By Robyn Atcheson
As a fan of all things related to the classic Victorian detective, a seemingly mundane note in the minute books of the Belfast Board of Guardians caught my attention a few weeks ago.
On 29 August 1843, the Guardians noted that 7s. 6d. was to be paid to a Patrick Sherlock ‘for the apprehension of William Smith who absconded with Union clothing’.[1]
Belfast’s own Patrick Sherlock therefore interacted with the poor as did Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous detective several decades later. While the canon of Sherlock Holmes stories displays a rather genteel, and certainly gentlemanly, image of Victorian London, there are several references to the other side of urban life in the nineteenth century. Holmes and Watson enjoy the benefits of wealth and status from their rooms in Baker Street but certain stories illuminate the darker, poorer side of life in London. The Baker Street Irregulars, street urchins employed by Holmes to carry messages or uncover clues, are present in the very first Sherlock Holmes story ‘A Study in Scarlet’ and even have a chapter named after them in another novel ‘The Sign of the Four’. The BBC’s modern adaptation, starring Benedict Cumberbatch in the infamous deerstalker, has recreated this scheme with the use of Sherlock’s ‘homeless network’ who aid him in many of his cases.
One Holmes story in particular highlights poverty in nineteenth-century London and provides an interesting contemporary fictional perspective on the matter.
‘The Man with the Twisted Lip’ is a short story contained in the volume The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, first published in The Strand magazine in 1891. A visit from a friend on behalf of her opium-addicted husband persuades Dr Watson to venture to an opium den of disrepute near the docks in search of the addict Isa Whitney. After locating Whitney relatively quickly, Watson is about to leave when an old, wrinkled man stops him, revealing himself to be none other than Holmes in disguise. (This opening sequence was recently referenced in the BBC’s ‘His Last Vow’ episode.) In the original story Holmes informs Watson that he is working on the case of Neville St Clair, a wealthy gentleman from Kent who had mysteriously disappeared. St Clair, thirty-seven years of age with a wife and two children ‘had no occupation, but was interested in several companies and went into town as a rule in the morning, returning by the 5.14 from Cannon Street every night.’ Mrs St Clair took an unexpected trip to London and was shocked to see her husband’s face, crying in anguish, in the second-floor window above the opium den. On investigation, police discovered that the room was used by a cripple, a professional beggar. St Clair’s clothes were found in the room, as well as ‘traces of blood … seen upon the windowsill’; his coat washed ashore the next day with 421 pennies and 270 halfpennies in the pockets. Holmes believes St Clair to have been murdered and the beggar, Hugh Boone, was arrested.
Holmes describes the suspect to his companion: ‘His appearance, you see, is so remarkable that no one can pass him without observing him. A shock of orange hair, a pale face disfigured by a horrible scar, which, by its contraction, has turned up the outer edge of his upper lip, a bulldog chin and a pair of very penetrating dark eyes, which present a singular contrast to the colour of his hair, all mark him out from amid the common crowd of mendicants and so, too, does his wit, for he is ever ready with a reply to any piece of chaff which may be thrown at him by the passers-by.’
The seemingly simple case is complicated further when Holmes and Watson call on Mrs St Clair in Kent to discover that she has received a letter, undeniably from her husband. While Watson sleeps, Holmes ponders the problem with his pipe, eventually wakening Watson early the next morning to reveal the solution. Returning to London, Holmes visits the beggar Boone in his cell in Bow Street and while Boone sleeps, washes his face until his image turned from that of a beggar to that of Mr Neville St Clair.
St Clair admits to Holmes that his ‘job’ in the city was begging. As a young man reporting for an evening paper, St Clair had once acted as a beggar for an article, using the secrets of make-up he had learned from an interest in acting. Shocked at how much money he was able to make, St Clair returned to the scheme when he needed to pay off a debt and then decided to quit his job as a reporter, describing the decision as ‘a long fight between my pride and the money’.
‘I do not mean that any beggar in the streets of London could earn £700 a year – which is less than my average takings – but I had exceptional advantages in my power of making up, and also in a facility of repartee, which improved by practice and made me quite a recognised character in the City. All day a stream of pennies, varied by silver, poured in upon me, and it was a very bad day in which I failed to take two pounds.’
The remarkable tale of the man with the twisted lip is an interesting glimpse into perceptions of poverty in Victorian London. While marvelling at the explanation, neither Watson as narrator nor any other character present, questions its validity. Are we, the twenty-first century reader, then meant to infer that it was possible for a beggar to make this amount of money in 1890s London?
Regardless of the amount made by such endeavours, the general attitude towards begging is clear. After hearing St Clair’s explanation, Holmes asks how he had avoided prosecution for begging to which St Clair replies that he was prosecuted ‘many times; but what was a fine to me?’ Not only was begging illegal under the Vagrancy Act of 1824 but it was considered a disgraceful act, publicly parading poverty on the street. Even St Clair himself is embarrassed by his occupation, clearly desperate to hide the truth from his family; ‘I would have endured imprisonment, ay, even execution, rather than have left my miserable secret as a family blot to my children.’ ‘God help me, I would not have them ashamed of their father. My God! What an exposure! What can I do?’ This shame, so feared by St Clair, was, however, nothing compared to the shame and fear of poverty itself. The author, Conan Doyle, could relate to the fear of poverty. His father, Charles Doyle, was an alcoholic and ended up in an asylum, throwing his family into periods of poverty while Arthur was a child.
A final interesting point to take away from Holmes’s encounter with poverty in this tale is that Neville St Clair lived this double life for years without being discovered. The dichotomy between rich and poor was, and arguably remains, a huge societal gap. How St Clair flitted between one and the other is definitely an interesting statement on the superficial aspects of poverty; his clothes, hair, make up and mannerisms that enabled others to classify him as either ‘rich’ or ‘poor’. For as Benjamin Disraeli stated in ‘Sybil’ in 1845:
‘Two nations between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy; who are ignorant of each other’s habits, thoughts and feelings, as if they were dwellers in different zones or inhabitants of different planets; who are formed by different breeding, are fed by different food, are ordered by different manners, and are not governed by the same laws … THE RICH AND THE POOR.’
[1] Public Records Office Northern Ireland, BG/7/A/3.
The School of History and Anthropology, in conjunction with the Institute for Collaborative Research in the Humanities, is hosting a conference in Clifton House, Belfast, 11-12 April 2014 entitled ‘Poverty and Famine in Ireland: The Great Famine, its contexts and legacy’. The programme can be found below. It is open to any and all who would like to attend though for reasons of space and catering it is limited to approx. 50-60 attendees. If you would like to attend please contact Georgina Laragy by email g.laragy@qub.ac.uk as soon as you decide. Admission is free and all are welcome. The conference will hear from some of the leading researchers in the field and it should be a excellent event.