BLUE

[mafief]

BLUE
The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
Words: 7843
Where was Watson living? Not Baker Street
Pre/Post Reichenbach (May 1891)? Pre. Dec 27. After Watson/Morstan Marriage (1888). After SCAN and TWIS.

Characters:
John Watson
Sherlock Holmes
commissionaire Peterson
Countess of Morcar
John Horner - a plumber
James (Jem) Ryder - upper-attendant at the hotel
Catherine Cusack - maid to the Countess
Inspector Bradstreet
landlord of small public-house
Breckinridge – geese seller
Bill - a boy helping Breckinridge
Mrs. Maggie Oakshott
Maudsley – thief/criminal, knows Ryder

Locations:
221B Baker Street
Tottenham Court Road to Goodge Street (near the British Museum)
Hotel Cosmopolitan
Alpha Inn (near the British Museum)
Wimpole Street/Harley Street/Wigmore Street/Oxford Street
small public-house near Holborn
Covent Garden
117, Brixton Road
Kilburn – Maudsley’s house

Other crimes/criminals/cases mentioned:
“my attempt to recover the Irene Adler papers, to the singular case of Miss Mary Sutherland, and to the adventure of the man with the twisted lip.”
“last six cases which I have added to my notes, three have been entirely free of any legal crime.” Still three more are not mentioned!

Other studies mentioned:
None

Questions about the story
“four million human beings all jostling each other within the space of a few square miles” Eep, that’s a lot of people… Which brings me to when did a census start, assuming that number was calculated by a census? Where was that data published?

Billycock – type of hat

“back of Tottenham Court Road” same side or opposite of the British Museum?

“It was pierced in the brim for a hat-securer, but the elastic was missing.” Elastic, as in rubber?

“a man with so large a brain must have something in it.” – Phrenology!

lime-cream – Oh! This is cool. Invented by Eugene Rimmel in ~1864 and is a water-in-oil (almond and lime water) hair product (book reference: Handbook on Cosmetics https://books.google.com/books?id=5YNGAQAAQBAJ&pg=PA534&lpg=PA534&dq=%22lime-cream%22+men+hair+product&source=bl&ots=jyJvM79zYD&sig=2JcVbtX8r9WLEV_KbOKt8lORx3M&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwifyMGThevWAhXCQiYKHZFHBxE4ChDoAQhNMAE#v=onepage&q=%22lime-cream%22%20men%20hair%20product&f=false)/ . Rimmel, the company, is still around.

“gritty, grey dust of the street” – guessing this is due to the coal being burned and the general dirtiness of the city.
“fluffy brown dust of the house” – my house dust is not brown, it’s more of a grey and fluffy.

More info about tallow and tallow candles (links get a little preachy, blah) - http://www.theprairiehomestead.com/2012/02/how-to-render-beef-tallow.html and http://www.theprairiehomestead.com/2014/01/tallow-emergency-candles.html

“brilliantly scintillating blue stone, rather smaller than a bean in size”, “forty-grain weight” – so ~ 1 cm in size and ~2.6 g

Assizes?

Newspapers - Globe, Star, Pall Mall, St. James’s, Evening News, Standard, Echo,

Vitriol – sulfuric acid

Scotch bonnet?

“we turn our dinner into a supper” – meal order? I use dinner and supper interchangeably.

doctors’ quarter?

Wimpole Street/Harley Street and Wigmore Street/Oxford Street run parallel to each other. Missing a step there… Directions not to be taken literally.

“zigzag of slums to Covent Garden” - there are a lot of theater places around that area now. When did the theaters move in?

“7s. 6d.” s is shillings and d is?

“the ‘Pink ’un’ protruding out of his pocket”?

Brandy fixing things again…

“What a shrimp it is” what?

Pentonville – jail. What other jails are in the area?

Other things about Holmes
“He was lounging upon the sofa in a purple dressing-gown, a pipe-rack within his reach upon the right, and a pile of crumpled morning papers, evidently newly studied, near at hand.”

Letting the guy go.

Other things about Watson
Working a practice and doing rounds

Comments

[smallhobbit]

Before I begin, there is one major item you have missed. Geese, and all poultry, were never sold at Covent Garden Market, which was for fruit, vegetables and flowers. All meat was sold at Smithfield Market.

Censuses began in 1841, and thereafter were taken every ten years. The earlier ones weren't entirely accurate, but would give a reasonable estimate of the number of people in any one place.

Elastic would have meant an elastic band, so a rubber band.

Regarding dust - the colour would be affected by interior coal fires, candles etc.

Assizes were the courts which tried the more serious cases. Because judges tended to travel the country they would be held periodically.

A bit like a beret - google 'scotch bonnet hat traditional' for images.

Holmes would have dined at 7 o'clock - early evening; supper would be about 9 o'clock, or later.

Doctors' quarter would be the streets where many doctors practiced, in particular Wimpole Street and Harley Street.

The Royal Opera House was first built in 1732, and other theatres were built in the same area. The market and the slums remained as well. As in a lot of London the two existed side by side for a long time.

UK currency was £,s,d until 1971, when it decimalised and became £ and p. £ = libra, Latin for pound (originally weight); s = schilling, which is German, although corrupted to shilling; and d = denarius, Latin for penny. 12d = 1s. 20s = £1.

The Pink 'un would be the Racing Post newspaper - a newsspaper, mainly horse racing, popular with gamblers with pink pages.

Comparing something to a shrimp would mean it was small.

Wormwood Scrubs and Holloway are other major prisons.

By the way, next week's answers may well be late as I shall be on holiday.

[mafief]

So markets. As you guessed, I was completely unaware that there were separate markets. Do you know what other markets were there? Are they still there?

Rubber band – I don’t know why this shocks me, but I didn’t expect elastic bands used for clothing at that point. More to figure out. :)

Judges traveled? Wouldn’t each county or town have their own?

“As in a lot of London the two existed side by side for a long time.” Are they typically mixed? I’ve sort of assumed that they would have been more separated. Sort of related question, the some theaters and opera houses would want to attract wealthier clients, right? Would those types of clients be willing to go near an area with markets and slums?


Enjoy your holiday! I hope you’ll be posting pictures if you are going site seeing. :)
Thanks again!

[smallhobbit]

The other main market was Billingsgate, which was the fish market. None of the markets are still in their original sites, but have moved slightly further out, making road transport easier. Initially this wasn't a problem, and Smithfield (the meat market) even had its own railway line at one point.

Minor crimes were dealt locally by magistrates, known as Justices of the Peace. Judges were much higher up, and would originally have been lawyers. It's a very old system.

The rich people would take a cab directly to the theatre, so could ignore the rabble. Up to early Victorian times theatres were generally visited by the poor. With the improvement of transport system, and the approval of Queen Victoria, the middle classes began to go. Seating would be separate of course. The theatres didn't care who came so long as they paid.

There will be pictures - I generally do two or three blog posts about my holidays, with pictures to go with it.