"Upon Meeting A Canonical Criminal"

Suppose for a moment that you were to suddenly find yourself mystically transported to the world of Sherlock Holmes. A bowler is at once upon your head, and an ulster covers your clothes. For our female readers this is still a legitimate image, as an ulster and hat are the height of adventuress fashion -- just ask Irene Adler. You smell the putrid yellow fog and watch the hansoms pass the gaslit corner on which you stand. In this land of the Canon, you are introduced to a stranger whose profession is simply given as "criminal."

What should your proper reaction be?

Well, forget Emily Post . . . forget Amy Vanderbilt . . . forget anything your mother taught you about being polite. Run for your life. Why? Simple probability.

Nearly 55% of all criminals in the Sherlock Holmes adventures are murderers. Oh, the stranger may only be a wife deserter, a horse race fixer, a payer of bribes, or a passer of phony coins, but don't count on it. Together those categories make up only 2% of the total Canonical criminal population. And due to the overlap involved with those of a lawless nature (those who commit one kind of crime are often guilty of other types as well), some of that 2% might still be murderers as well.

Like we said, run for it

Murderers are the most plentiful type of villain in the Watsonian chronicles, followed by thieves (15%), kidnappers (8%), and those guilty of criminal assault (also 8%). Beyond that, the next most abundant form of Canonical criminal is the vaguely-referred-to "man of bad character" at 6%. How wonderful the Victorian era was that way! If you knew your neighbor was guilty of something, yet you couldn't get the goods on him, all you needed to do was refer to him as a "man of bad character." Dr. Watson probably avoided a good many lawsuits this way, as who would sue for libel simply because someone wrote that their personality was less than delightful?

Of much more certain criminality were the robbers of the Canon, men like Sutton and Cartwright, or Biddle, Hayward, and Moffat. A solid 5% of the wrongdoers of the Watsonworks were robbers, and you needn't worry about that uncertain "overlap" factor here. All the robbers of the Canon were also killers. It seems to go with the job. Robbers are a traditionally minded lot that way -- they all kill and they all work in gangs. So if the criminal you've been introduced to is by himself, you're in luck -- he's probably not a robber. The chances are still one out of two that he or she has the killer instinct, but at least you'll know you weren't done in by a robber. A comforting thought.

At 4% each we find swindlers, spies, and a category lumping together miscellaneous aiders, abetters, and evidence concealers. Next, at 3%, come forgers, blackmailers and traitors, pretty specialized bits of law-breaking. But go further to those criminal classes which each take up only 2% of the total, and you find even more specialization: coiners, those who only hire criminals to do their dirty work, and those two common household pests, wife beaters and dog abusers. The dog abusers are a particularly sick lot, tending to use more imagination in their crimes, for some reason, than they would if they were working their atrocities on humans. No villain of the Canon ever thought of feeding a man to another man or setting a member of his household aflame. But when it comes to canines, these dastardly cretins ran amok.

Of the criminal groups that remain (totaling 1%), one has to wonder if there isn't some connection. Bigamists, suicides, and masterminds . . . they are all people with decidedly different ways of looking at the world. But let us suppose worse comes to worse, and the stranger you are introduced to on that Canonical streetcorner in that Watson-penned world is the worst offender of all. He has stolen, black-mailed, concealed evidence, rigged a horse race, deserted a fiancee, assaulted patrons of country pubs, and even killed a dog in a most calculated manner. He has, in all, performed more various criminal acts than any other criminal whose misdeeds are recorded in the Canon, and could, altogether too easily, have been called a "man of bad character." Standing face to face with this most ambitious malefactor, what would you do? You know the answer.

Say: "Hello, Mr. Sherlock Holmes."

(Printed in Plugs & Dottles, September 1985)