Musings of a Modern Day Thaddeus Sholto

When one is given to spending much of one's time dwelling alongside Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson in Victorian England, every now and then a lesson in the modern day comes in handy. Comparing the current state of the world with that of a century ago can be a pleasant enough diversion, especially when the modern world intrudes upon one's life with a force that can't be ignored. Such was the case recently, as one of your co-columnists was generously given an opportunity to see the detective of his local police force at work first hand after being picked up for waiting on a cab in his own front yard. Comparisons to Scotland Yard of Holmes's day were inescapable.

Take the work of Athelney Jones of the Yard in SIGN, for example. In the late 1880's, a detective such as Jones used certain simple techniques which obtained very quick results. If a burglary and possible murder, such as happened in SIGN, were under investigation, and the window through which a burglar might have entered was locked, the detectives course was clear: arrest everyone in the household and sort things out later.

The techniques of today's suburban police detectives are much more advanced, if the sample given this writer is any indication. Arrest is no longer necessary. A suspected prowler, spotted standing in his yard, can now be frisked and taken into the police car for questioning with the smallest expenditure of manpower, leaving the detective time for the rest of the household at his discretion.

Of course, the newspaper business has also advanced since Holmes's day. At the time of SIGN, the Standard reported on Athelney Jones's arrest of the entire Sholto household as a triumph. "The prompt and energetic action of the officers of the law shows the great advantage of the presence on such occasions of a single vigorous and masterful mind," the newspaper praised the whole affair.

Newspapers of this day and age have quite a different approach to such work on the part of the police. Instead of dwelling on the brilliance of the detectives, today's journalists often favor writing about the innocence of the questioned suspect. In the instance of the suspected prowler mentioned earlier, the newspaper article spent at least three times as many lines on the "decent, clean" attributes of the suspect as it did on the deductive processes of the detectives involved.

That's progress for you. The police get better, and so do those keeping an eye on them. It would be easy to go on comparing the Scotland Yard of the Canon to a certain suburban police department of today. But everyone has his or her job to do, and everyone makes an occasional error. Unfortunately for Lestrade, Gregson, and Jones, Sherlock Holmes was around to make their mistakes really stand out. Until Watson's stories came out, however, nobody knew of those mistakes but Holmes, Watson, and anyone else closely involved with a particular case. Times have changed.

With that in mind, one last comment has to be made. If, like Sherlock Holmes and the good Watson, Mr. Athelney Jones is still roaming this planet, finding it hard to get by on a fixed income, and looking for gainful employment . . . and if he should happen to read this, we have a tip for him. Mr. Jones, a man of your caliber would probably do well in the ranks of a certain suburban police force, the name of which can be obtained through this publication. But don't expect the good press you used to get.

(Printed in Plugs & Dottles, March 1985)