Free Holmes and Watson by June Thomson Page A

– a badly played one …’
    Holmes, who clearly considered his talent belonged to the former category, brushed aside any further objections with ‘a merry laugh’ and, treating the matter as settled, made arrangements for Watson to call for him at the laboratory at noon the following day so that he might accompany Watson on an inspection of the rooms.
    The next day, probably 2nd January, they therefore met again as arranged and set off for Baker Street. *
    Despite bombing during the war and redevelopment, many of the original brick-built houses of four or five storeys, with their plain façades and tiers of sash windows, remain relatively unaltered. Until the early 1860’s it was a fashionable area but, with the coming of the Metropolitan railway and the construction of Baker Street station, its character changed and it became more commercialised. However, it still remained a respectable, middle-class address.
    By 1881 many of the houses were used as business premises, including the waxwork museum of Madame Tussaud and Son which was at numbers 57 to 58. Not far away were the popular Portman Rooms and the Baker Street Bazaar. Other smaller commercial entrepreneurs included dressmakers, music and dance teachers, dentists and milliners. As he frequently sent telegrams, Holmes would have found the presence of a post and telegraph office at number 66 particularly useful.
    In many other ways, Baker Street was a convenient address. Baker Street station lay only a short distance away in Marylebone Road, although there is only one instance recorded in the canon of Holmes and Watson using the underground railway when they travelled to Aldersgate on their way to Saxe-Coburg Square (‘The Adventure of the Red-Headed League’), while Cadogan West’s body was found on the rails near Aldgate Station (‘The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans’). The trains were drawn by steam engines and although parts of the line ran above ground, passengers suffered the inconvenience of smoke and coal smuts accumulating in the tunnels.
    There were also omnibus routes nearby, among them that of the green ‘Atlas’ which ran via Baker Street or, if Holmes and Watson chose to walk through Portman Square into Oxford Street, with its excellent shopping facilities, they had a choice of no less than seven omnibus companies. However, there is no reference in the canon to either of them using this cheap form of transport.
    They generally preferred cabs, usually a hansom whichseated two, or, if more people needed to be accommodated, a four-wheeler, also known as a ‘growler’. There was a cab-rank outside Baker Street station or a passing cab could be hailed in the street or summoned by blowing a whistle, one blast for a four-wheeler, two for a hansom. Many Londoners carried a cab whistle on them for this purpose.
    But where exactly was 221B Baker Street?
    Apart from the matter of dating, this is one of the most vexed questions facing the Sherlockian scholar, and several different sites have been claimed as its location. The problem is compounded by two factors: the renaming of part of Baker Street since Holmes’ and Watson’s time, and the renumbering of the houses.
    The present-day Baker Street crosses Marylebone Road at right angles, running from Portman Square in the south to Clarence Gate, Regent’s Park, in the north, where it swings west and becomes Park Road. In 1881 this northern section was known as Upper Baker Street. It is in this more recently named extension that the present 221 Baker Street is situated. The site is now occupied by the Abbey National Building Society which has offices at numbers 215 to 229. * A few doors away is the Sherlock Holmes Museum, opened in 1990, which claims to be 221B Baker Street, although its correct postal address is 239.
    When Holmes and Watson arrived to inspect the lodgings, Baker Street was much shorter than it is today and extended only from Portman Square to the intersection of Paddington