PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE:
1878 - Began professional career as a detective
1882 - Began professional partnership with Dr. Watson no later than this date
1878 - 1889 - Investigated some 500 cases "of capital importance"
1878 - 1891 - Investigated 1000 cases in all
late 80s - Apr 91 - Devoted to exposing & breaking up criminal organization of Prof. Moriarty
1894 - Returned to active practice
1894 - 1901 - Handled hundreds of cases
1895 - Private audience with Queen Victoria, for services to England
June 1902 - Refused offer of knighthood
1903 - 1904 - Began retirement in solitude of Sussex coast, reviewing the records of cases and the destruction of those which might compromise more exalted clients. "The approach of the German war caused him, however, to lay his remarkable combination of intellectual and practical ability at the disposal of the government" with the result of communicating much false intelligence to the Germans, and arrest of Prussian spymaster Von Bork

CHARACTER:

• "Dual nature" of personality: "Nothing could exceed his energy when the working fit was upon him; but now and again a reaction would seize him, and for days on end he would lie upon the sofa in the sitting-room, hardly uttering a word or moving a muscle from morning to night."
• During these moods, alternated "between cocaine and ambition, the drowsiness of the drug and the fierce energy of his own keen nature", then an even blacker depression took him in reaction to the narcotics, from which he could only be rescued by a case
• His own powers became irksome when not in use: "My mind rebels at stagnation", and he chafed and brooded over "the insufferable fatigues of idleness"
• "My mind is like a racing engine, tearing itself to pieces because it is not connected up with the work for which it was built"
• "Animal lust for the chase: "The man is nothing, the work everything"
• "Work is the best antidote to sorrow"; "a change of work is the best rest"

APPEARANCE AND CONSTITUTION:

• Tall, thin; narrow face, large forehead, black hair, brows dark & heavy
• Nose thin, hawk-like; lips thin, firm; voice quick, high, strident
• Eyes gray, sharp, piercing, taking on "far-away introspective look"
• Seldom take exercise for its own sake, yet "always in training"
• A good runner; possessed of strength which one would hardly credit
• "I am exceptionally strong in the fingers"; "grasp of iron"
• Few men were capable of greater muscular effort
• "An abnormally acute set of senses"; "extraordinary delicacy of touch"
• "Frugal"; habits "simple to the verge of austerity"; "Idleness exhausts me completely" yet from time to time spend whole days in bed
• Late riser as a rule "save upon those not infrequent occasions when he was up all night" during which up early on a case, vigorous and untiring, going for days or even a week without rest
• Diet, spare at the best of times, abandoned altogether when working
• "I am a brain, Watson. The rest of me is a mere appendix."
• State of health "not a matter in which he took the faintest interest."
• Wiry, iron constitution; suffered breakdown from nervous prostration in Spring 1887; ordered to take complete rest in March 1897 due to "constant hard work of a most exacting kind, aggravated, perhaps, by occasional indiscretions of his own"
• In retirement, somewhat crippled by occasional bouts of rheumatism
• Took up swimming, nonetheless; little or no knowledge of amateur sports
• Baritsu (Japanese self-defense); boxing expert; excellent swordsman; enjoy fishing in the Broads near Donnithorpe; knowledge of golf clubs; singlestick expert

PUBLICATIONS:

• Author of a number of monographs, all of them on technical subjects
• Upon the Distinction Between the Ashes of the Various Tobaccos
• Monograph on polyphonic motets of Lassus, printed for private circulation, said by some experts to be the last word on the subject
• Two short articles on ears in the Anthropological Journal
• A "trifling" monograph upon the subject of secret writings, 160 separate ciphers analyzed
• Monograph upon the dating of documents
• A contribution to the literature of tattoos
• Monograph upon the tracing of footsteps
• Monograph upon the influence of the trade upon the form of the hand
• The Book of Life, the "somewhat ambitious" title of an article written for an English magazine, attempting to show how much an observant man might learn by accurate and systematic examination of all that came in his way
• Practical Handbook of Bee Culture
• Francois le Villard translated some of these works into French

PROFESSIONAL KNOWLEDGE:

• Minute knowledge of the history of crime
• Immense knowledge of "sensational literature"; "appears to know every detail of every horror perpetrated in the century"
• The higher criminal world of London; details of Continental crime
• Disguises, wearing and recognizing: "It is the first quality of a criminal investigator that he should see through a disguise"
• See publications on: tobacco ashes, shapes of ears, cryptography, dating of documents, tattoos, footsteps, influence of trades on form of hands
• Dogs
• Researches of a "medico-criminal aspect"
• An exact knowledge of London
• Newspaper types
• Perfumes
• The typewriter and its relation to crime
• Bicycle tyres
• Names and trademarks of the world's major gunmaking firms

DRESS:

• "Catlike love of personal cleanliness"; quiet primness of dress
• Normally dressed in conventional tweeds or frock-coat
• Occasionally don an Ulster; dressing-gown in privacy of own rooms
• In country, a "long gray travelling-cloak" with close-fitting, ear- flapped, cloth "travelling cap"

HOBBIES:

• Art -- spend some time in Bond Street picture-galleries; "art in the blood is likely to take the strangest forms"
• Study of honey-bee, bee-farming upon the South Downs
• Special study of the Buddhism of Ceylon (Hinayana)
• Cornish Language, conceived the idea that it is akin to the Chaldean, and had been largely derived from the Phoenician traders in tin
• Some weeks in a great University town pursuing laborious researches in Early English charters which, it was said, led to some striking results
• Study of polyphonic motets of Orlandus Lassus
• Deep and continuing interest in the Middle Ages, making special studies in Miracle Plays, a 15th Century Palimpsest, Early English charters, medieval pottery, music (especially Lassus)

PERSONAL:

• Born c. 1854; retired late '03 - early '04 after 23 years active practice.
• Descendant of country squires; grandson of a sister of the French artist Emile Jean Horace Vernet.

 
 
Copyright 1992 by EMERALD CITY PUBLISHING