“Is alcohol permitted?” [MAZA]
In the Sherlockian world, the saying made famous by John Bennett Shaw, BSI ("The Hans Sloane of My Age") is "All you need for a Sherlockian meeting is two Sherlockians and a bottle. In a pinch, dispense with the other Sherlockian."
But alcohol can be bit of a touchy subject. It's not everyone's thing, and for some, there may be negative connotations. Arthur Conan Doyle's father Charles Doyle was an alcoholic, and there's no doubt that the effects (some of which resulted in the elder Doyle being institutionalized) had a lasting effect.
We see it crop up in certain stories, such as in "The Cardboard Box," in which Jim Browner, an reformed alcoholic, went on a bender and killed his wife and her lover:
“I broke my blue ribbon and began to drink again”
We also saw tinges of the evil spirits in Henry Baker's hat, as evidenced by Holmes's characterization:
“He had foresight, but has less now than formerly, pointing to a moral retrogression, which, when taken with the decline of his fortunes, seems to indicate some evil influence, probably drink, at work upon him. This may account also for the obvious fact that his wife has ceased to love him.”
Watson's brother was an alcoholic, as we learned in The Sign of Four, which led to Watson's erroneous diagnosis of the Dundas separation case in "A Case of Identity":
“There is, of course, the other woman, the drink, the push, the blow, the bruise, the sympathetic sister or landlady.”
Holmes was quick to disprove Watson's theory:
“The husband was a teetotaler, there was no other woman, and the conduct complained of was that he had drifted into the habit of winding up every meal by taking out his false teeth and hurling them at his wife,”
So much for the evil influence of drink.
For a deeper dive on this, see Trifles Episode 335 -Alcoholism) and Episode 21 and Episode 22 - Pubs & Taverns.
Meanwhile, let's see what the boys at Baker Street Elementary are learning about it...
Baker Street Elementary follows the original adventures of Sherlock Holmes and John Watson, as they and their friends work through the issues of elementary school in Victorian London. An archive of all previous episodes can be viewed at the Baker Street Elementary website.
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