Among the curious chronological problems encountered by the Sherlock Holmes student, one of the most delicate and fascinating is that of the dates in The Red-Headed League . Its difficulties have been most ably set forth by Mr. H. W. Bell in his scholarly and comprehensive study, Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson . This work—the first and only attempt to place all the cases in chronological order—must inevitably form the basis of all future Holmes-Watson exegesis, and the following statement of the problem is summarised from its pages:

1. Watson says that Jabez Wilson’s visit to Baker Street took place on a Saturday in the autumn of 1890. Later on, the day is fixed, by the notice on the door of the League’s premises, as October 9th. But October 9th, 1890, was a Thursday.

2. The advertisement shown to Holmes on this occasion is stated by Watson to have appeared in the Morning Chronicle of April 27th, “just two months ago.” This is incompatible with all the other dates.

3. Jabez Wilson says that the advertisement appeared “this day eight weeks,” which, reckoning back from October 9th, would bring it to Thursday, August 14th.

4. Wilson also says that the League paid him £4 every Saturday for eight weeks, and that this “cost them two-and-thirty pounds.” It is hardly conceivable that Wilson should be mistaken about the money he received. But on the last Saturday (“October 9th”) the office of the League was closed, and he got no pay. If, therefore, he only worked for eight weeks, he should have received only £28 in all.

Let us now see what we can make of these contradictions. The year 1890 is determined by the original date of publication in the Strand Magazine for August, 1891 (“One day in the autumn of last year”) and by the notice on the League door (“The Red-Headed League is dissolved, Oct. 9, 1890”). The day of the week on which Wilson visited Holmes is also fixed, not merely by Holmes’ own statements (“to-day is Saturday”—“to-day being Saturday rather complicates matters”), but also by the fact that, as Mr. Bell points out, “the choice of Saturday was an essential part of the bank-robbers’ plot.” The visit to Baker Street, the investigation at Wilson’s establishment, and the final capture of the criminals all take place within twenty-four hours (Saturday morning[1] to the early hours of Sunday), so that we are restricted to a Saturday in the autumn of 1890. Since the date “April 27th” is an obvious error, which could not by any stretch of the imagination be called “a day in the autumn,” there is no reason to reject the month of October mentioned in the notice. We are therefore obliged to choose between the four Saturdays in October, 1890, which fell on the 4th, 11th, 18th and 25th respectively.

Mr. Bell, thinking that Dr. Watson may have misread his own figure “4” as a “9,” selects October 4th. I emphatically agree that this is the correct date, though I differ from Mr. Bell as to the precise way in which the mistake came about. In my opinion, the crucial points of the problem are ( a ) the surprising error “April 27th,” and ( b ) the discrepancy about the money, neither of which anomalies is accounted for in Mr. Bell’s commentary. In the following notes I shall hope to show exactly how ( a ) occurred, and to prove that ( b ) was no error at all, and thus to establish the date by two independent and mutually supporting lines of reasoning.

1. The date October 4th for Wilson’s visit to Holmes is a priori the most likely, since, as Mr. Bell remarks, Watson is hardly likely to have mistaken any one of the double figures 11, 18, or 25 for the single figure 9.

2. The advertisement in the Morning Chronicle directed the applicants to attend at 7 Pope’s Court “on Monday.” It was evidently on the very Monday specified in the advertisement that Vincent Spaulding showed the paper to Wilson, since they “put the shutters up” and started for Pope’s Court immediately.

3. The wording of the advertisement at first sight suggests that it appeared in the previous Saturday’s issue, and this suggestion is supported by Wilson’s remark that it appeared “this day eight weeks .” On examination, however, this will not hold water. If the advertisement appeared on the Saturday, why did Spaulding (who lived on the premises) not show it to Wilson at once? Why should he be reading Saturday’s paper on Monday morning? The inference is that the advertisement actually appeared on the Monday. The wording may have been due to carelessness; or the advertisement may have been intended to appear on the Saturday and have been crowded out or arrived too late for insertion on that day.

4. This view is strongly supported by Watson’s remark that the advertisement appeared “just two months ago.” This, if accurate, brings us back to Monday, August 4th. Wilson, no doubt, made the common error of reckoning a month as four weeks, whereas Watson was going correctly by the calendar.

5. Duncan Ross asked Wilson if he could “be ready to-morrow,” and he accordingly started work the day following the interview, viz. Tuesday, August 5th. On the Saturday immediately succeeding, he was paid £4 “for my week’s work.” Actually, he had only worked five days, but the salary would, no doubt, be reckoned as from the time of his engagement on the Monday, and, in fact, it is clear from the text that this was so.

6. Wilson thus received in all eight payments of £4, viz. on August 9th, 16th, 23rd and 30th, and September 6th, 13th, 20th and 27th, before the League was dissolved on the morning of the ninth Saturday, October 4th; these payments making up the correct total of £32.

7. The only difficulties which now remain are the two incorrect dates given in the text: ( a ) April 27th as the date of the advertisement, and ( b ) October 9th as the date of the dissolution of the League.

Fig. 1. Dr. Watson’s writing of August 4th ( Augst. 4 ). Note the formation of the “g” (loopless), the ill-shaped “s” and the uncrossed “t”; also the preliminary flourish to the left-hand stroke of the “4.”

Fig. 2. Dr. Watson’s writing of April 27th. Note the “pr” without loop and the undotted “i.”

Fig. 3. Ross’s suggested method of writing “October 4th.”

( a ) This is patently absurd, and suggests the error of a not-too-intelligent compositor at work upon a crabbed manuscript. Watson was a doctor, and his writing was therefore probably illegible at the best of times; moreover, he may have written his dates in a contracted form and used, in addition, a J pen in a poor state of repair. The adjoined pair of figures show how easily “Augst 4” might be mistaken, under these conditions, for “April 27.” In this way, the very error itself provides independent testimony that August 4th was the actual date of the advertisement, since it is difficult to see how any of the other dates in August (11, 18, 25)[2] could have been mistaken for 27, while the Saturday dates have already been shown to be impossible. But if August 4th was the date of the advertisement, then October 4th must have been the date of Wilson’s visit to Holmes; thus the two conclusions are mutually checked and confirmed. No other system of dating accounts either for the error “April 27th” or for the £32, whereas the present hypothesis accounts reasonably for both and is the only one that will do so.

( b ) If we accept this explanation of “April 27th,” we are confronted with a slight difficulty about the second error: “Oct. 9th” for “Oct. 4th” in the notice pinned on the League door. Could Watson write the figure “4” in two such dissimilar ways that it could be misread, on the one occasion as “27” and on another occasion as “9”? It seems possible that, in this instance, Watson himself carelessly misread the handwriting of Duncan Ross on the notice-card. Ross may have written his “4” in some such form as is shown in Fig. 3, and Watson, hurriedly espying the inscription, either then or later, when he came to compile his story, may have written down what he thought he saw, without troubling to verify the date by the calendar.

It is, in any case, abundantly clear that the good doctor did not at any time carefully revise his proofs, and it may be (as Mr. T. S. Blakeney suggests in Sherlock Holmes: Fact or Fiction? ) that he was especially vague and distrait when writing this story, owing to “the (presumed) death of Holmes shortly before, which evidently hit Watson hard.” Had he read his proofs with any attention, he could not possibly have passed the blatant absurdity of “April 27th.”[3] 

Having now shown that October 4th and August 4th are almost certainly the correct dates for Wilson’s visits to Holmes and to Pope’s Court respectively, we find ourselves face to face with a very remarkable corollary—namely, that the Monday on which the advertisement appeared in the Morning Chronicle , and on which Wilson entered upon his engagement with the Red-Headed League, was August Bank Holiday. This appears, at a first glance, to be most improbable. However, in Holmes’ own words, “I ought to know by this time that when a fact appears to be opposed to a long train of deductions it invariably proves to be capable of bearing some other interpretation.” And, in fact, when we examine the text in detail, we shall find the strongest corroborative evidence in favour of Bank Holiday.

Let us begin by examining the nature of Jabez Wilson’s business and the geography of Saxe-Coburg Square (or Coburg Square; there seems to be some doubt as to the precise title, due also, no doubt, to Watson’s slip-shod method of jotting down his notes).

The first thing we observe is that Wilson describes his establishment as “a small pawnbroker’s business.” Now, pawnbroking is usually carried on in connection with a shop of some kind, having a window in which unredeemed pledges are displayed for sale. But there is no mention of either shop or window[4] in connection with Jabez Wilson’s pawnbroking, and it is, in fact, quite evident from the text that nothing of the kind existed. On p. 42 Holmes says, “To-day is Saturday,” and, after a brief interval of contemplation, turns to Watson with the words, “Put on your hat and come.” It is before lunch (p. 43), and therefore all the shops would be open, and certainly were open, for we read on p. 44 of “the immense stream of commerce” and the footpaths “black with the hurrying swarm of pedestrians.” This was after the visit to Wilson’s, so that we may conclude that, if Wilson had had a shop, it should have been open when Holmes and Watson called.

This being so, if Holmes wanted to see the shop-assistant, Vincent Spaulding, in a casual way, without arousing suspicion, what should we expect him to do? Surely to walk straight in and enquire the price of some object in the window. (True, in such a case, the knees of Spaulding’s trousers, which Holmes particularly wanted to examine, might have been concealed by the counter, but that difficulty could readily have been overcome by requesting him to bring the object forward into the light of the doorway.) But it seems clear that no such opportunity presented itself. The place was only “announced” by “three gilt balls and a brown board.” There was no shop and no window, and Holmes was thus obliged to fall back upon knocking at the door of the house and, on having it opened to him, putting forward an unconvincing enquiry about the way to the Strand, which could have been put with far more propriety at the tobacconist’s, the little newspaper shop or the Vegetarian Restaurant.

So far, so good. There was no shop; and we must suppose that the business was a moneylending business and nothing more, unredeemed pledges being presumably disposed of by private arrangement with other second-hand establishments.

Let us now go back to the events of Monday, August 4th, the day on which Wilson and Spaulding answered the advertisement.

We are told that, on this occasion, Vincent Spaulding “came down into the office.” This, to begin with, supports the conclusion that the business was carried on in an office and not in a shop. Where, then, did Spaulding come “down” from? Certainly not from the shop, if such had existed (for any shop or place of public business would be on the ground floor), unless we suppose the “office” to have been in the basement, which seems scarcely reasonable. If, then, Spaulding came “down” to the office, it was either from a bedroom or living-room on an upper floor, or else from some upper room used for the storage of goods. If he came from a living-room or ( a fortiori ) from a bedroom, then he was idling while his employer worked, and, with so exceptionally diligent a young man, how could that have happened at any other time than a public holiday? (I shall come presently to the nature of Jabez Wilson’s work in the office.) If, on the other hand, Spaulding came “down” from a store-room, it is quite possible that he was engaged in putting away and inventorying the goods deposited there—a very suitable occupation for a day on which no regular business was being transacted. Actually, I am inclined to think that he was thus employed,[5] since on p. 35 Wilson states that Spaulding “was very glad to have a holiday,” thus suggesting that he would, in the ordinary course of events, have expected to work on that particular day.

Jabez Wilson, in the office, was undoubtedly at work—and upon what? It appears very likely that both he and Spaulding were engaged in storing, valuing and otherwise dealing with pledges deposited on the previous Saturday, and booking up the various transactions completed on that day. Thursday and Friday, as we know, were normally Wilson’s busiest days, but Saturday, being pay-day, is the day on which pledges are most frequently redeemed, and pawnbrokers always keep open to a late hour on Saturdays. This means that a good deal of business would be left to be carried over, on Monday, from the day-book to the ledger. In addition, if the Monday was a Bank Holiday, there would also be a number of thriftless people who had actually pawned goods on the Saturday so as to get extra money for their week-end pleasuring. Thus we get a mental picture of Spaulding engaged (or supposed to be engaged) in stocktaking upstairs, while his employer is at work on the books in the office, both taking advantage of the public holiday to set their house in order. It is also quite conceivable that they would not be averse from doing a little moneylending even on a Bank Holiday morning. What was there to prevent the man who had squandered his wages in the public-house on the Saturday and Sunday from sending his wife round to knock discreetly at the front door on Monday, bringing the Family Bible or the flat-irons in a modest paper parcel?

But now we come to a very important point. When Spaulding had shown Jabez Wilson the paper, he was instructed to “put up the shutters for the day and come right away”; after which Wilson adds, “so we shut the business up.” Immediately we ask ourselves: If there was no shop-window, to what shutters does this refer? Why should any shutters be put up at all? If this was an ordinary weekday, with the “girl of fourteen” at home and working about the house, what imaginable reason could there be for putting up the shutters, which (in the absence of a shop), could only be the shutters of the “office” or the dwelling rooms? The point is puzzling, in any case; but the most reasonable answer seems to be this: That it was Bank Holiday, that the girl had been given the day off, and that the shutters were put up on the ground floor, first, to indicate to any caller that there was nobody to answer the door and secondly, as a measure of protection for the money in the office safe, which could not, of course, have been paid in to the Bank either on the Saturday evening, the Sunday or the Bank Holiday morning. In short, the shutters were put up because the house was empty, and the expression “we shut the business up” probably merely means that the work upon the books, etc., was discontinued.

The next passage to be considered is the description of the journey to Pope’s Court. It is noticeable that no mention is made anywhere of open shops or of the ordinary City traffic. On the contrary, it is distinctly asserted that “Fleet Street was choked” with red-headed folk, and that Pope’s Court was packed “like a coster’s orange-barrow.” This was in 1890, not in 1934. Even to-day, it would be difficult to find enough permanently unemployed red-headed men in London[6] to “choke” Fleet Street on a working day; in 1890, it would have been impossible. Therefore, if all these men were able to leave their work to answer an advertisement, it must have been because Bank Holiday had already released them. And can we suppose that so serious a dislocation of the traffic as the “choking” of Fleet Street would imply could have been permitted on a working day without police interference? Evidently there was no attempt at the formation of an orderly queue outside the League premises, since Spaulding was permitted to “push, pull and butt” his way through the crowd; yet we hear of no protest from the occupiers of other premises in Pope’s Court. It is evident that no business was being carried on that day in the City; the day was a Monday; therefore the day was Bank Holiday Monday. This unusual date was, doubtless, expressly chosen so that neither Wilson nor Spaulding should have any pressing reason for staying in Saxe-Coburg Square. We must remember that it was important, from the conspirators’ point of view, that both men should be free to attend at Pope’s Court, not merely so as to avoid delay and error in getting hold of the right Jabez Wilson, but also so that Spaulding[7] should be at hand to influence his employer’s decision by offering to attend to the business in his absence.

It is, no doubt, odd that Wilson should not have mentioned to Holmes that the interview took place on Bank Holiday; but in his flustered state of mind the fact had probably slipped his memory, nor was there any reason why he should attach special importance to it. It may, perhaps, be a small corroborative point that he waited until the morning following the interview before effecting the purchase of a penny bottle of ink, a quill pen and seven sheets of foolscap. True, he was in low spirits on the Monday evening, but, on the other hand, he had returned from Pope’s Court in a state of joyful excitement, and Spaulding might well have suggested the immediate purchase of the stationery, had any shops been open at the time. I do not, however, insist upon this. The most interesting and suggestive point in the narrative is, I submit, the absence of a shop-window combined with the putting-up of the shutters. It will be noticed, by the way, that the shutters were “put up for the day,” although (until he saw the crowds) Wilson could have had no reason to suppose that the interview would occupy more than a couple of hours at most. Evidently he had determined to make a day of it in any case; and this adds further weight to the argument for Bank Holiday.



NOTE ON DR. WATSON’S HANDWRITING

The only document we possess, purporting to be in the handwriting of Dr. Watson, is the sketch-map which illustrates the adventure of The Priory School .[8] It bears his name in block letters at the right-hand bottom corner, and presents at first sight an aspect of authenticity. The wording is clear, and the letters, on the whole, neatly formed, though five out of the ten small “i’s” are undotted, the small “r” is loopless and tends to degenerate into a single stroke, the capital “E” resembles a “C,” and there are variations in the forms of the capitals “R” and “T.” In any case, whoever executed this wording would, of course, be taking particular pains to make it legible and suitable for reproduction as a line-block, and it probably is very unlike the same person’s hand when writing ordinary MS. or notes.

But is the writing necessarily that of Dr. Watson? In The Naval Treaty we find a sketch-plan in exactly the same handwriting, purporting to have been drawn by Percy Phelps. In The Golden Pince-nez the identical handwriting again makes its appearance, masquerading this time as that of Stanley Hopkins.

It is possible, of course, that Watson himself re-drew the two last-mentioned sketches for the blockmaker, though, since he evidently had access to Holmes’ collection of original documents, (e.g. the letter reproduced in The Reigate Squires ) there is no obvious reason why he should have done so. It may be urged that at the time of The Naval Treaty (1888) he was married and not living in Baker Street; but this does not apply to The Golden Pince-nez , which belongs to 1894, the year of Holmes’ return.

The probability is that all three of the plans—hurriedly executed on scraps of paper—reached the blockmaker in a crumpled and dirty condition unsuitable for reproduction, and were re-drawn by him from the originals. Or, since the same artist illustrated the whole series of stories, from the Adventures to the Return , he may have done the re-drawing.

The letter in The Reigate Squires is in a different category. The exact reproduction of the original handwritings was essential, and, although we know that it was badly crumpled during Holmes’ struggle with Alec Cunningham, it was, of course, carefully ironed out and preserved as an important piece of evidence in the case; the blockmaker had to do his best with it.

It is a very curious thing that the handwriting on the blotting-paper in The Missing Three-Quarter should also bear a suspicious resemblance to that of this ubiquitous calligrapher. It is supposed, on this occasion, to be the autograph of Godfrey Staunton, written on a telegraph form with “a broad-pointed quill pen,” and blotted with “thin” post-office blotting-paper. For a document produced under these conditions, it is remarkably legible, and the ink has spread very little.

Finally, in the definitive (“Omnibus”) edition of 1928, the signature “John H. Watson” has been omitted from the map of the Priory School. This cannot be without significance. Watson doubtless felt its presence to be misleading, and had it excised from the block as a tacit admission that neither sketch nor writing was from his own hand.



[1] Mr. Bell says “early afternoon”; but Wilson’s visit, Holmes’ fifty minutes of reflection, and the journey to the City all took place before lunch. Wilson probably arrived about eleven o’clock, coming immediately from Pope’s Court, which he had reached at 10 a.m.

[2] Any one of these dates would throw the date of the dissolution of the League forward to a double-figure date (October 11th, 18th, 25th), which could not readily be mistaken for a “9.” August 25th is open to the further objection that Watson (as is clearly proved by Mr. Bell in an interesting study of The Sign of Four ) wrote his “5” rather like a “6,” without the cross-bar, so that it certainly could not have resembled a “7.”

[3] Students may object that Mr. Bell has discovered another occasion ( The Man with the Twisted Lip ) on which Watson read his own “4” as a “9” (Bell, p. 66). But I am inclined to think that here Mr. Bell’s second suggestion may be the correct one, and that Watson simply wrote “Ju. 19th,” forgetting that this abbreviation might stand either for June or for July.

[4] It is true that the Strand Magazine artist depicts the establishment with a window which appears to be intended for a shop window, but no goods are displayed there. In any case, the evidence of the illustrations is only to be accepted with caution. See Mr. Bell’s section on The Musgrave Ritual (p. 14).

[5] At the moment when he came down he was presumed to have been reading the paper, but this need only mean that he had knocked off work for a few minutes. Perhaps it was the regular time for his “elevenses.” He would not, of course, get the paper till Wilson had finished with it.

[6] The advertisement had only appeared that morning, and there was no time for applicants to come in from the provinces.

[7] Spaulding would, indeed, miss a few hours of valuable time from his tunnelling work under the empty Bank, but this would be considered of minor importance, compared with the necessity of carrying through the plot to get Wilson out of the way.

[8] Strand Magazine , February, 1904.