spymaster Von Bork.
During the course of Sherlock’s career, there was a gradual move to emancipate women from many of their shackles. The Married Women’s Property Act of 1882 decreed that women could retain rights over their own assets. The Matrimonial Causes Act of 1884 empowered a wife deserted by an adulterous husband to divorce him, and the 1886 reform to the Custody Act meant that a woman was automatically awarded the guardianship of her children if their father died.
Holmes takes Violet Smith’s ungloved hand in “The Solitary Cyclist.”
Rational and just as he was, it seems highly likely that Holmes would have approved of these sensible measures. Whether he thought that women were cool and rational enough to be awarded the vote (as they were in 1918) is quite another matter…
Helen Stoner raises her veil in “The Solitary Cyclist.”
Eugenia Ronder meets a terrible fate in “The Veiled Lodger” through her husband’s jealousy. Victorian women had few rights and were obliged to rely on the chivalry of men. This theme is often reflected in the Holmes stories.
