More Research-reading Sherlock- Modern Communications– by Alicia Rasley

Alicia Rasley
March 2, 2025

Sherlock and Modern Communications

In 1876 Thomas Watson, a young engineer, was summoned by a peremptory British colleague: “Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you.” This was the first telephone call by Alexander Graham Bell.

Coincidentally, a few years later, another peremptory Brit summoned another Watson: “Watson: Come at once if convenient. If inconvenient, come all the same.”

This is the telegram Holmes sends to his comrade in “The Adventure of the Creeping Man.” And it shows the casual use Holmes makes of transformative communications technology.

Holmes and Watson, who grew up in the greatest era of telegraphy, employed the “wire” in their work. Holmes was frequently cabling Watson in London and across the country, checking up on criminals in the distant United States, and receiving frantic requests from clients. They were the earliest of “early adopters”, quick to take advantage of technological advancements.

Telegraph.

The first telegram was sent by inventor Samuel Morse in 1844, plaintively asking, “What hath God wrought?” This 19^th Century communication system gave the world 169 years of service, but was finally superseded by the telephone and email and electronic transmissions. The last telegram was sent 14th July 2013.

Prior to the 1840s, communication could go only as fast as the speediest horse and ship, about 20 miles an hour. But the railroad system and the new technology of telegraphy made ferreting out information much more efficient for Detective Holmes. In-country telegraphy became available at British railroad stations in 1850s, and soon cables were laid under the channel to the continent. So in “The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans,” Holmes was able to cable Italy and receive a response within a few hours.

The first transatlantic cable – an immense achievement—was laid in the 1860s, but it took another decade to achieve relatively reliable telegraph traffic from Europe to North America. After that, Holmes could use the telegraph to get information from the United States and Canada. For example, in “The Adventure of the Dancing Men,” he telegraphed New York inquiring about the man who sent cryptic and threatening coded messages to a young woman. Soon the American detective responded with the dramatic revelation that the suspect was a Chicago crime lord.

Sending a telegram required both equipment and an equipment operator, supplied by the company British Telegraph. Usually Holmes would go to the nearest telegraph office, write the message on notepaper, and the operator would use Morse code to transmit it to the recipient office. Telegrams were charged at a tuppence a word, and Watson often pointed out when Holmes wrote a long and expensive message.

Receiving the reply was simpler for Holmes. The message would be typed onto yellow paper and delivered by a messenger, usually a young boy in a spruce uniform.

Of course, Sherlock did like to complicate matters. In “The Hound of the Baskervilles,” he sent Watson to Devon to search for the killer hound, instructing him to cable any news back to London. But in fact, he didn’t trust Watson to handle everything on his own, so he hid out on the local moor to supervise. He used an elaborate system of Devon-to-London-to-Devon telegraphing (and an energetic local boy carrying messages to and from the telegraph office) so he could hide on Dartmoor and observe the mysterious activity. By telegraphing back and forth to London, he received and responded to Dr. Watson’s daily cabled reports. This allowed him to fool poor Watson (who was, admittedly, easy to fool) think he was in charge.

The Telegraph Boy by Richard Gutschmidt 1902

Often an adventure would start with Holmes receiving a telegram from an importunate potential client. In “The Adventure of the Missing Three-Quarter,” Watson recounts,

We were fairly accustomed to receive weird telegrams at Baker Street, but I have a particular recollection of one which reached us on a gloomy February morning some seven or eight years ago and gave Mr. Sherlock Holmes a puzzled quarter of an hour. It was addressed to him, and ran thus:

“Please await me. Terrible misfortune. Right wing three-quarter missing; indispensable to-morrow. — Overton.”

“Strand post-mark and dispatched ten-thirty-six,” said Holmes, reading it over and over. “Mr. Overton was evidently considerably excited when he sent it, and somewhat incoherent in consequence. Well, well, he will be here, I dare say, by the time I have looked through the Times, and then we shall know all about it. Even the most insignificant problem would be welcome in these stagnant days.”

(They both puzzled over that “missing three-quarter,” but it turned out to refer to a rugby player.)

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Even after the telephone became more common in the 1890s, Holmes still made extensive use of the telegraph. In fact, the telegraph office and the telephone exchange were usually in the same building in a town.

In “The Adventure of the Retired Colourman,” Holmes used both to trick poor Watson into taking the suspect on a wild goose chase into the countryside. He told Watson to wait until evening and then send back a telegram with the message “Bolted!”

So Mr. Amberley and I found ourselves on the roadside in what seemed to me to be the most primitive village in England. We made for the telegraph office, but it was already closed. There was a telephone, however, at the little Railway Arms, and by it I got into touch with Holmes, who shared in our amazement at the result of our journey.

Watson had a bad night in a bad inn with the suspected murderer. When he arrived back home, he found that Holmes had arranged this frustrating day and the late-night telegram to give him a chance to burgle the suspect’s house and find the bodies. Somehow, as he did in “The Baskervilles,” Watson forgave him for the deception.

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Telephone.

The telephone was a later invention (patented in the 1870s), and took decades to become common in Great Britain. Later in the series, Holmes became more sedentary, and the married Dr. Watson wasn’t as available for cross-country fact-finding expeditions. Holmes had a phone installed at 221B Baker Street, and made good use of it. In “The Adventure of the Retired Colourman,” set in 1898, he boasted, “Thanks to the telephone and the help of the Yard, I can usually get my essentials without leaving this room.”

Illustration by Howard K. Elcock

By 1902, there were enough Londoners with phones to require a phone book. So Watson could use the new telephone directory to track down the oddly named man “Garrideb”:
The telephone directory lay on the table beside me, and I turned over the pages in a rather hopeless quest. But to my amazement there was this strange name in its due place. I gave a cry of triumph. “Here you are, Holmes! Here it is!”

Holmes responded, “We must now find out if our other correspondent is a fraud also. Just ring him up, Watson.“

Soon Holmes encountered an “illustrious client” with an even more advanced phone arrangement and a wariness of public phone directories. He told Holmes, “In case of emergency, there is a private telephone call, ‘XX.31.’” So even in the dawn of the telephone age, some celebrities went for unlisted phone numbers.