Spring 2023 BSJ

The Spring 2023 Baker Street Journal includes these articles:

The Editor’s Gas-Lamp.

The Brain or the Appendix: Doctors, Detectives, and Diagnosis
by Lakshmi Krishnan.

Swindle! Financial Crimes in the Canon
by Jonathan Tiemann.

The Mythical Mixture of Watson’s Bachelor Days
by Dino Argyropoulos.

Five Quarter Centuries of Confusion Over the Missing Three-Quarter
by Eric Scace.

Antecedents of “The Creeping Man”
by Donald Bridy.

“The Creeping Man” Puzzle
by Louise Haskett.

British Intelligence: The Baker Street Irregulars (a.k.a. SOE) in WWII
by Dana Cameron.

“Help! Help! Murder!” How the Reigate Villains Overpowered Sherlock Holmes
by Derrick Belanger.

Mourning for Holmes: More than a Myth
by Laurence Pernet.

The Commonplace Book.

Baker Street Inventory.

The 2023 BSI Weekend.

“Stand with me here upon the terrace . . .”

Whodunit?

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The Editor’s Gas-Lamp

“The charm of variety”
by Dan Andriacco, Editor

Dan Andriacco, Editor, The Baker Street Journal

The first Baker Street Journal to which I subscribed was dated December 1971, almost half a century before I was invested in the Baker Street Irregulars. This literary journal, although published by the BSI, has never been only for members of the BSI. It is a kind of trade publication for Sherlockians the world over. As the BSJ’s newly appointed tenth editor of record, it is my goal to see that it continues to serve our community with a variety of offerings that are interesting and accessible, well researched and well written, fun without being frivolous, and together offer a wide range of subjects and approach in each issue.

In the inaugural number of this “irregular quarterly of Sherlockiana” in January 1946, founding editor Edgar W. Smith began “The Editor’s Gas-Lamp” by writing:

It is altogether fitting that Sherlock Holmes should be honored by the publication of a journal devoted to a critical analysis of his life and times. No other man has ever been so honored before him but then no other life has ever lent itself so completely to affectionate dissection; no other times have offered quite so full a flavor of the stuff of which our dreams are made.

While yet the memory of Sherlock Holmes is green—and that will be as long as the spirit of adventurous emprise is still astir in human hearts—there will be those who will be moved to write in loving tribute to the master and his works. They will address themselves, in their devotion, to the man himself and to the things he thought and said and did: and they will take within their scope as well the London street in which he lived, and the room in which he sat, and the brave, devoted friend who stood and fought beside him when he sallied forth upon the chase.

That introduction to Volume 1, Number 1 of the Old Series is called “The Game Is Afoot.” And, of course, it remains so—with some evolution. Today’s BSJ, like Smith’s, still offers the features “From the Editor’s Commonplace Book,” “Baker Street Inventory,” “Letters to Baker Street” (when available), and “Whodunit?” In recent years, however, it has also found room for essays from a Doylean perspective, historical and literary analysis, looks at Sherlock Holmes in popular culture, and profiles of leading lights in our shared interest. That will continue.

For decades, the title page of the BSJ has carried the notation “Founded by Edgar W. Smith Continued by Julian Wolff, M.D.” Starting with this issue, the name of Steven Rothman also will appear there as Editor Emeritus in recognition of his amazing 23 years at the helm. I thank him for his kindness and help to me during the transition. The earliest editions of this publication also carried associate editors on the masthead. That tradition is being revived, with Mike McSwiggin (“A Seven Percent Solution”) in the position. Rich Krisciunas also joins us as copy editor.

The presence of a crossword puzzle in this issue may seem an irregularity, but it is not unprecedented. It even has deep historical roots. Many readers will recall that Christopher Morley printed his brother Frank’s Sherlockian crossword puzzle in the May 19, 1934 “Bowling Green” column at the dawn of the Baker Street Irregulars. That puzzle was later reprinted in Vincent Starrett’s 221B: Studies in Sherlock Holmes anthology. Moreover, the first Sherlockian crossword puzzle in the BSJ appeared in Volume 1, Number 4 Old Series from late 1946, drawing on adventures throughout the Canon. The puzzle in this issue is based on “The Creeping Man,” which celebrates its 100th anniversary this year and is also the subject of an insightful essay herein.

Other features in this issue will take us to Baker Street Weekend, reveal the relationship between World War II British Intelligence and Holmes’s original irregulars, and explore tobacco, telegrams, swindles, and the hard-boiled cred of Sherlock Holmes.

What is the uniting leitmotif of this rich mixture? As Edgar W. Smith wrote in the closing paragraph of that initial “Gas-Lamp,” “The Journal is dedicated to the proposition that there is still infinitely much to be said about the scene in Baker Street . . .”

The Editor’s Gas-Lamp, Spring 2023, Vol. 73, No. 1.