Watson's Tin Box meeting summary - September 21, 2026

On the third Monday of each month, the Watson's Tin Box of Ellicott City scion meets at Union Jack's in Columbia MD and we gathered September 21 for another great gathering of members - TWENTY SEVEN in total. As always I took a census of where people were attending from: Frederick MD won the competition for most attendees with five people - we also had visitors from places including: Gettysburg PA, Bowie, Columbia, Bellcamp, Ellicott City, Silver Spring, Frederick, Gaithersburg, Darnestown Woodbine, Sandy Spring, Baltimore, Odenton. 

Congratulations to Heather Dertsbaugh who became a member of WTB with her second visit, and we welcomed first-time visitor, Michael! 

 tThe story of the meeting was 'The Dancing Men'.... but we always start with toasts. Liane Luini provided a poem by Christopher Morley as toast to The Woman, and a second poem by him as an 'extra'.

Elementary (First published in BSJ September 1961)
If Baker Street required a mate
Or Reason crowned a queen,
The only one to segregate
Would be, of course, IRENE.

Te Deum Laudanum (Written Christmas 1949, first published in BSJ September 1961)
What opiate can best abate
Anxiety and toil?
Not aspirins, nor treble gins,
Nor love, nor mineral oil 
My only drug is a good long slug
Of Tincture of Conan Doyle.

Debbie Belchis also brought along an original poem for the group!!!

Dancing Men Gangsta poem

He’s tall and lean, quick witted and sly
He’ll size you up in the wink of an eye
Describe your travels, your friends, and your foes
Your favorite foods, your habits, and clothes

By examining naught but the mud on your soles.

Lazily lounging with pipe in his hand
His exploits are regaled with awe in the Strand
The world’s greatest detective! He’s Sherlock Holmes

Dr. Watson’s best friend, star of Baker Street prose

But yo! Troubles afoot when forces arrive
From Chicago’s mafia to England’s countryside
Gangsta foes with malicious manner
Intrude on our English Squires Ridling Thorpe Manor
Hidden from site at Elridge’s farm
Dastardly desires, Impending harm!
Yo Ho Sherlock Holmes, Be More Attentive!
Impending disaster should be your incentive!

He skillfully decodes the mysterious hieroglyphics
A gleam in his eye, he telegrams his missive.
But 2 days pass with no reply
Off to East Anglia he must fly!

And there he encounters a mysterious bit
Locked and shuttered windows, candle still lit!
Inspector Martin’s bewildered, must be the wife
No, no the staff cry! Not on your life!

But yo! Sherlock Holmes has deduced the whole matter
A third bullet! And assumptions are shattered!
An unrequited love, a villain from her past!
Coded dancing men and the truth is told at last
Holmes flushes out the villain, hoist with his own petard!
Arrogant to the end, that dastardly blackguard!
Shocked and pained, the man exclaimed, how all this do you uncover?
And Holmes calmly replied, “What one man can invent another can discover”

Lazily lounging with pipe in his hand
His exploits are regaled with awe in the Strand
The world’s greatest detective! He’s Sherlock Holmes!
Dr. Watson’s Best Friend, Star of Baker Street Prose!

Tom Fahres similarly delivered TWO Haikus. First to The Woman of the evening:

Miss Elsie Patrick

Will always be “The Woman”

To Mister Slaney 

Secondly, Tom delivered his traditional Haiku for the story of the month:

Men dance but don’t speak

Unless you have the right key

Holmes gets it, too late

Next came Announcements

• Carla Coupe reminded us that the 47th Annual "Saturday With Sherlock Holmes" at the Pratt Library will be held Saturday, November 14th from 10:30 to 1:00. More details closer to the date - and it will be recorded also.
• Olivia Millunzi reminded us that the play 'Clue' (based on the movie) will be performed at the Hipodrome, Baltimore on January 23 & 24.
• Tom Fahres shared a save-the-date of Friday Oct 23, from 4-6pm for the MoCo Maryland Mullusk Masticaters SPODE. Meet at Olney Grille, Olney, Maryland/ Tom will provide Details and maps available at the October Tin Box meeting.
• The next meeting of the Red Circle of Washington DC will be held on Saturday, October 3 at J. Hollinger's in Silver Spring. The speaker will be Julie McKuras coming from Minnesota, and details can be found at www.redcircledc.org
• Liane Luini announced that we have had a recent collaboration with Steve Mason and the Beacon Society. The Beacon Society was formed to encourage young people to read the Sherlock Holmes stories. Their website (https://www.beaconsociety.com/) is a wealth of information. One of the programs they manage is the Fortescue Scholarship Honours Program (https://www.beaconsociety.com/fortescue-scholarship-exams.html.) It is a series of exams that start with earning your Bachelors, Masters and Doctorate in Sherlockiana. A number of us Tin Boxers have earned our Doctorates. After that, people wanted more so annual Re-certification exams were started in 2020. And since that, of course, was not enough, Steve decided to offer Mid-Year Re-certification exams. And our connection is our original Mycroft Quizzes created by Steve Clarkson are serving as the source material for the exams. The first one is available and is based on the 1991 quiz. I tried it out. It was tough! I'm just glad I didn't have to do the Quiz in real time at a meeting! The benefit of the Exams is they are open book and there is no time limit to complete them. You can do them in your own time and use any resource available to you except phone a friend. You have to do your own work! I highly recommend trying them. The overall purpose is to increase your knowledge and enjoyment of the Canon and they certainly do that!
• We were reminded that Peter Blau has also announced that tickets are now on sale for Mark Shanahan's popular play "A Sherlock Carol" at the Arts Barn in Gaithersburg.  There will be a  do-it-yourself theater party and Red Circle meeting on Sunday, December 6.  Purchase your own tickets, and the group will then gather somewhere nearby for drinks afterwards. You can purchase your tickets at the Arts Barn web-site.
  
• I announced that Watson's Tin Box will be displaying the Six Napoleons Evidence Box at the dinner, to add to the occasion. I'm sure I'll have a blog post on that dinner soon.
• On the topic of Dancing Men, member Nea Dodson shared a photograph she took of the entrance to the Museum of London Sherlock Holmes exhibition with huge dancing men. Appropriately, they spell: COME AT ONCE.

• And Grant Heller shared that a colleague at work has a Star Trek poster on the wall in his office. Close inspection revealed that one character (I don't know anything about Star Trek) is holding a volume of Baring-Gould!!! See front row, at left: 

We mixed up the agenda this month as an experiment - and it worked. While we settled down to chat and wait for dinner, Olivia Millunzi delivered the quiz while we waited for dinner... and I have to say it works well. We have a new agenda order.

As always, Michelle March provided some wonderful t-shirt design prizes tied to the evening's story. Tonight there were two. In the spirit of not being exclusory, I've included the de-coded meaning under each of these wonderful designs:

IYKYK

Dance like no one's watching.... write like someone is

Debbie Clark presented the evidence box for Devil's Foot to an attentive audience:

The evidence display on the evening, and some examples of the evidence:

Left: Among the items - an advertisement for Thurston’s billiards. Thurston isWatson’s billiard’s partner.From the story:‘You never play billiards except with Thurston.’ Truly remarkable that this exists! Right: Pictured is a saucer from the Imperial Hotel at Russell Square, possibly where Hilton Cubitt stayed in London when he met Elsie Patrick, who would become his wife.From the story:‘Last year I came up to London for the Jubilee, and I stopped at a boarding-house in Russell Square, because Parker, the vicar of our parish, was staying in it.’

Left: Pictured is the note Holmes sent to Abe Slaney at Elrige’s Farm, asking Slaney to return to the Cubitt’s residence. The dancing men message read, ‘Come here at once.’. Right: Watson's cheque book... that Holmes keeps locked in a drawer.

Our discussion of the Dancing Men story was highly enjoyable.... how could it not be? After all, in some ways the Dancing Men story is the most iconic of all. Certainly it provides the most recognizable imagery. In preparation for meetings, I normally read an annotated version of the story, and listen to an audiobook version (preferably Stephen Fry) - and learned that Dancing Men really isn't easy to follow as an audiobook!

Tom Fahres asked how we really know that Elsie tried to commit suicide? A robust discussion on firearms and forensic evidence was had, and Al (see below!) shared his expertise on blowback from firing a weapon. Everyone agreed that Sherlock failed his clients - for a range of reasons, including just not visiting the scene to investigate earlier. And once he solved the code... why didn't he send them a telegram immediately? Or order an express train to get there immediately? So many questions. 

Nea pointed out that Elsie didn't exactly help matters - she clearly had a husband who supported her and could have put a lid on the whole episode, and addressed it directly. A side-note from me - if Elsie did indeed attempt suicide - was that not a crime? Or at least one that would have been investigated at the time?

One thing I mentioned when introducing the story -  this 1905 article is one of many suggesting (strongly) that Doyle picked up the general idea from Edgar Allan Poe, and not for the first time.

Our very special esteemed presenter for this meeting was Allen Hafner, with a talk titled "Forensic Science, from Sherlock to CSI." Al Hafner has worked in law enforcement for 45 years. He graduated from the Baltimore City Police Academy in 1972 and went to work for the Howard County Police Department. HCPD was a small department at that time and each officer was responsible for handling their own minor crime scenes, literally on-the-job training. Larger scenes would be taken over by a detective. Evidence collected for further examination would be sent to labs run by other police departments. With the building of the new town of Columbia, Howard County experienced explosive growth and the police department grew with it. When a dedicated crime scene unit was created in the 1980s, Al was transferred to the new unit because of his past crime scene work and his skills in photography. After 21 years in uniform, Al opted for early retirement to work for the State of Maryland as a Fingerprint Technician and was their primary fingerprint trainer. He assisted in linking the State’s fingerprint computer system with new Booking Centers, using this system to confirm the identity of arrested suspects. In 1998, Al returned to HCPD as a Latent Print Examiner, crime scene investigator, and academy instructor. Al has been involved in many serious criminal investigations and served on multi-jurisdictional task forces. He has testified as an expert witness in many local courts and several times in Federal courts. During his career, Al was awarded two Bronze Stars and a box full of meritorious certificates. Since his retirement in 2018, Al continued to work under contract for a few years to perform latent print verifications and forensic case reviews. He continues to consult with detectives on cold case investigations.

OK.... all that biography should make it clear that this was going to be good - and Al had the whole group hanging on his every word. Al taught us that physical evidence is all about the context we find it in - and evidence falls into two categories: Class Characteristics and Individualization. We even saw a real crime scene (a burglary) and learned what Al saw that pointed to the solution (along with fingerprints). We also learned about early innovators in bringing science to criminal solution - Bertillon and Hans Gross. Gross wrote 'Criminal Investigation, A Practical Textbook'. Jumping forward a hundred years, Al discussed the advent of DNA testing and its effects on criminal investigation, and then the 'CSI effect'  when that TV show appeared, and everyone's new career goal was to become a forensic scientist.

Perhaps the best sign of a wonderful talk are the questions.... and when I packed everything up and left at the end of the meeting, Al was still surrounded by people asking questions!! Thanks Al for an amazing talk - it's clear we'll need a Part 2. And probably a Part 3!

What a great meeting!! I'll end the post with this violin model that Michelle made and shared with the group. It's amazing, and includes quotes from the canon written into blank spaces.