The Spring 2024 Baker Street Journal includes these articles:
The Editor’s Gas-Lamp.
About the ’Fifties: A BSI Memoir
by Peter Blau.
The Godfathers of Sherlockian Publishing
by Steven Rothman.
Clinical Notes by a Resident Doctor
by Robert S. Katz.
Sherlock Holmes and the Quran
by Nawazali A. Jiwa.
What Did Dr. Watson Know?
by Tess Gerritsen.
How Much Would It Cost to be Sherlock Holmes Today?
by Erik Deckers.
Sherlock Holmes’s Telling Trait: Simplifying Complexity
By Marino Alvarez.
Arthur Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes in Chicago
by Linda Crohn.
The Commonplace Book.
Baker Street Inventory.
Letters to Baker Street.
The 2024 BSI Weekend.
“Stand with me here upon the terrace…”
Whodunit?
* * *
The Editor’s Gas-Lamp
“It is the unofficial force—the Baker Street Irregulars.”
by Dan Andriacco, Editor
This year marks the 90th anniversary of the Baker Street Irregulars. In fact, it’s the 90th in three different ways, which can be a little confusing.
Christopher Morley, through his column in the Saturday Review of Literature, organized a cocktail party at the Duane Hotel in New York on January 6, 1934 to celebrate the birthday of Sherlock Holmes. And as the late Jon Lellenberg wrote in Irregular Memories of the ’Thirties, “That cocktail party, in the large sense, is still going on today.” Morley regarded it as the first meeting of the BSI.
What was billed as the “first formal meeting” took place at Christ Cella’s speakeasy on E. 45th Street on the evening of June 5, 1934. It was open to those (men) who had perfect or near-perfect solutions to the Sherlock Holmes crossword puzzle created by Frank V. Morley, Chris’s brother, and published in the Saturday Review.
The first annual dinner of the BSI took place on December 7, 1934, also at Christ Cella’s. Five attendees (including Morley) wrote about the event, but only Alexander Woollcott’s account was set down within a few weeks of that evening. Their narratives don’t agree on all the details, making what really happened then something of a delightful mystery.
Ninety years on, the Baker Street Irregulars are much more than an annual dinner. While the lifeblood of the Sherlockian community is the hundreds of scions and other groups around the world, the importance of what Morley started all those years ago lies far beyond its members. Today’s BSI serves the cause by publishing books, holding periodic conferences, sponsoring the annual Distinguished Lecture and the Saturday luncheon during BSI Weekend, and issuing this irregular Journal.
The BSJ also has evolved since its founding in 1946, while continuing to honor its origins. In that spirit, we offer in this issue a new feature from Robert Katz, M.D, called “Clinical Notes by a Resident Doctor,” hearkening back to Morley’s “Clinical Notes by a Resident Patient” in the early BSJ. Happy reading in this anniversary year!
The Editor’s Gas-Lamp, Spring 2024, Vol. 74, No. 1.
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