July 2025 - some finds at Denny's

On the weekend I went to Denny Dobry's open house, to celebrate the closure of his 221B study, and to look over the books and items being sold. Along with books, there was an opportunity to buy one of the few items from the study not being donated to the University of Minnesota library.

A summary of the day with lots of photos of the study will be posted soon, but I also wanted to make a short post showing a few things I picked up at Denny's.

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The first item is one of three bound Strand Magazine volumes I picked up on the day. Two had no Doyle content, but I've added them to the collection. 

The third is Volume 5, containing quote a few stories from the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. The volume is not in amazing condition at all, but I was attracted to a lovely chain of provenance.

The book contains a bookplate from the Marquis of Donegall - Edward Chichester, 6th Marquess of Donegall. He was a dashing journalist, and editor of the Sherlock Holmes Journal. He famously owned a copy of the 1887 Beeton's. 

Along with the bookplate, pasted on the facing page is a curious document to retain: a fform letter from the Lord Great Chamberlain to the Marchioness that she has not been successful in the ballot to obtain seats for the 1953 opening of Parliament. Why was this pasted into the copy?

What makes this copy more fun, is a provenance slip. The Marquis died in 1975. The provenance slip states "This book was given to me in about 1990 by Jim Hallett of the Scandalous Bohemians of Akron, Ohio. I am passing it, as a gift from Jim Hallett, to my friend Bill Vande Water, BSI. Signed by Hugh T. Harrington BSI, November 3, 2014."

So the may passed from the Marquis of Donegall (up to 1975), to Jim Hallett (up to 1990), to Hugh T. Harrington BSI (up to 2014), to Bill Vande Water BSI (passed beyond the Reichenbach 2024), to me in 2025 via Denny Dobry's parnassus on wheels. That's pretty cool!

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I'd been looking for these three items below -and was pleased to find them all at once. Picklock Holes was one of the first Sherlockain pastiches, published in Punch Magazine.  The initial series of stories were re-published in the 1970s, then a second series of stories (1903) and one final story in 1918. These also were re-published in the 1970s. And so, the 'Picklock Holes Canon' is distributed across three small publications, as each series/article was identified independently.

The author, R.C. Lehman, (Rudolph Chambers Lehmann (1856 – 1929)), was an English writer, and politician in the House of Commons from 1906 to 1910. That means he was not a sitting politician when he wrote the first two Picklock series (pre 1910) and then the final story (1918). He was a major contributor to Punch magazine for many decades.

On the last story, it's a wonderful title - 'His Final Arrow' is a direct response to 'His Final Bow', and picked up almost instantly that it may now have been the verb 'bow' but the noun from 'bow and arrow'. Absolutely brilliant. 

Publications details, left to right:

Title: The Adventures of Picklock Holes

Softcover (there were 250 copies published in hardcover with a dustjacket also)

Publisher: Aspen Press (Colorado), 1975

Title: The Return of Picklock Holes

Softcover, with introduction by Brian R. MacDonald 

Publisher: Magico Magazine (NY), 1980

Title: His Final Arrow

Softcover, with introduction by Brian R. MacDonald 

Publisher: Magico Magazine, 1980

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The next item is, on its face value, a copy of the Sherlock Holmes Journal, published by the Sherlock Holmes Society of London. This edition was published in 1987, to celebrate the centenary of Sherlock Holmes, and therefore the centenary of 'A Study in Scarlet'. This is an outstanding volume, and I wish I'd known about it to cite it when I wrote my recent article on Doyle's 1885 letter. 

The edition includes a deep analysis of the locations in London, an summary of Doyle's life at the time of writing the book, and an overview of the early editions of Study in Scarlet that were published.

Publications details:

Title: The Sherlock Holmes Journal ; 1887-1987 ; A Study in Scarlet Centenary Special

Softcover

Publisher: Sherlock Holmes Society of London (London), 1987

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The next item has been on my list for quite a while! The Oxford Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Novels and Short Stories in 9 Volumes shipped in a handy box. Along with the canon, each volume contains a series of notes in an appendix. I've heard from Sherlockians that use these volumes as their 'reading copies' that the binding is not strong and that pages detach.

Publications details:

Title: The Oxford Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Novels and Short Stories in 9 Volumes Hardcover in dust jackets

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 1993

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I LOVE THIS POSTER. I found it against a wall behind a bookshelf, it's a thick card poster, and the corners are bumped, but it's a poster for what we now might call the 'Sherlockian Saturdays at the Pratt', or the  'Saturday With Sherlock Holmes' program at the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore, MD.

So when was this poster from? There's so much detail, but there's NO YEAR! For an answer, I turned to the current organizer of the Pratt event each November:

"It is during the early years, as it is advertising the earlier two-day event format. This was changed to a one-day meeting in 1996. I Googled which years had November 10 as a Saturday since 1980, and it came up as 1984, and 1990. So, it was either of those two years. However, William Donald Schaefer (fine print at the bottom of the poster) was the Mayor of Baltimore from 1971 to 1987. So, the answer is...drumroll...1984."

Thanks Andy!

Watson's Tin Box meeting brief report - 21 July 2025

Each third Monday of the month, the Watson's Tin Box of Ellicott City scion meets - usually in person. But for July 21, we decided to roll back the clock to COVID days, and host a virtual meeting. It was a risk, but the meeting worked out well, and we'll definitely consider hosting one or two meetings a year that way.

We had a great turnout for the meeting - up to forty attendees at any point. We opened up the Zoom room half an hour early to allow people to re-connect, and people from afar were clearly pleased that they could re-connect with the scion following the remote meetings of 2020-22. We had attendees from right across the US, Edith Pounden was there from Canada, and even Bill Barnes from Australia!

The story of the meeting was The Final Problem, and as we hosted a virtual meeting, we could invite a speaker from.... ANYWHERE. And that's what we did, with Burt Wolder making a wonderful presentation. 

I prepared some slides (because it's Zoom!) and these captured the meeting agenda, and some history of the scion:

The Tin Box shown at right is a still from the movie 'The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes', but I did show the Gasogene 'Tin Box' to our members also. The slides below show some of the background and history of the scion, and the Evidence Boxes that are an important part of our scion's identity.

I also shared the exciting news that both issues of Irene's Cabinet, and information on the contents of every Evidence Box, are available on our web site. After a hiatus, the scion is preparing a new issue of Irene's Cabinet as a tribute to the founding editor Beth Austin, who sadly passed away in 2020.

We then proceeded to the toast, where Liane Luini toasted "The Woman", using a toast created by Deborah Belchis, and published in Irene's Cabinet (Volume 9, 2011 page 39):

This was followed by Tom Fahres delivering the traditional Haiku related to the story of the month:

No shabby cabby

Black cloak with red tipped collar

Mycroft has the reins

We then moved on to the story. First, the Evidence Box for The Final Problem. Rather than hold items up for the camera, but we decided to look at some items from the DIGITAL version of the Evidence Box for this story, which can be accessed on our site.

Here are the items I decided to highlight for everyone on slides - a nice range of examples:

As always, amazing imagination and creativity from Paul Churchill. The shards of brick, for example. It would never occur to me if I was reading the story and looking for items, that the remains of the shattered brick were a physical item. Remarkable.

And so to the discussion of the story:

As a starting point, I shared a few points. One was the illustration by Paget ('the death of Sherlock Holmes') - truly iconic - that was something of a plot-spoiler for anyone flicking through the story when they opened it in the Strand. The center illustration was a wise response from 'To-day' magazine upon Holmes' death. Newnes says "Great Scott! Doyle, is he dead?" to which 'The Corpse' (Holmes) replies "It's all right, guv'nor' ; the doctor knows what to do when you want me'". Furthermore, 'The Adventures of Picklock Holmes' in 'Punch' for the same date was the final story - and my recent blog post transcribes their prescient observation that Holmes may well return!

The group discussion focused on the relationship between Sherlock Holmes and Moriarty. We explored questions about Watson's reliability as a narrator, whether Watson ever actually saw Moriarty (was it all in Holmes' head?), and the implications of Holmes's actions in Europe. The participants debated whether Holmes's flight from Moriarty ruined a police sting operation - as Moriarty chased Holmes out of England and out of their jurisdiction. We also discussed the narrative technique used by Conan Doyle, and the possibility of Moriarty's escape. Certainly when I first read the Canon I kept waiting for Moriarty to turn up again - after all, Holmes did!

We also dropped "the game" briefly and discussed the real-life inspiration for the setting in Switzerland and the narrative choices made by Arthur Conan Doyle. We wondered whether  Doyle drew from his own experiences with his wife's illness and the town of Davos - for the fake patient that decoyed Watson back to the hotel. The conversation also touched on the mention of an air gun in the story and its potential significance for future plot-lines. Surely Doyle planned a future story - amazing really to think of it - by mentioning the air gun in this story.

Frederick Dorr Steele's Illustration Legacy

Finally, Burt Wolder BSI presented a comprehensive overview of Frederick Dorr Steele's life and work, highlighting his contributions to illustration and his iconic depictions of Sherlock Holmes. Steele's innovative use of color and his ability to bring characters to life through illustration were emphasized. Burt also discussed Steele's connections to other artists of the time and his influence on the visual representation of Holmes in America. 

Burt ended his presentation describing Steele's legacy, and ongoing efforts to honor his work through the Frederic Dorr Steele Memorial, where you can learn more.

A 1980 Sherlockian presentation - THE PROBLEMS WITH THE FINAL PROBLEM

In a batch of Sherlockian items I'd acquired in Australia were some items mailed from the US. Among them were this double-sided sheet of paper - a paper presented at a Sherlockian meeting in Illinois that somehow ended up in Canberra, Australia. 

So let's take a look at a 45 year-old piece of scholarship, one that touches on chronology, and takes three very neat Sherlockian approaches to understanding the Final Problem.

  

Transcript:

THE PROBLEMS WITH THE FINAL PROBLEM

I. JOHN H. WATSON'S PROBLEMS:
This is one of the few stories in which Watson's dating is not questioned by the chronologists. All but Blakoney, Brond and Christ accept Watson's, April 24, 1891. (Blakeney doesn't contradict, just says Spring 1891, Beond says April 1891 and Christ suggests 10 days earlier, April1 14).

Now stop for a moment and consider this date. Only STUD and SIGN have been published before this. THE STRAND MAGAZINE had brought out its first issue in January, just four months earlier. SCAN was to appear in the July issue just two months after the events in Fina. With the customary lead time Scan must have been written well before the events recounted in Fina. Probably all of the stories in THE ADVENTURES had been written by then. In the very first paragraph of Fina, Watson mentions the Reuter's dispatch carried in the English papers on May 7, 1891 presumably reporting Holmes' death. Yet there is not one word of it in the STRAND issue for July or in any of the other STRAND issues carrying Holmes stories from August through Novenber 1893.  This was a mere six months before Holmes' return in April 1894 which was not announced until October 1903. There is something fishy about all of this.

Watson has a Moriarty problem. On the second page of Fina (in STRAND) Holmes explains, "You have probably never heard of Professor Moriarty?" Watson answers, "Never." Yet in VALL which is presumed to have taken place several years earlier Watson knows about Moriarty. Much has been written on this problem and there is no solution which will satisfy every-one. If the tragedy at Birlstone did not occur until 1899 as is maintained by Ian McQueen, and I agree with him, then Moriarty did not die at Reichenbach. This makes Fina look like the hoax that many believe it to be. If it was a hoax, who perpetrated it and who was the victim? The entire trip to Switzerland seems rather thin and senseless. But was Watson taken in by Holmes or by Moriarty through his agent, the swiss lad? Or was Watson the one who was cruel enough to make up a crude story that would cause so much consternation among his thousands of readers? If so, who was the one who put him up to it? Was it Sherlock Holmes or was it Conan Doyle?
Both of them also had problems.

II. SHERLOCK HOLMES' PROBLEMS:
What happens when a private investigator gets too much publicity? Walter Paget found, to his sorrow, that public appearances could be painful. More than once in theater lobbies and restaurants he was pointed out as Sherlock Holmes and subjected to unwanted attention. The true Holmes must have faced a similar problem. The two stories that had already been published had brought him fame and numerous clients. But they had not disclosed his appearance. In Beeton's D. I. Friston showed a Holmes that looked nothing like him. Conan Doyle's father, Charles Doyle, illustrated the first editions of STUD in book form. His pictures did not look the least like

Holmes. The third edtion, profusely illustrated by George Hutchinson showed a barely recognizable Holmes, but not one that would allow anyone to positively identify him. And so, although Holmes was a master of disguise he was still able to go about London without a disguise and without being accosted as a celebrity.

But now the new STRAND MAGAZINE was about to run a series of stories and Greenhough Smith and W. H. J. Boot had engaged Sidney Paget to illustrate them. Paget's skill far surpassed that of his predecessors. He made Holmes look lile Holmes and so there was a problem in the offing. It has been said that Sidney Paget used his brother Walter as a model but Sidney's daughter denies this. Certainly there to a resemblance just as there is a resemblance to Basil Rathbone who was a Paget relative. (See Ann Byerly's articles, BSM 13, P 1 and BSM 16, P 1.)

In the United States Allan Pinkerton solved the problem of ready identification by founding an agency and hiring numerous operatives. In later years Nero Wolfe remained at home most of the time and had Saul Panzer and others to do his leg work.

But Holmes had a different solution - temporary retirement under the mask of death, and, after three years only a very few would know of his return until STRAND published Empt in October 1903. By that time Holmes was ready to permanently retire to his bee farm in Sussex. This was broken but briefly by his service at the outbreak of the Great War.

III. ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE'S PROBLEM:
In 1890 England everybody who was anybody read PUNCH. Only Colonel Blimp, Lord Plushbottom, Mrs Grundy, the uneducated and the uncouth failed to read PUNCH as each weekly issue appeared.

Consider then, the plight of the literary agent as the issue for August 12, 1893 reached its readers. Few, if any, failed to read "The Bishop's Crime, Number I" of "The Adventures of Picklock Holes", by "Cunnin Toil." A week later there was II: "The Duke's Feather" followed by III: "Lady Hilda's Mystery" and IV: "The Escape of the Bull-dog." They were coming every week and the clever parodies on the master detective were swamping him as he appeared in Rosi and Gree in THE STRAND. After a four week rest Picklock was back on October 7 in "The Hungarian Diamond" another four weeks passed and November 4 brought "The Umbrosa Burglary." The Picklock Holes stories were written for PUNCH by R. C. Lehmann a staff writer and a member of "The Punch Table." Jon L. Lellenberg says he was "one of the best British parodists" and "the kind of parodist that sensitive authors must have dreaded" -- (BSM 2, p 15). But well before the final installment of Picklock the decision had been made. The sly digs and hearty guffaws could be endured no longer and Holmes had to go. We know now that he did not die but in the fall of 1893 nothing less than death would not stop the nuisance and so "The Final Problem" was hastily written to appear in THE STRAND for December. And on December 30 the second part of "The Stolen March" closed with an editorial note: "There is no proof positive given by any eye-witness whose veracity is unimpeachable of the death of the great amateur detective as it has been described in the STRAND MAGAZINE for this month. Where is the merry Swiss boy who delivered the note and disappeared? What was the symbolic meaning of the alpenstock with the hook at the end, left on the rock? Why, that he had not "taken his hook," PICKLOCK HOLES has disappeared, but so have a great many other people. That he will turn up again no student of detective history and of the annals of crime can possibly doubt. Is it not probable that he has only dropped out of the STRAND MAGAZINE? And is it not equally probable that under some alias he will re-appear elsewhere? Verb. sap. - ED.

How prophetic! With Holmes gone VIII: "Picklock's Disappearance" was in PUNCH for January 13, 1894. Note "disappearance" not "death." A cartoon "Dropping an 'H'" showed Picklock lowering Sherlock with a rope over the edge of a cliff. The editor commented "-- and when either "SHERIOCK HOLMES" or "PICKLOCK HOLES" may be "wanted," we undertake to produce both or either of them." For years Sherlockians thought that that was the end of Picklock. But recently we have found that he was back in the pages of Punch from October 14, 1903 to March 2, 1904 or just a few weeks after the return of Holmes.

Who among us knows which of the problems was THE problem of "THE FINAL PROBLEM."

Presented by Newt Williams to the Occupants of the Empty House meeting on Friday, June 6, 1980.

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What a delightful read. 'Newt Williams' was Newtown M. Williams. He was a member of the Baker Street Irregulars as "The Netherlands-Sumatra Company", and he died in 1986.

The obituary mentions that Newt was a key early member of the Occupants of the Empty House of Southern Illinois, and founded their journal - The Camden House Journal. 

Brad Keefauver's blog notes that the scion held its last meeting in 2022.

I checked Wessex Press book 'Commanding Views of the Empty House', which published some collected writings from The Occupants of the Empty House. 

LUCKILY, this very article by Newt Williams is included in the book! The text is slightly different to that I've transcribed above, but it provides some answers in the brief introduction to the article:

The following article was presented to The Occupants of the Empty House at one of our early meetings. When Newt passed away in January 1986, the article was printed in tribute to his many insightful essays. It appeared in The Camden House Journal for March 1986.  

Who was R T Norman?

Late last year I posted about the 2024 Sherlockian Saturday at the Pratt. That post includes a link to the Youtube recording of the event, and my talk was about R T Norman. 

Who was R T Norman? Well, I was reading a list of Conan Doyle's favorite Sherlock stories, and it noted that R T Norman won the competition with the closest guess of ACD's list. Who was this Sherlockian, I wondered. Quite a lot of searching and reading convinced me that he had not previously been written about - or indeed himself published any Sherlockian articles that I could find.

And so, I started to seek him out - not sure if it would be successful, but thankfully I found him. The article on R T Norman was recently published in the Baker Street Journal. Here, I'm posting the original submitted draft, and adding in some extra images that provide deeper details and evidence of the statements in the article.

Who was R.T. Norman?

Matthew D. Hall

The March 1927 issue of the Strand Magazine announced a competition set by Arthur Conan Doyle. The author had selected his best twelve stories from among the first forty-four Sherlock Holmes short stories published, and provided that sealed list to the Editor. 

 

As a "little test of the opinion of the public" Doyle challenged readers to submit their list and see who could divine all twelve stories (the order of the stories was not judged). The winner would receive a prize of £100 and an autographed copy of "Memories and Adventures", with a further 100 readers with the next nearly correct entries also receiving a copy of the signed book. 

One thing I really wanted to find was an entry couple from the Strand Magazine - and Ira Matetsky was kind enough to source a copy of the magazine and share an image of the entry coupon. Several people helped by checking their records, including Toronto Public Library, without success. The coupon was included in the advertising section of the magazine - this section at the front of the magazine was removed when issues were bound together into hardcover volumes.

The Strand article carried a numbered illustration from each of the eligible stories, and a coupon was provided in the magazine for entrants to number the twelve stories for their entry. Given these competition parameters, there were 21,090,682,613 possible entry combinations of twelve stories!

Three months later, the June 1927 edition of the Strand announced that "The prize of £100 has been won by Mr. R. T. Norman, Spring Hill, Wellingborough. Northants, who correctly named ten stories of the twelve selected by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle as the best."  

Seven entrants correctly guessed nine of the stories, and many guessed eight, and autographed books were distributed accordingly. The announcement was followed by a brief essay by Doyle rationalizing his selection of the twelve best Sherlock Holmes stories, and sharing the list : The Speckled Band ; The Red-Headed League ; The Dancing Men ; The Final Problem ; A Scandal in Bohemia ; The Empty House ; The Five Orange Pips ; The Second Stain ; The Devil's Foot ; The Priory School ; The Musgrave Ritual ; The Reigate Squires. This list has been the source of much Sherlockian discussion, collected and published with accompanying essays (for example 'The Baker Street Dozen' ) and stimulated a number of other lists achieved via debate and voting.

Who was this victorious but almost anonymous R. T. Norman? Surely someone who could best estimate Doyle's favorite Holmes stories is worthy of Sherlockian recognition. The Strand announcement did not feature a photograph or an interview with Norman, and the only press attention was a brief note in Norman's local Northampton Mercury that provided no other information. For Norman it appears there was 15 minutes of Sherlockian fame, and a handy check worth about US$5,000 in 2024.

Research in newspaper articles and official records reveals that R. T. Norman was Raymond Thomas Norman (1889-1956), and at the time of winning the Sherlock Holmes Competition he was a Lecturer in Classics and Ancient History at Durham University . 

Norman was born in 1888 in Wellingborough (indexed as Thomas Raymond Norman but appearing as R. T. throughout his life), his father being known for founding Norman's Store in the town.  R.T. Norman was educated at Wellingborough School, and attended the University of London (BA 1908, MA 1913). The 1911 census shows Norman listed as a schoolmaster at Kent College, Canterbury. 

When war broke out, Norman was "on the point of going to Oxford University" but joined the Inns of Court Rifles in London and entered the Officer Training Corps. He was commissioned into the 7^th Cheshires and served in Egypt and Palestine before being moved to France in 1918. There, Norman was transferred to the 102nd Light Trench Mortar Battery, and was engaged in action on the Western Front in the last days of the war. In January 1919 newspapers carried an announcement that R. T. Norman was awarded the Belgian Croix de Guerre "for gallantry during the fighting at Menin and on the Scheldt in October 1918".

Following repatriation on the conclusion of the war, Norman enrolled at Balliol College at the University of Oxford as a relatively senior student aged over thirty, earning an MA. Norman was known for his sporting prowess, representing his County in both tennis and field hockey, and he continued these activities at Oxford where he earned a Blue for hockey. Photographs of the Balliol Hockey XI and Tennis VI from 1919 to 1922 show a clean-shaven man with an intense gaze and athletic appearance (see for example Figure 1).

Figure 1. Cropped image of R. T. Norman from photograph of the 1921-1922 Balliol College hockey team, Oxford University. (Balliol archives PHOT 24.23). This photograph has been reproduced by kind permission of Gillman & Soame photographers.

Following graduation, Norman appears to have embarked upon his career as Lecturer in Classics and Ancient History at Durham University, a career that last thirty years. 1927 was a banner year for Norman. Along with winning £100 in the Sherlock competition, he married fellow Wellingborough local Bessie Burkitt . Together, they had two daughters Ann (1932) and Elizabeth (1936, called Buffy), and lived in Durham. 

Northampton Mercury - Friday 02 September 1927

A Durham University archives photograph taken outside Durham Castle in 1927 captures four members of a dining club called 'the Slowcoach Club’ including Raymond Norman (Figure 2). Perhaps his relaxed smile is a reflection of the prize money headed to the lunch table.

Figure 2. Durham Castle 1927 the Slowcoach Club. Left to right: E.F. Baxter, R.T. Norman, G.S. Conway and B. Colgrave. From Durham University Library and Collections CAST/B/16. This photograph has been reproduced by permission of Durham University. (Underneath I've placed a photo of the site of that photograph).

Norman continued at Durham University till retirement, living at 26 North Bailey, Durham. The 1939 Register (effectively a census) was performed to produce identity cards and ration books for wartime England, and Norman (with his family) is listed as as Lecturer in Ancient History and Philosophy. 

Norman's involvement in Durham University life (social and academic) evident in the pages of the Durham University Journal. After retirement, the Normans relocated to 18 Hatton Ave, Wellingborough where he died suddenly on July 13th 1956, aged 67 years. Raymond T. Norman was cremated, and a final resting place has not been identified.

Northamptonshire Evening Telegraph - Monday 16 July 1956

Somewhere out there are 101 signed copies of Memories and Adventures, prizes from the Sherlock Holmes Competition. It would be interesting to know whether those inscriptions bear any specific reference to the competition. We don't know if R.T. Norman was a Sherlockian, and no evidence of articles by him on the topic have been identified. Nevertheless, his success in the 1927 competition predicting Conan Doyle's best stories warrants his place in Sherlockian memory. 

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I sincerely hope that a descendant sees this post - if so please get in touch, as I'd love to learn more about R T Norman and learn if the book is still in the family ! (email : cispt2 at gmail dot com)