AV Club:
When Sir Arthur Conan Doyle began publishing stories and novels about his brilliant, drug-addled super sleuth Sherlock Holmes in 1887, he intentionally gave the character a geographically impossible home base. At the time, the street numbers on Baker Street didn’t even reach 200.
Imagining Holmes to be real, fans sent him letters, ranging from simple fan mail to genuine pleas for help, but their letters could not be delivered. Then, in the 1930s, London rejiggered its street numbers, a move that affected Baker Street. Suddenly, there really was a 221 on the famous thoroughfare, and it belonged to a bank. Admirably, the financial institution didn’t just dispose of Holmes’ mail. Instead, they hired someone to act as the detective’s “personal secretary.” Through customized letters, this ombudsman would gently explain to fans that Holmes had given up his detective gig to go raise bees in the country.
I didn’t know there hadn’t always been a 221B Baker St.
Interesting about raising bees. In last year’s “Mr. Holmes,” he has indeed retired to the country to raise bees. Now I wonder if that’s a reference to something in the literature, or instead a reference to what this ombudsman was writing.
It’s been many years since I read the canon so I don’t remember. Interestingly enough, the CBS show about Holmes, “Elementary”, has Sherlock actively raising bees on the roof of his brownstone.
I’d put my money in that bank based on this story alone.
Oh now I’m even more intrigued.
Ah never mind. It was evidently in the canon, that he retired to Sussex and raised bees, and wrote a book on the subject. Shoot. I would have loved it to have been because of a random idea by this ombudsman, just attaching itself to the Holmes universe.
Considering how posh that neighborhood might have become, that bank might not want your business. 😉
You’re still talking to me, right?
I wonder if that’s why, in “Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century”, an aged Holmes arranged to have his body preserved in honey?