"The Speckled Band" - A Simple Act of Charity. New Year 1911.

Readers of Sherlock Holmes may be interested in a theatre programme I recently acquired that records an unusual occasional performance of Conan Doyle's adaptation of The Speckled Band. This post shares its content and attempts to provide some context.

1) The Pretoria Pit Disaster. 

Postcard of the Disaster (John Sharples later died).

At 7.50 am on December 21, 1910 an explosion occurred in the No 3 Bank Pit, Hulton Colliery, Westhoughton, Lancashire, that shocked a nation preparing for Yuletide festivities. It proved to be one of the worst mining disasters in British history. The Parish of Westhoughton website has an excellent account HERE & may be supplemented by the moving story of survivor Joseph Staveley recorded HERE .

As these accounts detail, a fund was at once set up to support the many bereaved families and, even as more of the dead were being recovered, Sheffield was in the vanguard in arranging a charity matinee of entertainment at its Lyceum. Under the Immediate Patronage of the late Queen's third and fourth daughters (then in their 60's), the local Telegraph Mayor, (new) Master Cutler (Arthur Balfour) and others supported an ad hoc committee of Sheffield theatre managers. It is testament to their commitment and the tragedy's impact that such performers as Lillie Langtry and Seymour Hicks were engaged gratis at such short notice.

Part 1 of the Matinee Programme

2) The Speckled Band.

At the time of the Pretoria disaster Conan Doyle was home at Windlesham with a special Christmas to celebrate. Adrian had just been born (on November 19) and would be christened on the second day of 1911. Notwithstanding this preoccupation, his permission is sought and given to include a version of his latest theatrical success in Sheffield's matinee of the 5th.

After the failure of The House of Temperley Doyle's hurriedly adapted short story had more than averted potentially heavy losses in leasing The Adelphi. Saintsbury's Holmes and Lyn Harding's Rylott had packed the theatre from June until the play's transfer to The Globe in August. That equally well-received show had closed by the end of November. In America, the less successful production starring Charles Millward would fold on December 17, after brief runs in Boston and at New York's Garrick. 

The play was due to commence a new season in 1911 under Arthur Hardy's management at The Strand. The popular Lyn Harding would return along with Christine Silver as Enid Stoner. A new Holmes for London theatregoers, O P Heggie, performed the role from February 6-25, primed with a note from the author (see HERE ). 

It is perhaps less well-known that Arthur Hardy was already touring a company that had, for example, played the Edinburgh Lyceum from 5-10 December, 1910. A playbill survives in Glasgow University's Special Collections. Holmes is Julian Royce (back in the role he played when touring the Gillette/Doyle play) and it is from this cast the Sheffield contingent was drawn (see HERE ).  

Part 2 of the Matinee Programme

Seven members of the touring company travelled to Sheffield for the afternoon to play The Baker Street Scene. In Doyle's play this is Act 2, scene 2. An online version of The Speckled Band may be read HERE . This omits Mrs Soames who is another client in other editions. Two striking omissions will be observed: Milverton is excised and of course where there's no Act 3 there can be no snake!

Julian Royce

I'd say the scene stood up well enough on its own terms offering the iconic detective in reassuringly familiar situations and surroundings. Apart from the practical need to keep things simple, perhaps this was not in any case a time for melodramatic horror. There was enough real horror in the adjoining county.

Andrew Lycett notes in his biography (p 345-60)that ACD kept a lump of coal in his study that he joked he'd gladly drop on his toe if visitors conceded there was coal in Kent ( a favoured, failed investment). I'm sure it took on a more sober meaning after Chrismas 1910.

3) Some Matters of Related Interest.

The Billboard for October 15, 1910 has an article about Charles Frohman's new production for the Boston theater in which Conan Doyle is reported to have promised to attend "the first performance of his play wherever it is presented in America" (see HERE ). I doubt he ever saw this as a feasible prospect. 

My American friend, Sherlockian Howard Ostrom, may be intrigued to learn (or did he know?) that Gilbert M (Bronco Billy) Anderson is not the only early cowboy star with a Sherlock Holmes connection. While researching I came across a reference to the early rehearsals for Frohman's "The Speckled Band": Ronald L Davis notes in his "William S Hart: Projecting the American West" (see HERE ) that Hart was hired to play Holmes in The Speckled Band but quit after one week's rehearsal, "sensing that the show was heading for disaster". In the event, Charles Millward occupied Baker Street in Boston.

Later in 1911: While, in England, A Corney Grain is known to have played the detective in The Speckled Band  on May 8 at the Southampton Grand, William Desmond began a lengthy tour of Australia and New Zealand in August for the Williamson Company.

1914: The Sydney Morning Herald for 25 April reported the imminent appearance of Julian Royce in the role made famous in England by Matheson Lang: Harry Vernon's "Mr Wu". (see HERE ). This article is of further interest in describing Charles Millward's career and current introduction to Australia.

 Royce seemed fated to follow in more famous footsteps but there is an interesting comment on his Holmes in The New Zealand Herald of 16 May 1914 (see HERE ) suggesting "the British press spoke of him as the best Sherlock Holmes ever seen". 

Julian Royce in the Gillette "Sherlock Holmes" at Kennington Theatre.

  
© Ray Wilcockson (2015) All Rights Reserved.



    

Return to New Street - Birmingham in the Sherlock Holmes Canon.

Birmingham and Aston.

I hear of Sherlock in unlikely places. There exists an establishment in Birmingham's Corporation Street I have not had reason to visit whose website addresses "Sherlock Holmes trivia buffs". I wonder if its manager is a florid-faced, elderly gentleman , with fiery red hair...

Today, Corporation Street extends from New Street and its station for some two miles all the way to the site of Conan Doyle's home circa 1880. Clifton House, Aston Road is long gone, along with much of the Victorian city. A blue plaque, erected by the civic society, commemorates the author's residence in what was then still a village.

These were formative years for Conan Doyle: as doctor, writer and man. He turned 21 as ship's surgeon aboard the Greenland whaler, Hope, during the first of two maritime adventures that punctuated extended periods in Aston as medical assistant to Dr Reginald Ratcliff Hoare who treated him more like a son than an employee.

My sense is that Hoare persisted for Conan Doyle as one of those fixed points welcome in any life. In its report of his death in 1898, the BMJ notes Dr Conan Doyle was "one of those who sent tokens of their respect". ( see column one ). The family was represented at Conan Doyle's wedding to Jean Leckie in 1907. Hoare lives on as the inspiration for Dr Horton in "The Stark-Munro Letters"...and both doctors perhaps in Sherlock Holmes's identical morning habit of smoking the dottles of a previous night's pipes. 

Birmingham would never be forgotten and just now and again finds its way into the Sherlock Holmes stories. 

The Gloria Scott.

"There had been a daughter, I heard, but she had died of diphtheria while on a visit to Birmingham." 


A poignant creation, Victor Trevor's nameless sister. Her passing mention has no plot significance but along with a deceased mother and the father's fate plays out a retribution for the original sin and leaves Victor alone in the world. 

As to the girl's particular fate, it parallels the irony of her father's - riches are no protection in this life. This is no child of the slums; diphtheria (that great leveller) takes her as readily, far from home.

River Rea shows her 3 children, Cholera, Typhoid & Diphtheria to Birmingham.

The story's internal evidence places Holmes at Donnithorpe "more than twenty years" after The Gloria Scott episode of 1855. 
Thus, in late 1892, Doyle writes essentially of Hoare's Birmingham which had endured an outbreak of diphtheria in 1871-2 and was currently bracing for a steep rise in fatalities that would peak in 1895. For me, and I suspect Dr Doyle, Victor Trevor's unnamed sister stands for thousands like her. 

The Three Gables.

"I was trainin' at the Bull Ring in Birmingham when this boy done get into trouble."

Steve Dixie is, of course, transparently lying. Holmes knows it; Dixie knows he knows it. Given the bruiser's slow wits and lack of education it is amusingly feasible to imagine he here trots out his stock alibi blissfully unaware that city's Bull Ring was (and still is) essentially a market.

Bull Ring Market, Birmingham c 1905.

 It is just as likely, however, that some of the city's boxing gyms were located in the area. Moreover, Conan Doyle appears to have kept in training during his tenure in Aston. We know he had "two pairs of battered and discolored gloves" with him on board The Hope, where he, famously, gave steward, Jack Lamb, a black eye.

Sreve Toussaint as Steve Dixie (Image Granada TV).

What is certain is that both Doyle (in 1880) and Steve Dixie (circa 1903) would need all the pugilistic skills they could muster in a Birmingham rife with gangs such as the notorious Peaky Blinders. 

The Three Garridebs.

"Howard Garrideb Constructor of Agricultural Machinery Binders, reapers, steam and hand plows, drills, harrows, farmers’ carts, buckboards, and all other appliances. Estimates for Artesian Wells Apply Grosvenor Buildings, Aston."

Doyle would be as familiar with Grosvenor Road in Aston as Sherlock Street in the city centre. Eventually, Corporation Street becomes the Lichfield Road beyond Aston Rd North and Grosvenor is by the railway station. 

So, the hapless Nathan Garrideb is packed off to a strange city 100 miles and two hours away having taken no such journey in years. There are, of course, striking similarities with REDH and STOC. In essence all three are cautionary tales ( as is ENGR). In such cases the only sensible action any of these clients take is to consult Sherlock Holmes.

Birmingham is ideal for Doyle's purposes and it is not surprising the city still calls to him in 1925  for another of its worthies has remained a constant reminder of it in the author's life: Joseph Chamberlain.

Though never Prime Minister, the Londoner who migrated to Birmingham to make screws was a towering political figure throughout the three most active decades of Conan Doyle's career (in Churchill's phrase "the one who made the weather"). The two lives converged most closely in the Boer War and during the author's failed excursions into politics. But they had passed like ships in the night long before. 

1906 postcard for Chamberlain's 70th Birthday.

The Stockbroker's Clerk.

"You are ready to come to Birmingham then?" 

Though set more than a decade apart, STOC and GLOR stand together in The Memoirs and draw on the common memory of Doyle's Midlands interlude. The former is the Birmingham story of the Canon, uniquely bringing Holmes and Watson to the streets their creator walked. 

Looking up Corporation St from New St c 1904.

The chronologers date STOC to 1888/89. For years I have mistakenly pictured 126b, the offices of the phantom Franco-Midland Hardware Company, Limited, as Dickensian in age and character. In fact, Corporation Street was barely ten years old in 1888 and would not be completed until 1903. By the time Doyle arrived, ex-Mayor Chamberlain had been elected to Parliament, but his ambitious plan to cut a swathe through the slums with a great boulevard stretching from New Street had been accepted in '76 and begun in '78. Given its number, the fictional office would be one of the newest built and likely awaiting first occupation.

Hall Pycroft relates how 'Mr Arthur Harry Pinner' suggested "a couple of hours at Day's Music Hall in the evening". 

Day's Crystal Palace 1890 programme (image Arthur Lloyd)

Day's Crystal Palace Concert Hall (later The Empire) was on the corner of Smallbrook St and Hurst St in the city centre. Opened in 1862, the name changed to Day's Crystal Palace of Varieties in 1887. It would close in September, 1893, six months after the publication of STOC. Just the place a young doctor's assistant might seek entertainment in his brief periods of leisure. 

A Tale of Two Cities & Dual Identities.

"He swears by London you know, and I by Birmingham."

The Stockbroker's Clerk may not aspire to comet vintage in the Canon but it possesses an artful symmetry of plot, character and setting, stylistically suited to a whimsical but cautionary parable of the human comedy. There is no iconic scene such as REDH offers in the bank vault; no classic moment of deduction on a par with the dog in the night. Holmes, with almost as little to do as in ENGR, is rather in connoisseur mode, chronicling (with Watson) one of those outre tales that everyday life occasionally presents. It is this kind of story and, aptly, if less comical, Pinner's tasks for Pycroft are pale and unimaginative beside Jabez Wilson's encyclopaedic marathon.

"Nothing could be better," said Holmes.

In keeping with its prosaic nature, the story opens not in Baker St but in the domestic setting of Watson's Paddington practice. Doyle takes pains to endow Hall Pycroft with idiom and vocabulary authentic to his city milieu. 

The railway journey serves two functions: its dramatic duration coincides with the clerk's relation of events and, symbolically, it represents a voyage (taken by the three travellers and the reader) from darkness to illumination.

Birmingham proves a place of ironies. In 3GAR it is merely somewhere distant to park Nathan while Killer Evans retrieves the hidden press. Here the city functions as a siren to the clerk's credulous greed and as the place of (mild) penance. It is mere good fortune (with the support of Sherlock Holmes) that he is not stung more seriously than toiling through trade directories for several nights in a New Street hotel.

For the Beddington brother who deceives Hall Pycroft, Birmingham had, similarly, seemed a cunning, inspirational plan. Ironic and retributive indeed that he should go to all the trouble and expense of renting offices and disguising himself only for events in London to confound him utterly.

One of the subtle beauties of this story lies in the way it plays with identity. It is quite the prose Comedy of Errors. Consider. One Beddington poses as both Arthur Pinner and his brother, Harry. The other (the murderer) assumes Hall Pycroft's identity. As Holmes concludes: "Human nature is a strange mixture, Watson. You see that even a villain and a murderer can inspire such affection that his brother turns to suicide when he learns that his neck is forfeited". Ironically, only then are the Beddingtons inescapably themselves.

Doyle has Shakespearean fun with this meme of dual identities and cannot resist including Holmes and Watson.
The former is presented as an accountant to Arthur Harry Pinner, the latter as a clerk. We should not miss (Watson doesn't) that Hall Pycroft can formulate a lie rather too easily for comfort. It is he who suggests the ruse of introducing "two friends of mine who are in want of a billet". And one senses Watson's disquiet in "One is Mr Harris of Bermondsey, and the other is Mr Price, of this town," said our clerk, glibly." 

Perhaps Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson provide the "Blade Straight, Steel True" image of true brotherhood.

                                                *******

The train awaits. It's goodbye Birmingham. Next stop Euston!

Further Reading.

Day's Crystal Palace: Arthur Lloyd Site Entry    
Doyle in Birmingham: Birmingham City Council Entry 
Joseph Chamberlain
Improvement Scheme: The Iron Room Entry 
Early Municipal Housing
in Birmingham:              Municipal Dreams Entry 


© Ray Wilcockson (2015) All Rights Reserved.