The Chronology Corner

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A Study in Scarlet
SIGNIFICANT YEAR REFERENCE:
"In the year 1878 I took my degree of Doctor of Medicine of the University of London . . ."
SIGNIFICANT HISTORICAL TIE-IN:
"I was removed from my brigade and attached to the Berkshires, with whom I served at the fatal battle of Maiwand." (June 27, 1880.)
SIGNIFICANT PASSAGE OF TIME:
"I was removed, with a great train of wounded sufferers, to the base hospital at Peshawar . . . improved . . . was struck down by enteric fever . . . . For months my life was despaired of, and when at last I came to myself . . . I was despatched . . . landed a month later on Portsmouth jetty, with my health irretrievably ruined, but with permission from a paternal government to spend the next nine months in attempting to improve it . . . London . . .There I stayed for some time at a private hotel in the Strand . . . I soon realized . . . that I must make a complete alteration in my style of living."
SIGNIFICANT YEAR REFERENCE OF
QUESTIONABLE VALUE:
"There was the case of Von Bischoff at Frankfort last year."
KEY WATSON DATE OF CASE:
"It was upon the 4th of March, as I have good reason to remember, that I rose somewhat earlier than usual, and found that Sherlock Holmes had not yet finished his breakfast."
KEY HISTORICAL REFERENCE OF THE CASE:
"I want to go to Halle’s concert to hear Norman Neruda this afternoon."
SEEMING BAD REPORTAGE BY THE STANDARD:
"The two bade adieu to their landlady upon Tuesday, the 4th inst., and departed to Euston Station with the avowed intention of catching the Liverpool express. They were afterwards seen together upon the platform. Nothing more is known of them until Mr. Drebber’s body was, as recorded, discovered in an empty house in the Brixton Road, many miles from Euston."
LESTRADE CONFIRMS WATSON:
"They had been seen together at Euston Station about half-past eight on the evening of the 3rd. At two in the morning Drebber had been found in the Brixton Road."
"On Thursday the prisoner will be brought before the magistrates, and your attendance will be required."
WHAT THE BARING-GOULD ANNOTATED SAYS:
March 4, 1881. Of course, Bring-Gould’s original thought in a 1948 BSJ was March 4, 1882. Methinks he bowed to popular opinion.
WHAT ZEISLER, THE KING OF CHRONOLOGY, SAYS:
March 4, 1881. He does reiterate a nice point about Holmes and Watson meeting at Bart’s on January 1st, because the lab was empty, something we might make use of later.
THE BIRLSTONE RAILWAY’S TIMETABLE:
Call me contrary, but certain warped impulse has always made me want to go with that "bad" Standard date. As March 4 fell on a Tuesday in 1884, The Standard would seem to be placing the date at March 4, 1884. If Watson copied from actual newspaper clippings in his scrapbook, this could be a very reliable date. It would mean, of course, that "Speckled Band" actually took place *before* the Drebber-Stangerson murders, and Watson’s desire to write a novel of tragic romance in America caused him to condense time in his first chronicle of Holmes, making a later case his first with the detective.
In his original introduction to "The Date Being . . ." Andrew Jay Peck makes a good case for the Moriarty-involved opening of The Valley of Fear having been transplanted on to the Birlstone case, which didn’t necessarily involve Moriarty. He cites the precedence of the mind-reading passage from "The Resident Patient," which we all know was transplanted from the suppressed tale "The Cardboard Box." I think a good case can be similarly made for separating the "meeting Sherlock Holmes" portion of STUD from the "Drebber case" portion. The coincidence of Holmes getting a letter from Gregson just as the consulting detective concludes an explanation of his trade seems a bit much (like something from fiction, for heaven’s sake!), but the transplant notion explains even that quite nicely.
I have to conclude that the initial meeting, the days of Watson studying Holmes, and the incident of the article "The Book of Life" all took place some time long before March 4, 1884, the obvious beginning of the true Study in Scarlet.

The Sign of the Four
CURRENT STATE OF HOLMES’S DRUG HABIT:
"Three times a day for many months I had witnessed this performance . . ."
CURRENT STATE OF WATSON’S HEALTH:
"My constitution has not got over the Afghan campaign yet."
"What was I, an army surgeon with a weak leg and a weaker banking account, that I should dare to think of such things?"
SIGNIFICANT REFERENCE TO ANOTHER CASE:
"But you have yourself had some experience of my methods of work in the Jefferson Hope case."
SIGNIFICANT PASSAGES OF TIME:
"More than once during the years that I had lived with him in Baker Street . . ."
"For weeks and for months we dug and delved in every part of the garden without discovering its whereabouts."
SIGNIFICANT EVENT REFERENCE
OF QUESTIONABLE VALUE:
"I was consulted last week by Francois le Villard, who, as you probably know, has come rather to the front lately in the French detective service."
THE MANY DATES OF MARY MORSTAN:
"I was quite a child . . . placed . . . in a comfortable boarding establishment at Edinburgh, and there I remained until I was seventeen years of age. In the year 1878 my father, who was senior captain of his regiment, obtained twelve months’ leave and came home. He . . . directed me to come down at once."
"On reaching London I drove to the Langham and was informed that Captain Morstan was staying there, but that he had gone out the night before and had not returned."
"He disappeared upon the third of December, 1878 — nearly ten years ago."
"If she were seventeen at the time of her father’s disappearance she must be seven-and-twenty now — a sweet age . . ."
THE YEARLY PEARL DELIVERY:
"About six years ago — to be exact, upon the fourth of May, 1882 — an advertisement appeared in the Times asking for the address of Miss Mary Morstan . . ."
"I published my address in the advertisement column. The same day there arrived through the post a small cardboard box addressed to me, which I found to contain a very large and lustrous pearl."
"Since then every year upon the same date there has always appeared a similar box, containing a similar pearl, without any clue as to the sender."
"She . . . showed me six of the finest pearls that I had ever seen."
SIGNIFICANT MONTH AND DAY REFERENCE:
"This morning I received this letter . . ."
"Post-mark, London, S. W. Date, July 7."
"Be at the third pillar from the left outside the Lyceum Theatre to-night at seven o’clock."
"LOST — Whereas Mordecai Smith, boatman, and his son Jim, left Smith’s Wharf at or about three o’clock last Tuesday morning . . ."
THE DATES OF MAJOR SHOLTO:
"He retired some eleven years ago . . ."
"The major had retired some little time before." (Captain Morstan’s disappearance)
"I have just found, on consulting the back files of the Times, that Major Sholto, of Upper Norwood, late of the Thirty-fourth Bombay Infantry, died upon the twenty-eighth of April, 1882."
"Captain Morstan disappears. . . . Four years later Sholto dies."
"Early in 1882 my father received a letter from India which was a great shock to him. He had suffered for years from an enlarged spleen, but he now became rapidly worse, and towards the end of April we were informed that he was beyond all hope . . ."
SIGNIFICANT MONTH REFERENCE:
"It was a September evening and not yet seven o’clock, but the day had been a dreary one, and a dense drizzly fog lay low upon the great city. Mud-coloured clouds drooped sadly over the muddy streets.
SIGNIFICANT PRIOR ACQUAINTANCES:
Holmes to McMurdo: "Don’t you remember that amateur who fought three rounds with you at Alison’s rooms on the night of your benefit four years back?"
Athelney Jones: "It’s Mr. Sherlock Holmes, the theorist. Remember you! I’ll never forget how you lectured us all on causes and inferences and effects in the Bishopgate jewel case."
WHAT THE BARING-GOULD ANNOTATED SAYS:
September 18, 1888. There’s long been two camps on SIGN, the July camp and the September camp, and Baring-Gould is firmly on the September side. Of course, there’s always one person who goes completely off the chart . . .
WHAT ZEISLER, THE KING OF CHRONOLOGY, SAYS:
April 16, 1888. Zeisler trusts Watson’s mentions of twilight and moonlight as if the doctor was an astronomer, yet doesn’t believe Watson knows what month it is?
THE BIRLSTONE RAILWAY’S TIMETABLE:
The year in which The Sign of the Four occurs would seem a straightforward calculation. Captain Morstan’s disappearance, December 3, 1878 is described as "nearly ten years ago." The ad in the May 4, 1882 newspaper is described as "about six years ago." Holmes’s research seems to back up these dates.
The next choice one has to make when pondering the dates of SIGN is whether one wants to go with Mary Morstan’s "This morning I received this letter" (said letter postmarked July 7) or Dr. Watson’s "It was a September evening . . ." As Keefauver’s First Rule of Chronology is "Trust Dr. Watson," I have to go with September. Apparently most of my predecessors do as well, making Holmes’s statement "Women are never to be trusted" from this case especially timely.
Why was Holmes so emphatic about the untrustworthiness of women when Watson announces his engagement to Mary Morstan? Is it that he really doesn’t trust women in general, or that he’s trying to break the news of Morstan’s duplicity to his friend? That envelope postmarked July 8 seems ample evidence for collusion between Mary Morstan and Thaddeus Sholto, who were simply using Holmes and Watson to force Bartholomew Sholto to play straight in dividing up the treasure. Add to that bit of evidence the fact that Mary Morstan shows the Baker Street boys six pearls when anyone who does the math knows she should have seven, and her credibility breaks down rather swiftly. Holmes knew this was not a woman to be trusted. (And this chronologist is also very fond of the script of Crucifer of Blood.)
As for the exact date, we know the case starts on a Tuesday, thanks to Holmes’s ad. Watson’s opening words, "Three times a day for many months I had witnessed this performance," lead me to believe that it was the first Tuesday in September, as the three summer months would be a natural bracket for Watson to track Holmes’s drug habit in. Thus, the Birlstone Railway Timetable has to go with Tuesday, September 4, 1888 for the start of this case.
It might be noticed that I’m dating SIGN based on internal evidence and, for the moment, totally ignoring Watson’s marital status in other tales. Well, as Sherlock Holmes once said "It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts."
My feeling is that presupposing Mary Morstan to be the only wife Dr. Watson ever had is definitely theorizing before the data. Thus, Keefauver’s Second Rule of Chronology states: "It is a capital mistake to theorize marriages before one has dates. Insensibly one begins to twist dates to suit marriages, instead of marriages to suit dates." (And we all know that dating must properly come before marriage!)

"A Scandal in Bohemia"
KEY WATSON DATE OF CASE:
" . . . it was on the twentieth of March, 1888 . . ."
KEY WATSONIAN EVENT:
"I had seen little of Holmes lately. My marriage had drifted us away from each other."
SIGNIFICANT PASSAGE OF TIME:
"Then I must begin by binding you both to absolute secrecy for two years . . ." says the king. "A Scandal in Bohemia" was published in July of 1891.
THE MANY DATES OF IRENE ADLER:
"Born in New Jersey in the year 1858."
"Some five years ago, during a lengthy visit to Warsaw, I (the King) made the acquaintance of the well-known adventuress, Irene Adler." (As Irene had "Prima Donna of the Imperial Opera of Warsaw" in her bio, it would seem she attained that position around the age of 25, also, it would seem, the age of the King at that time. "I am but thirty now.")
According to Watson’s date of the story, Irene married Godfrey Norton on March 21, 1888. (A Wednesday.)
WHAT THE BARING-GOULD ANNOTATED SAYS:
May 20, 1887. How Baring-Gould can, in good conscience, print that date on a page facing a date Watson which writes as March 20, 1888 is beyond me. If Watson was mistaken, shouldn’t a good editor fix that mistake? And if Watson *wasn’t* mistaken, shouldn’t a good Sherlockian agree with him?
WHAT ZEISLER, THE KING OF CHRONOLOGY, SAYS:
March 22, 1889. Here’s a prime example of twisting dates to fit marriages. Zeisler thinks Watson met Mary Morstan in April of 1888. That being the case, there’s no way Watson can be married to her a month earlier. Thus SCAN becomes the square peg that must be pounded into that round hole, and if said pounding must destroy Watson’s best date reference, so be it. THE BIRLSTONE RAILWAY’S TIMETABLE:
This tale seems to make chronologists crazy, but I really have to go with Watson on this one. He’s clear and precise this time with no internal contradictions. As this was his first short story, the good doctor probably paid greater attention to detail on SCAN than any other tale. Let the marriages fall where they may -- in my book SCAN is rock solid at March 20, 1888.

"The Red-Headed League"
KEY WATSON DATES OF THE CASE:
"I had called upon my friend, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, one day in the autumn of
last year . . ."
"It is The Morning Chronicle of April 27, 1890. Just two months ago."
"THE RED-HEADED LEAGUE IS DISSOLVED. October 9, 1890."
SIGNIFICANT CANONICAL TIE-IN:
"You will remember that I remarked the other day, just before we went
into the very simple problem presented by Miss Mary Sutherland . . ."
WILSON’S ACCOUNT OF TIME PASSED:
"Will you be ready to-morrow?" (Duncan Ross’s words to Wilson on the day of the newspaper ad.
"This went on day after day, Mr. Holmes, and on Saturday the manager came in and planked down four golden sovereigns for my week’s work. It was the same next week, and the same the week after."
"Eight weeks passed away like this . . ."
"And no later than this morning. I went to my work as usual at ten o’clock, but the door was shut and locked, with a little square of card-board hammered on to the middle of the panel with a tack. Here it is, and you can read for yourself."
"THE RED-HEADED LEAGUE IS DISSOLVED. October 9, 1890."
"This assistant of yours who first called your attention to the advertisement — how long had he been with you?"
"About a month then."
HOLMES’S DETECTION SCHEDULE:
"To-day is Saturday, and I hope that by Monday we may come to a conclusion."
KEY HISTORICAL REFERENCE OF THE CASE:
"Sarasate plays at the St. James’s Hall this afternoon."
SIGNIFICANT PRIOR ACQUAINTANCES:
"Watson, I think you know Mr. Jones, of Scotland Yard?"
"I have had one or two little scores of my own to settle with Mr. John Clay."
BANKER MERRYWEATHER’S RECORD
1404 CONSECUTIVE WEEKLY RUBBERS:
"It is the first Saturday night for seven-and-twenty years that I have not had my rubber."
WHAT THE BARING-GOULD ANNOTATED SAYS:
October 29, 1887.
WHAT ZEISLER, THE KING OF CHRONOLOGY, SAYS:
October 19, 1889.
THE BIRLSTONE RAILWAY’S TIMETABLE:
Well, at least the year seems a no-brainer on this one: 1890. And the day does seem to be Saturday, the day of concerts and rubbers of whist. But when Watson starts telling us that April 27 was two months prior to October 9, all chronological Hell seems about to break loose.
But is Watson the true culprit here? The good doctor occasionally seems to be blamed by chronologists for quoting what came out of the client’s mouths inaccurately, when those clients may have been totally in the wrong to begin with. (Think about it -- most of them are in no frame of mind to cite accurate dates.) I’ve gone on record prior to this stating that Wilson was lying about his true twenty-four weeks of work to keep Holmes’s fee down ("Upon the Relative Reliability of Watson and Wilson," Baker Street Journal, June 1983), and will stick with that thought. October 9 was the date on that sign. April 27 was the date on the newspaper. Both are pieces of physical evidence actually presented to Holmes and Watson, and yet Jabez Wilson keeps referring to the interval between as eight weeks, even though the digging of a tunnel and copying of all that encyclopaedia material would both fit more comfortably into a twenty-four week span. Plainly, Wilson is lying.
All the Saturday evidence, however, makes me now agree with chronologists like Blakeney, Dakin, Hall, and Thomson . . . October 11 has to be the beginning date of the case. "Duncan Ross" just didn’t know exactly what day it was when he wrote the sign, or else was a little bit late in posting it after he originally wrote it. So the Smash’s final judgement this time out: Saturday, October 11, 1890.

"A Case of Identity"
NOTABLE SINGLE RESIDENT AT BAKER STREET:
". . . Sherlock Holmes as we sat on either side of the fire in his lodgings at Baker Street."
UNCHRONICLED CASE REFERENCE:
"But here" — I picked up the morning paper from the ground — "let us put it to a practical test. Here is the first heading upon which I come. ‘A husband’s cruelty to his wife.’"
"This is the Dundas separation case, and, as it happens, I was engaged in clearing up some small points in connection with it."
SIGNIFICANT PASSAGE OF TIME:
"Ah," said he, "I forgot that I had not seen you for some weeks. It is a little souvenir from the King of Bohemia in return for my assistance in the case of the Irene Adler papers."
NOTABLE STATE OF WATSON’S WRITING CAREER:
"I cannot confide it even to you, who have been good enough to chronicle one or two of my little problems."
PRIOR ACQUAINTANCE OF QUESTIONABLE VALUE:
"I came to you, sir, because I heard of you from Mrs. Etherege, whose husband you found so easy when the police and everyone had given him up for dead."
AGE REFERENCES OF QUESTIONABLE VALUE:
"Yes, my stepfather. I call him father, though it sounds funny, too, for he is only five years and two months older than myself."
". . . she married again so soon after father’s death, and a man who was nearly fifteen years younger than herself."
SIGNIFICANT DAY REFERENCES:
"That was last Friday, Mr. Holmes, and I have never seen or heard anything since then to throw any light upon what became of him."
"I advertised for him in last Saturday’s Chronicle."
"Missing [it said] on the morning of the fourteenth, a gentleman named Hosmer Angel."
EVENT REFERENCE OF QUESTIONABLE VALUE:
"You will find parallel cases, if you consult my index, in Andover in ‘77, and there was something of the sort at The Hague last year."
SIGNIFICANT REFERENCES TO PRIOR CASES:
"Once only had I known him to fail, in the case of the King of Bohemia and of the Irene Adler photograph; but when I looked back to the weird business of ‘The Sign of Four’, and the extraordinary circumstances connected with ‘A Study in Scarlet’, I felt that it would be a strange tangle indeed which he could not unravel.
STATE OF WATSON’S MEDICAL PRACTICE:
"A professional case of great gravity was engaging my own attention at the
time, and the whole of next day I was busy at the bedside of the sufferer."
WHAT THE BARING-GOULD ANNOTATED SAYS:
October 18, 1887.
WHAT ZEISLER, THE KING OF CHRONOLOGY, SAYS:
October 9, 1889.
THE BIRLSTONE RAILWAY’S TIMETABLE:
Spring is the time of courtship and mating urges, and it is spring to which we must inevitably consign "A Case of Identity," based on biology alone. Weeks have passed since Holmes saw Watson, and the detective has been rewarded for the Adler affair in that time, easily placing this case in spring of 1888, weeks after the late March doings of SCAN.
The ad in the Saturday paper advertises that Hosmer Angel is missing as of the morning of the 14th, which many chronologists assume means that the 14th was the day of the intended wedding (Friday). To me, Hosmer Angel wasn’t truly missing until the next night had passed without a word from him, and since the 14th of April 1888 falls handily on a Saturday, it seems to fill the bill quite nicely. Since Miss Sutherland has demonstrated her speed in taking recourse by getting the ad in Saturday’s paper following Friday’s wedding desertion, I have no doubt that she was on Holmes’s doorstep by Monday, making my date for this case’s beginning: Monday, April 16, 1888.
(One note of defense against an obvious question: When Holmes refers to "the other day, just before we went into the very simple problem presented by Miss Mary Sutherland" in October of 1890 (in REDH), he is not necessarily referring to IDEN. Like every good businessman, Sherlock Holmes did have repeat customers. As for the reference to SIGN, Watson is simply thinking about it as he writes the tale -- we can’t expect him to remember every though from years before.)

"The Boscombe Valley Mystery"
WATSON’S MARITAL STATE:
"We were seated at breakfast one morning, my wife and I . . ."
STATE OF WATSON’S PRACTICE:
"I have a fairly long list at present."
"Oh, Anstruther would do your work for you."
CURIOUS REFERENCE, NOT NECESSARILY
REFERRING TO MRS. WATSON:
"I should be ungrateful if I were not, seeing what I gained through one of them."
HOLMES’S STATEMENT OF THE DATE:
"On June 3d, that is, on Monday last, McCarthy left his house . . ."
"Under these circumstances the young man was instantly arrested, and a verdict of ‘wilful murder’ having been returned at the inquest on Tuesday, he was on Wednesday brought before the magistrates at Ross."
PREVIOUS ACQUAINTANCE OF NOTE:
". . . and who have retained Lestrade, whom you may recollect in connection with ‘A Study in Scarlet’, to work out the case in his interest."
"In spite of the light brown dustcoat and leather-leggings which he wore in deference to his rustic surroundings, I had no difficulty in recognizing Lestrade, of Scotland Yard."
YOUNG MCCARTHY’S TESTIMONY:
"I had been away from home for three days at Bristol, and had only just returned upon the morning of last Monday, the 3d."
THE DATES OF MCCARTHY AND TURNER:
"McCarthy had one son, a lad of eighteen, and Turner had an only daughter of the same age, but neither of them had wives living."
"This fellow is madly, insanely, in love with her, but some two years ago, when he was only a lad, and before he really knew her, for she had been away five years at a boarding-school, what does the idiot do but get into the clutches of a barmaid in Bristol and marry her at a registry office?"
"About sixty; but his constitution has been shattered . . ."
"I have had diabetes for years. My doctor says it is a question whether I shall live a month."
"It was in the early ‘60’s at the diggings. There I parted from my old pals and determined to settle down to a quiet and respectable life. I bought this estate, which chanced to be in the market, and I set myself to do a little good with my money, to make up for the way in which I had earned it. I married, too, and though my wife died young she left me my dear little Alice."
WHAT THE BARING-GOULD ANNOTATED SAYS:
June 8, 1889.
WHAT ZEISLER, THE KING OF CHRONOLOGY, SAYS:
June 27, 1890.
THE BIRLSTONE RAILWAY’S TIMETABLE:
The key date around which "Boscombe Valley" revolves is plainly Monday, June 3rd, the day of the murder. As June 3rd falls on a Monday only in 1989 in the decade prior to BOSC’s publication, that is the date most chronologists begin their work with (others making much too much of a casual remark in STOC, but more on that when we get there). An inquest on the 4th follows the murder, followed by the magistrates on the 5th. Holmes read all this from newspapers in London, so Holmes and Watson’s involvement could not have possibly begun before Thursday the 6th . . . which is still quite a rush, especially since one of the papers came all the way from Herefordshire. And while Friday would seem a likely date, Dr. Watson and his wife are breakfasting very late for a weekday. Thus the Smash must go with conventional wisdom and actually agree with Baring-Gould: Saturday, June 8, 1889.

"The Five Orange Pips"
SIGNIFICANT PASSAGE OF TIME:
"When I glance over my notes and records of the Sherlock Holmes cases between the years ‘82 and ‘90 . . ."
SIGNIFICANT YEAR REFERENCE:
"The year ‘87 furnished us with a long series of cases . . . the Paradol Chamber . . . the Amateur Mendicant Society . . . the British bark Sophy Anderson . . . the Grice Patersons in the island of Uffa, and finally of the Camberwell poisoning case."
SIGNIFICANT MONTH REFERENCE:
"It was in the latter days of September . . ."
WATSON’S MARITAL STATUS:
"My wife was on a visit to her mother’s . . ."
PREVIOUS ENCOUNTERS OF NOTE:
"I heard from Major Prendergast how you saved him in the Tankerville Club scandal."
"I have been beaten four times — three times by men, and once by a woman."
THE DATES OF THE OPENSHAW CLAN:
"When Lee laid down his arms my uncle returned to his plantation, where he remained for three or four years. About 1869 or 1870 he came back to Europe and took a small estate in Sussex, near Horsham."
"He didn’t mind me; in fact, he took a fancy to me, for at the time when he saw me first I was a youngster of twelve or so. This would be in the year 1878, after he had been eight or nine years in England."
" . . . by the time that I was sixteen I was quite master of the house."
"One day -- it was in March, 1883 — a letter with a foreign stamp lay upon
the table in front of the colonel’s plate."
"The letter arrived on March 10, 1883. His death was seven weeks later,
upon the night of May 2d."
"Well, it was the beginning of ‘84 when my father came to live at Horsham, and all went as well as possible with us until the January of ‘85. On the fourth day after the new year I heard my father give a sharp cry of surprise as we sat together at the breakfast-table."
"On the third day after the coming of the letter my father went from home
to visit an old friend of his, Major Freebody . . . . Upon the second day of his absence I received a telegram from the major, imploring me to come at once. My father had fallen over one of the deep chalk-pits
"It was in January, ‘85, that my poor father met his end, and two years
and eight months have elapsed since then."
"It was headed, "March, 1869," and beneath were the following enigmatical notices:
"4th. Hudson came. Same old platform.
"7th. Set the pips on McCauley, Paramore, and John Swain, of St. Augustine.
"9th. McCauley cleared.
"10th. John Swain cleared.
"12th. Visited Paramore. All well."
WATSON PROMOTES HIS PREVIOUS BOOK:
"I think, Watson," he remarked at last, "that of all our cases we have had none more fantastic than this."
"Save, perhaps, the Sign of Four."
WHAT THE BARING-GOULD ANNOTATED SAYS:
September 29, 1887.
WHAT ZEISLER, THE KING OF CHRONOLOGY, SAYS:
September 24, 1889.
THE BIRLSTONE RAILWAY’S TIMETABLE:
Here we have an excellent case of a Watsonian fork in the road: on one hand, Watson makes clear year and month references that are backed up by the client’s date-filled tale. On the other hand, we have a reference to "The Sign of Four" and a wife who has a mother. More conservative Sherlockians of the past tried with all their might to keep Watson married to only one woman, and have that one woman be Mary Morstan. As a result, they want to ignore the year and keep the month, ignore the mother and keep the SIGN. The Smash has to go back to his Number One Rule on this one: Trust Watson.
And following that rule, I have to lay down my second rule of chronology: If one argues in front of Watson’s dates, one inevitably starts twisting dates to suit marriages, rather than letting dates dictate marriages. (And everyone knows dates lead to marriages.)
Accepting the dates and the wife with a mother, we are left with only that pesky SIGN reference, which is easy to see as shameless self-promotion on Watson’s part: "If you think this case is great, buy ‘The Sign of Four,’ available at all better book stalls!"
Which, in turn, leaves us with only one question: what was the day this case started? For that, we must turn to the handiwork of Captain Calhoun of the Lone Star. On Wednesday, May 2, 1883, Captain Calhoun killed Elias Opensaw. On Friday, January 9, 1885, Captain Calhoun killed Joseph Openshaw. And on Friday, September 16, 1887, Captain Calhoun killed John Openshaw. Why that particular day? Why five orange pips and only five? Ritual, of course. Calhoun was a pattern killer, and even though life at sea made it hard to adhere to his patterns perfectly, they’re still there. He killed Openshaw #2 exactly one year, eight months, and seven days after Openshaw #1. Then Openshaw #3 dies exactly two years, eight months, and seven days after Openshaw #2. Was the added year a purposeful change, or just the result of fitting his pattern around his seagoing schedule?
Who knows with these mass murderers? Whatever the reason, I’m dating this case at Friday, September 16, 1887.

"The Man with the Twisted Lip"
WATSON’S DEFINITE DATE REFERENCE:
"One night--it was in June, ‘89--there came a ring to my bell . . ."
"Of Friday, June 19th."
WATSON’S MARITAL STATUS:
"Or should you rather that I sent James off to bed?" (In other words, married, but to a wife unsure of his name.)
ISA WHITNEY’S DRUG SCHEDULE:
"But now the spell had been upon him eight-and-forty hours . . ."
"I thought it was Wednesday. It is Wednesday."
"I tell you that it is Friday, man."
THE DATES OF NEVILLE ST. CLAIR:
"Some years ago--to be definite, in May, 1884 — there came to Lee a gentleman, Neville St. Clair by name . . . in 1887 he married the daughter of a local brewer, by whom he now has two children."
"Last Monday Mr. Neville St. Clair went into town . . ."
INSPECTOR BRADSTREET’S ELAPSED CAREER:
"Well, I have been twenty-seven years in the force, but this really takes the cake."
DURATION OF MRS. ST. CLAIR’S ORDEAL:
"That note only reached her yesterday," said Holmes.
"Good God! What a week she must have spent!"
WHAT THE BARING-GOULD ANNOTATED SAYS:
June 21, 1889.
WHAT ZEISLER, THE KING OF CHRONOLOGY, SAYS:
June 21, 1889 (What? Agreement between the big "Z" and B-G?)
THE BIRLSTONE RAILWAY’S TIMETABLE:
Funny thing about "Twisted Lip" -- Watson argues with a man who has supposedly been smoking opium for two days straight about what day it is, and only succeeds in confusing him (and us) all the more.
When Watson tells Isa Whitney that it’s Friday, June 19th, what is Isa’s response? "Good heavens! I thought it was Wednesday." Watson assumes the "it" in Whitney’s statement refers to the current day, but it’s obvious to anyone with a calender for 1889 that what Whitney is really saying is "I thought June 19th was Wednesday." And June 19th was a Wednesday in 1889.
For a man supposedly in an opium stupor, Isa Whitney seems to be on the ball about what day June 19th was on. Had he really been smoking for two days straight? Watson trusts Kate Whitney’s word that Whitney has been lost to dope for 48 hours. But was she exagerating, just to get the Watsons’s help? I think so. Whitney knew he’d only been at the Bar of Gold a few hours, just as he knew that the 19th was Wednesday.
Like most of us, Watson knew what day of the week it was. He just wasn’t clear on the number attached to it. Thankfully, he had a friend like Isa who was unselfish enough to try to straighten him out, even when embroiled in massive problems of his own (opium and a scheming wife).
The Smash’s final conclusion: Going with the crowd, Friday, June 21, 1889 for this one.

"The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle"
THE MOST FAMOUS DATE REFERENCE IN THE CANON:
"I had called upon my friend Sherlock Holmes upon the second morning after Christmas . . ."
SIGNIFICANT REFERENCES TO OTHER CASES:
" . . . of the last six cases which I have added to my notes, three have been entirely free of any legal crime."
"Precisely. You allude to my attempt to recover the Irene Adler papers, to the singular case of Miss Mary Sutherland, and to the adventure of the man with the twisted lip.
LENGTH OF TIME SINCE BAKER HAD CASH:
"If this man could afford to buy so expensive a hat three years ago, and has had no hat since, then he has assuredly gone down in the world."
RECONFIRMING THE DATE:
"Precisely so, on December 22d, just five days ago."
STATE OF WATSON’S PRACTICE:
"I shall continue my professional round. But I shall come back in the evening . . ."
THE ARRIVAL OF THE BIRD:
"This year our good host, Windigate by name, instituted a goose club, by which, on consideration of some few pence every week, we were each to receive a bird at Christmas."
WHAT THE BARING-GOULD ANNOTATED SAYS:
December 27, 1887.
WHAT ZEISLER, THE KING OF CHRONOLOGY, SAYS:
December 27, 1889.
THE BIRLSTONE RAILWAY’S TIMETABLE:
It’s a testimony to the power of "Blue Carbuncle" that no one, but NO ONE denies that this case began on December 27 -- a really remarkable thing, when one considers how fast and loose Sherlockian scholars have played with much more plainly stated dates. As for the year, well as the latest of the three cases Watson refers to as most recent in his chronicles in TWIS, which has 1889 written all over it (literally). Thus the Smash must go with the crowd once more on this one: Friday, December 27, 1889.
Added note: Holmes’s statement of the three cases of Watson’s last six sounds as though the chronology student is now limited to placing five, and only five, cases between SCAN and BLUE. Could Watson have participated in a case and not taken notes on it during that period, only to write it up later?

"The Adventure of the Speckled Band"
THE PERIOD BETWEEN THE OCCURRENCE
AND THE WRITING:
"On glancing over my notes of the seventy odd cases in which I have during the last eight years studied the methods of my friend Sherlock Holmes . . ."
SIGINIFICANT COMMENTS BY WATSON:
"The events in question occurred in the early days of my association with Holmes, when we were sharing rooms as bachelors in Baker Street. It is possible that I might have placed them upon record before, but a promise of secrecy was made at the time, from which I have only been freed during the last month by the untimely death of the lady to whom the pledge was given."
SIGNIFICANT DATE REFERENCE:
"It was early in April in the year ‘83 . . ."
SIGNIFICANT MORNING REFERENCE:
"He was a late riser, as a rule, and as the clock on the mantelpiece showed me that it was only a quarter-past seven, I blinked up at him in some surprise, and perhaps just a little resentment, for I was myself regular in my habits."
THE TIMES OF THE ROYLOTTS:
"In the last century, however, four successive heirs were of a dissolute and wasteful disposition, and the family ruin was eventually completed by a gambler in the days of the Regency. Nothing was left save a few acres of ground, and the two-hundred-year-old house, which is itself crushed under a heavy mortgage. As it was, he suffered a long term of imprisonment and afterwards returned to England a morose and disappointed man."
"When Dr. Roylott was in India he married my mother, Mrs. Stoner, the young widow of Major-General Stoner, of the Bengal Artillery. My sister Julia and I were twins, and we were only two years old at the time of my mother’s re-marriage. She had a considerable sum of money--not less than L1000 a year--and this she bequeathed to Dr. Roylott entirely while we resided with him, with a provision that a certain annual sum should be allowed to each of us in the event of our marriage. Shortly after our return to England my mother died --she was killed eight years ago in a railway accident near Crewe.Dr. Roylott then abandoned his attempts to establish himself in practice in London and took us to live with him in the old ancestral house at Stoke Moran."
"Last week he hurled the local blacksmith over a parapet . . ."
"She was but thirty at the time of her death . . ."
"She died just two years ago . . ."
"Julia went there at Christmas two years ago, and met there a half-pay major of marines, to whom she became engaged. My stepfather learned of the engagement when my sister returned and offered no objection to the marriage; but within a fortnight of the day which had been fixed for the wedding, the terrible event occurred . . ."
"Two years have passed since then, and my life has been until lately lonelier than ever. A month ago, however, a dear friend, whom I have known for many years, has done me the honour to ask my hand in marriage."
" . . . we are to be married in the course of the spring. Two days ago some repairs were started in the west wing of the building . . ."
SIGNIFICANT REFERENCES TO NATURAL EVENT:
"It is a little cold for the time of the year."
"But I have heard that the crocuses promise well."
THE SCHEDULE OF THE WORKMEN:
"Two days ago some repairs were started in the west wing of the building . . ."
" . . . there were no signs of any workmen at the moment of our visit."
WHAT THE BARING-GOULD ANNOTATED SAYS:
April 6, 1883.
WHAT ZEISLER, THE KING OF CHRONOLOGY, SAYS:
Early in April 1883, probably April 4,1883.
THE BIRLSTONE RAILWAY’S TIMETABLE:
The statement "early in April in the year ‘83" is clear enough, and no chronologer disputes it. The day is the item of question on this case, and my first impression on that score is that Watson would not be so annoyed at being awakened at 7:15 if it were not a day he fully expected to sleep as long as he wanted . . . a Sunday. Ernest Bloomfield Zeisler argues that it was not a Sunday, as Watson would not have felt compelled to state that the workmen were not at Stoke Moran if it were a Sunday, as the assumption would have been obvious to the reader. Yet Watson does not tell us that it was Sunday, so we have no basis for making Zeisler’s assumption. Zeisler also argues against Sunday, stating that Holmes could not have visited the Doctors Commons to check out Roylott on a Sunday . . . which I think shows little faith in the resources and connections of Sherlock Holmes. A regular person might not have been able to do the research on a Sunday, but the master detective on a mission of immediate life-or-death importance? That is another story. Quarter past seven is only a resentful hour to young bachelors on the morning after their Saturday night recreations, and thus I’m sticking this tale on Sunday, April 1, 1883.
Was SPEC the true first case of working with Holmes that Watson recorded? I find nothing in SPEC that disproves my earlier assertion in the STUD Chronology Corner. Watson’s confession that he promised to keep this tale secret until after a certain lady’s death gives him a good reason for using STUD first, even though SPEC was the more remarkable tale . . . perhaps even the thing that inspired him to start writing up Holmes’s cases to begin with. He surely must have had the writing of it in mind while he was still in contact with Helen Stoner, or else the promise not to write of it would not have even come up. And that promise also shows us exactly why he decided to publish STUD first . . . all of the main players in the crime are dead by the time the case is done.
In VEIL, Watson makes the statement, "When one considers that Sherlock Holmes was in active practice for twenty-three years, and that during seventeen of these I was allowed to cooperate with him and to keep notes of his doings . . ." Knowing that Watson was doing so in September of 1903 (CREE), subtracting the three years when Watson thought Holmes dead, one gets the year 1883 as the year that Holmes started allowing Watson to "cooperate with him." Unless one can prove a falling out between the two during some other period, I think the VEIL statement backs up my assertion of SPEC’s claim to being the prime Canonical tale.
Having said all that, I’ll go one step further and proclaim April Fool’s Day as a new Sherlockian holiday . . . the day our Canon truly begins. Not in the Afghan war, not as Watson graduated from medical school, and not as he and Holmes became room-mates, innocent of each other’s career plans. It all truly began on a day when Holmes woke a resentful Watson from a peaceful morning-after slumber to head into what is perhaps THE classic among their adventures together. On April Fool’s Day . . .

"The Adventure of the Engineer’s Thumb"
SIGNIFICANT SEASON AND YEAR REFERENCE:
"It was in the summer of ‘89, not long after my marriage, that the events occurred which I am now about to summarize."
STATE OF WATSON’S PRACTICE:
"I had returned to civil practice and had finally abandoned Holmes in his Baker Street rooms, although I continually visited him and occasionally even persuaded him to forego his Bohemian habits so far as to come and visit us. My practice had steadily increased, and as I happened to live at no very great distance from Paddington Station, I got a few patients from among the officials."
TIME OF WATSON WAKE-UP:
"One morning, at a little before seven o’clock, I was awakened by the maid tapping at the door to announce that two men had come from Paddington and were waiting in the consulting-room."
THE TIMES OF VICTOR HATHERYLY:
"He was young, not more than five-and-twenty . . ."
"I have had considerable experience of my work during the seven years that I was apprenticed to Venner & Matheson, the well-known firm, of Greenwich. Two years ago, having served my time, and having also come into a fair sum of money through my poor father’s death, I determined to start in business for myself and took professional chambers in Victoria Street."
"During two years I have had three consultations and one small job, and that is absolutely all that my profession has brought me. My gross takings amount to L27 10s. Every day, from nine in the morning until four in the afternoon, I waited in my little den, until at last my heart began to sink, and I came to believe that I should never have any practice at all."
"Yesterday, however, just as I was thinking of leaving the office, my clerk entered . . ."
"He was plainly but neatly dressed, and his age, I should judge, would be nearer forty than thirty."
SIGNIFICANT DAY REFERENCE:
"It appeared in all the papers about a year ago." "Listen to this: ‘Lost, on the 9th inst., Mr. Jeremiah Hayling, aged twenty-six, a hydraulic engineer.’"
WHAT THE BARING-GOULD ANNOTATED SAYS:
September 7, 1889.
WHAT ZEISLER, THE KING OF CHRONOLOGY, SAYS:
September 8, 1889.
THE BIRLSTONE RAILWAY’S TIMETABLE:
It’s the summer of 1889. Watson is not only married, his practice is well established, and he is high on Holmes’s abilities over Scotland Yard, steering Hatherly away from the police and toward his old friend. Watson is also still in close enough contact with Holmes and Mrs. Hudson to expect that showing up with a guest for breakfast will not be an imposition -- the kind of thing only a close family member can get away with, so he is not far out of their lives. As both BOSC and TWIS took place in June of that summer, and both featured Holmes succeeding significantly where the police had failed, I would have to place ENGI close on the heels of those two cases, the latter of which occurred on June 21.
As "the 9th inst." means "the 9th of this month," we know that Jeremiah Hayling’s disappearance was in all the papers sometime in the latter two-thirds of the month he disappeared in, which was "about a year ago." This would seem to confirm dating the case in the final part of June.
The fact that the maid has to wake Dr. Watson up at 7 a.m. during the early-dawn month of June says "sleep-in Sunday" to me, and adding that to all the preceding data, I place "Engineer’s Thumb" on Sunday, June 30, 1889.

"The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor"
WATSON’S MARITAL STATE:
"It was a few weeks before my own marriage, during the days when I was still sharing rooms with Holmes in Baker Street, that he came home from an afternoon stroll to find a letter on the table waiting for him. I had remained indoors all day, for the weather had taken a sudden turn to rain, with high autumnal winds . . ."
AND THE SEASON ONCE MORE:
"Draw your chair up and hand me my violin, for the only problem we have still to solve is how to while away these bleak autumnal evenings."
LORD ST. SIMON’S LIFETIME:
"Born in 1846. He’s forty-one years of age . . ."
"Lord St. Simon, who has shown himself for over twenty years proof against the little god’s arrows . . ."
"As it is an open secret that the Duke of Balmoral has been compelled to sell his pictures within the last few years . . ."
"It is in the personal column of the Morning Post, and dates, as you see, some weeks back."
"There was a paragraph amplifying this in one of the society papers of the same week."
"An important addition has been made during the last week to the list of the prizes which have been borne away by these charming invaders."
"When did you first meet Miss Hatty Doran?"
"In San Francisco, a year ago."
"My wife was twenty before her father became a rich man."
"Her father brought her over for this last London season."
THE WEDDING DAY:
"Two days later--that is, on Wednesday last--there is a curt announcement that the wedding had taken place . . ."
"Such as they are, they are set forth in a single article of a morning paper of yesterday . . ."
"The ceremony, as shortly announced in the papers of yesterday, occurred on the previous morning . . ."
FHM’S HOTEL BILL:
"Oct. 4th, rooms 8s., breakfast 2s. 6d., cocktail 1s., lunch 2s. 6d., glass sherry, 8d."
"More valuable still was it to know that within a week he had settled his bill at one of the most select London hotels."
FRANK AND HATTIE’S DATES:
"Frank here and I met in ‘84, in McQuire’s camp, near the Rockies, where pa was working a claim. We were engaged to each other, Frank and I; but then one day father struck a rich pocket and made a pile . . ."
" . . .then Frank went off to seek his fortune . . ."
" . . . there was my Frank’s name among the killed. I fainted dead away, and I was very sick for months after. Pa thought I had a decline and took me to half the doctors in ‘Frisco. Not a word of news came for a year and more, so that I never doubted that Frank was really dead. Then Lord St. Simon came to ‘Frisco . . ."
WHAT THE BARING-GOULD ANNOTATED SAYS:
October 8, 1886.
WHAT ZEISLER, THE KING OF CHRONOLOGY, SAYS:
December 7, 1888.
THE BIRLSTONE RAILWAY’S TIMETABLE:
Well, taking Lord St. Simon’s birth year and adding his age (also considering the fact that it’s autumn and his birthday has most likely passed for that year), the case probably takes place in 1887, with 1888 as an outside possibility if his birthday was past mid-October. Frank and Hattie met in 1884, and over two years have passed since that time, seeming to confirm an 1887 or 1888 date.
But then comes the matter of Frank Moulton’s hotel bill for October 4th, used as note-paper for a note he slipped Hattie Doran on the day of her wedding. As the wedding was reported the next day in a Wednesday newspaper, it plainly occurred on a Tuesday. In 1887, October 4 occurs on a Tuesday. In 1888, on a Thursday. As it would seem much more likely for a fellow to be carrying his hotel bill on the same day he received it, rather than sometime the next week, we find confirmation of 1887 as the year.
For Holmes and Watson,then, the case begins two days later, on Thursday, October 6, 1887.

"The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet"
WATSON’S CURRENT PLACE OF RESIDENCE:
"Holmes," said I as I stood one morning in our bow-window . . .
STATEMENT OF THE MONTH:
"It was a bright, crisp February morning, and the snow of the day before still lay deep upon the ground, shimmering brightly in the wintry sun."
THE DAYS OF THE TRANSACTION:
"Yesterday morning I was seated in my office at the bank when a card was
brought in . . ."
"Next Monday I have a large sum due to me . . ."
"I should not dream of doing so were it not absolutely certain that I should be able in four days to reclaim it."
"I leave it with you, however, with every confidence, and I shall call for it in person on Monday morning."
AGES AND TIMES OF THE HOLDER FAMILY:
"He was a man of about fifty . . ."
"She is my niece; but when my brother died five years ago and left her alone in the world I adopted her . . ."
"She is four-and-twenty."
WHAT THE BARING-GOULD ANNOTATED SAYS:
December 19, 1890.
WHAT ZEISLER, THE KING OF CHRONOLOGY, SAYS:
February 19, 1886.
THE BIRLSTONE RAILWAY’S TIMETABLE:
While my usual method is to follow Watson’s dates and let marriages sort themselves out later, "Beryl Coronet" is the first example of a situation where Watson’s marital status must be used to help determine part of the date. We know it is February and Watson is unmarried and at Baker Street, speaking of "our bow-window." As the tale was published in 1892, that bachelor limitation holds us to the years 1882 thru 1887.
Within that six year span, I would conjecture that 1886 is the most likely suspect, for one reason and one reason alone: Holder’s client has that large sum of money coming due on Monday. And while Monday is a fine day for debts to come due, I think it much more likely that the first of the month was the real day that the debt came due. As March 1st fell on a Monday in 1886, I would then place this case’s beginning on Friday, February 26, 1886."The Adventure of the Copper Beeches"
THE SOLE SIGNIFICANT TIME REFERENCE:
"It was a cold morning of the early spring, and we sat after breakfast on either side of a cheery fire in the old room at Baker Street."
REFERENCES TO CASES PAST:
"The small matter in which I endeavoured to help the King of Bohemia, the singular experience of Miss Mary Sutherland, the problem connected with the man with the twisted lip, and the incident of the noble bachelor, were all matters which are outside the pale of the law."
THE ABSENCE OF MORIARTY:
"But, indeed, if you are trivial, I cannot blame you, for the days of the great cases are past. Man, or at least criminal man, has lost all enterprise and originality."
THE LIFE AND DATES OF VIOLET HUNTER:
"I have been a governess for five years in the family of Colonel Spence Munro, but two months ago the colonel received an appointment at Halifax, in Nova Scotia . . ."
"Well, when I called last week I was shown into the little office as usual, but I found that Miss Stoper was not alone."
"I shall go down to Hampshire quite easy in my mind now. I shall write to Mr. Rucastle at once, sacrifice my poor hair to-night, and start for Winchester to-morrow."
"For two days after my arrival at the Copper Beeches my life was very quiet; on the third, Mrs. Rucastle came down just after breakfast and whispered something to her husband."
"Two days later this same performance was gone through under exactly similar circumstances."
"I did as I was told, and at the same instant Mrs. Rucastle drew down the blind. That was a week ago, and from that time I have not sat again in the window, nor have I worn the blue dress, nor seen the man in the road."
THE CHRONOLOGY OF THE DOG:
"On the very first day that I was at the Copper Beeches, Mr. Rucastle took me to a small outhouse which stands near the kitchen door. As we approached it I heard the sharp rattling of a chain, and the sound as of a large animal moving about."
". . .for two nights later I happened to look out of my bedroom window about two o’clock in the morning. It was a beautiful moonlight night, and the lawn in front of the house was silvered over and almost as bright as day. I was standing, rapt in the peaceful beauty of the scene, when I was aware that something was moving under the shadow of the copper beeches. As it emerged into the moonshine I saw what it was. It was a giant dog."
HOLMES RESUMES THE CASE:
"The telegram which we eventually received came late one night just as I was thinking of turning in and Holmes was settling down to one of those all-night chemical researches which he frequently indulged in."
"By eleven o’clock the next day we were well upon our way."
THE SEASON ASSERTS ITSELF:
"It was an ideal spring day, a light blue sky, flecked with little fleecy white clouds drifting across from west to east. The sun was shining very brightly, and yet there was an exhilarating nip in the air, which set an edge to a man’s energy. All over the countryside, away to the rolling hills around Aldershot, the little red and gray roofs of the farm-steadings peeped out from amid the light green of the new foliage."
"I had no difficulty in getting leave to come into Winchester this morning, but I must be back before three o’clock, for Mr. and Mrs. Rucastle are going on a visit, and will be away all the evening"
"Mr. Fowler and Miss Rucastle were married, by special license, in Southampton the day after their flight."
WHAT THE BARING-GOULD ANNOTATED SAYS:
April 5, 1889.
WHAT ZEISLER, THE KING OF CHRONOLOGY, SAYS:
April 7, 1890.THE BIRLSTONE RAILWAY’S TIMETABLE:
Watson has saved the best test of a chronologer for last in the "Adventures" tales. "Copper Beeches" has astoundingly little data -- no years, months, or days of the week mentioned directly. All we get is "early spring," a Watson who is plainly at Baker Street (though refers to the sitting room as "old"), and a number of cases that are in the past.
Based on that list of cases Holmes mentions, and the dates I’ve already assigned to them, SOLI must take place after 1889. The fact that Holmes is complaining about the lack of criminal challenges means the matter pre-dates Moriarty and Holmes’s 1891 war on the Professor’s organization. Only 1890 remains.
And while Watson was surely married at that time, his words "the old room at Baker Street" would tend to confirm that he was just back for a lengthy visit. Why was he visiting? The tale’s opening paragraphs should be enough to answer that question. Watson was back in Baker Street making his first attempts at writing up The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, soaking up the old, familiar atmosphere and having full access to Holmes’s notes to supplement his own. As The Sign of the Four was just published in February of 1890, it would seem only natural for Watson to be making such an endeavor in March of 1890.
As a considerate husband, of course, Watson would not just pack up and leave his wife if she were not already away on a visit of her own . . . a fairly long visit, it would seem, as Watson is still at Baker Street when Miss Hunter’s telegram arrives. Why would a husband and wife be apart for so long in the spring, that time when romance is at its peak? My answer would be this:
They gave each other up for Lent.
Sacrificing that thing they loved the most for the period between Ash Wednesday (March 5, 1890) and Easter Sunday (April 20, 1890). Considering that Watson has already presented Holmes with four tales at the story’s outset, which is sixty pages worth in the Doubleday complete, estimating Watson’s writing speed at a solid six pages a day, factoring in the most likely days for Miss Hunter to be checking Westaway’s for job openings, my conclusion is this: COPP begins on Tuesday, March 18, 1890.

"Silver Blaze"
THE BAKER STREET SCENE
" . . . as we sat down together to our breakfast one morning."
DAYS OF OUR LIVES
"Such was the general situation last Monday night when the catastrophe occurred."
"On Tuesday evening I received telegrams from both Colonel Ross, the owner of the horse, and from Inspector Gregory, who is looking after the case, inviting my cooperation."
"Tuesday evening! And this is Thursday morning. Why didn’t you go down yesterday?"
"It is obvious, therefore, that there were many people who had the strongest interest in preventing Silver Blaze from being there at the fall of the flag next Tuesday."
"Four days later Holmes and I were again in the train, bound for Winchester to see the race for the Wessex Cup."
VAGUE REFERENCE TO WATSON’S WORKS:
"Because I made a blunder, my dear Watson — which is, I am afraid, a more common occurrence than anyone would think who only knew me through your memoirs."
AGE OF SILVER BLAZE
"He is now in his fifth year . . ."
THE TIMES OF RESIDENCE
"We have found traces which show that a party of gypsies encamped on Monday night within a mile of the spot where the murder took place. On Tuesday they were gone."
"He has twice lodged at Tavistock in the summer."
THE SEASON
"In every other direction the low curves of the moor, bronze-coloured from the fading ferns, stretched away to the sky-line, broken only by the steeples of Tavistock . . ."
THE HORSES OF THE MATTER
"Wessex Plate [it ran] 50 sovs. each h ft with 1000 sovs. added, for four and five year olds. Second, L300. Third, L200. New course (one mile and five furlongs).
"1. Mr. Heath Newton’s The Negro. Red cap. Cinnamon jacket.
"2. Colonel Wardlaw’s Pugilist. Pink cap. Blue and black jacket.
"3. Lord Backwater’s Desborough. Yellow cap and sleeves.
"4. Colonel Ross’s Silver Blaze. Black cap. Red jacket.
"5. Duke of Balmoral’s Iris. Yellow and black stripes.
"6. Lord Singleford’s Rasper. Purple cap. Black sleeves."
COLONEL ROSS’S YEARS ON THE TURF:
"I have been on the turf for twenty years . . ."
JOHN STRAKER’S WORK HISTORY:
"He has served the colonel for five years as jockey and for seven as trainer."
WHAT THE BARING-GOULD ANNOTATED SAYS:
September 25, 1890
WHAT ZEISLER, THE KING OF CHRONOLOGY SAYS:
July 12, 1888
THE BIRLSTONE RAILWAY’S TIMETABLE:
Placing the year of "Silver Blaze" is another great challenge for the Sherlockian chronologist. It appears to take place before Watson started marrying, but beyond that, there seems little clue. (The reference to Watson’s memoirs is easily discounted, as Holmes could have said such a thing before Watson had written anything, basing it solely on Watson’s over-positive opinion of Holmes.) The thread I grabbed to follow through this tangled skein was the six horses of the Wessex Plate race. As four and five year olds, we know they were all born four to five years before the race. And as they were born, they were also named.
Now, a horse’s name can be a plain thing. Silver Blaze and the Negro were obviously named for their coloration. Pugilist was plainly called that in hopes he’d be a fighter. But what of the others? Why, for example, would Lord Backwater name his horse "Desborough"?
Consider what we know about Backwater — he’s a friend of Lord Balmoral’s family, as we saw in "Noble Bachelor." (Both men having horses in this race is but one more sign of their close friendship.) He’s also something of a romantic, as he is Lord St. Simon’s advisor when his bride disappears, and has also agreed to be Sir Robert’s intended host for his honeymoon. Backwater’s romantic tendencies plainly extended to his reading tastes, for in 1884, a Scottish novelist named Annie Swan had a novel published called "Mark Desborough’s Vow." Ms. Swan was a writer of idealized romances, and the romantic Backwater was so enthralled by the character of Mark Desborough that he named his horse after him.
Then we come to the Duke of Balmoral and his horse, Iris. From the data provided by Watson in "Noble Bachelor," we know that the Duke of Balmoral was not doing too well financially, even having to sell his pictures at some point. He was plainly searching for any business venture that might bring him much needed funds, and my theory is that the Duke named his horse Iris in 1884 to impress one James Wilkes, a toolmaker who was going out on his own in London that year and founding a company named "Wilkes Iris" to make irises for microscopes. Business did not boom immediately for Wilkes, who even had to turn to making cigarette lighters at some point to make ends meet, so the Duke’s interest in the company probably didn’t last much longer than the time it took to name the race horse, but name it "Iris" he did.
Taking the naming of the horses into account that places this case in the area of 1888-1889. But where to go from there?
The fading ferns, the ear-flapped cap — these are signs of autumn cold setting in. But when in autumn? Going by Canonical example alone, The Hound of the Baskervilles has the Dartmoor foliage fading by early October. As Watson is so solidly married (by his own dates) in autumn 1889, this places us in fall of 1888. And the fall of 1888 was a very busy time for Sherlock Holmes, if only for one reason: Jack the Ripper. Striking on August 31, September 8, twice on September 30, and then one last time on November 8, Jack was the one criminal who could not be ignored by anyone in London.
Sherlock Holmes’s distraction is evident from the way he ignores summonses from Colonel Ross and Inspector Gregory, though eventually he does go. That last part indicates some time has passed since the September 30th murder, yet with the still-fading foliage, November 8th (and the time after it to investigate) has not yet come. Given such considerations, and the days Watson gives us, I’d have to say the case begins on Thursday, October 25, 1888.

"The Yellow Face"
HOLMES’S CURRENT STATE:
"Few men were capable of greater muscular effort, and he was undoubtedly one of the finest boxers of his weight that I have ever seen."
THE FRIENDSHIP’S CURRENT STATE:
"For two hours we rambled about together, in silence for the most part, as befits two men who know each other intimately. It was nearly five before we were back in Baker Street once more."
NATURE’S CURRENT STATE:
"One day in early spring he had so far relaxed as to go for a walk with me in the Park, where the first faint shoots of green were breaking out upon the elms, and the sticky spear-heads of the chestnuts were just beginning to burst into their fivefold leaves."
GRANT MUNRO’S AGE:
"I should have put him at about thirty, though he was really some years older."
EFFIE MUNRO’S AGE:
"I am a married man and have been so for three years.
"She was a widow when I met her first, though quite young—only twenty-five."
"She had only been six months at Pinner when I met her; we fell in love with each other, and we married a few weeks afterwards."
THE TIMETABLE OF THE NEW NEIGHBOURS:
"Well, about six weeks ago she came to me."
"Well, last Monday evening I was taking a stroll down that way when I met
an empty van coming up the lane . . . it was clear that the cottage had
at last been let."
"All the rest of the night I tossed and tumbled, framing theory after theory, each more unlikely than the last."
"I should have gone to the City that day, but I was too disturbed in my
mind to be able to pay attention to business matters . . ."
"For two days after this I stayed at home . . . . On the third day, however, I had ample evidence that her solemn promise was not enough to hold her back from this secret influence which drew her away from her husband and her duty.
"I had gone into town on that day . . ."
"That was yesterday, Mr. Holmes . . ."
"In that case I shall come out to-morrow and talk it over with you. But we had not a very long time to wait for that. It came just as we had finished our tea."
PHOTO TIME FOR THE MUNROS:
". . . a full-length photograph of my wife, which had been taken at my request only three months ago."WHAT ZEISLER, KING OF CHRONOLOGY SAYS:
A Saturday near April 1, 1885 or 1886
WHAT THE BARING-GOULD ANNOTATED SAYS:
Saturday, April 7, 1888THE BIRLSTONE RAILWAY’S TIMETABLE:
When placing this case in the years of Holmes and Watson’s cohabitation, much has been made of Watson’s words, "we rambled about together, in silence for the most part, as befits two men who know each other intimately." But their current level of intimacy really make any difference to Sherlock Holmes, who kept to himself on a regular basis? Watson didn’t have any choice but to become comfortable with Holmes’s silences very quickly, so I don’t think that line can fairly be used as a solid criteria for dating the tale.
Much more important, in my mind, is the reference to Holmes’s incredible strength and boxing ability. According to A Study in Scarlet, Watson learned of Holmes’s boxing abilities before he knew of Holmes’s line of work. As boxing was one of the few points of social contact Holmes engaged in during college, it’s not surprising that he and Watson made contact on that point early on. We know Holmes was boxing actively four years before The Sign of the Four, but past that, there is little evidence of it.
Going by Holmes’s physical condition, and Watson’s comments on it, I would have to date this case as early as possible, before the drug experimentation, before the cases that would cause him to collapse utterly. In 1883, at the time of SPEC, we know Holmes’s strength was poker-bendingly healthy, and that surely held out until 1884. Why 1884?
Starting with the day Grant Munro’s neighbors moved in, a Monday, it is easy to count the days in this story and find that Munro called upon Holmes on a Saturday. Which Saturday?
Well, there’s that photo that Grant asked his wife to have taken of her "three months before." And when would a man be asking his wife for a photograph? Christmas naturally suggests itself, and that would be the time Munro would think of as when his wife had it taken, regardless of when the actual photo session was. And three months later puts us right in that time when those green shoots are appearing on the trees: Saturday, March 29, 1884.
(Why 1884, and not 1883? Because in 1883 three months after Christmas would put this case at the same time as "Speckled Band" was set at in an earlier Chronology Corner.)

"The Stockbroker’s Clerk"
THE STATE OF WATSON’S CAREER AND MARRIAGE:
"Shortly after my marriage I had bought a connection in the Paddington district."
"I had confidence, however, in my own youth and energy and was convinced that in a very few years the concern would be as flourishing as ever."
"For three months after taking over the practice I was kept very closely at work and saw little of my friend Sherlock Holmes, for I was too busy to visit Baker Street, and he seldom went anywhere himself save upon professional business."
STATEMENT OF THE MONTH:
"I was surprised, therefore, when, one morning in June, as I sat reading the British Medical Journal after breakfast, I heard a ring at the bell, followed by the high, somewhat strident tones of my old companion’s voice."
"You had, then, been sitting with your feet outstretched to the fire, which a man would hardly do even in so wet a June as this if he were in his full health."
SIGNIFICANT REFERENCE TO A PRIOR CASE:
"I trust that Mrs. Watson has entirely recovered from all the little excitements connected with our adventure of the Sign of Four."
STATEMENT OF THE SEASON
AND WATSON’S HEALTH:
"Summer colds are always a little trying."
"I was confined to the house by a severe chill for three days last week."
THE TIMELINE OF HALL PYCROFT’S CAREER:
"I used to have a billet at Coxon & Woodhouse’s, of Draper Gardens, but they were let in early in the spring through the Venezuelan loan, as no doubt you remember, and came a nasty cropper. I have been with them five years, and old Coxon gave me a ripping good testimonial when the smash came, but of course we clerks were all turned adrift, the twenty-seven of us. I tried here and tried there, but there were lots of other chaps on the same lay as myself, and it was a perfect frost for a long time. I had been taking three pounds a week at Coxon’s, and I had saved about seventy of them, but I soon worked my way through that and out at the other end. I was fairly at the end of my tether at last, and could hardly find the stamps to answer the advertisements or the envelopes to stick them to. I had worn out my boots paddling up office stairs, and I seemed just as far from getting a billet as ever."
THE DAYS OF PYCROFT’S NEW JOB(S):
"At last I saw a vacancy at Mawson & Williams’s . . .I sent in my testimonial and application, but without the least hope of getting it. Back came an answer by return, saying that if I would appear next Monday I might take over my new duties at once, provided that my appearance was satisfactory."
"When do you go to Mawson’s?"
"On Monday."
"Be in Birmingham to-morrow at one."
"Stick at it, and let me have the lists by Monday, at twelve."
"All Sunday I was kept hard at work, and yet by Monday I had only got as far as H. I went round to my employer . . . and was told to keep at it until Wednesday, and then come again. On Wednesday it was still unfinished, so I hammered away until Friday — that is, yesterday."
"And you can come up to-morrow evening at seven and let me know how you are getting on. Don’t overwork yourself. A couple of hours at Day’s Music Hall in the evening would do you no harm after your labours."
HOLMES AND WATSON ENTER THE TIMELINE:
"At seven o’clock that evening we were walking, the three of us, down Corporation Street to the company’s offices."
THE CURRENT DAY RECONFIRMED:
"It is customary at Mawson’s for the clerks to leave at midday on Saturday."
WHAT THE BARING-GOULD ANNOTATED SAYS:
June 15, 1889
WHAT ZEISLER, THE KING OF CHRONOLOGY, SAYS:
June 15, 1889
THE BIRLSTONE RAILWAY TIMETABLE:
Trusting Dr. Watson’s narrative, we can pull two undisputable references from "Stockbroker’s Clerk": that it was June, and it was a Saturday. Beyond those, the next most important chronological details would seem to be these three: (1) the case occurs after The Sign of the Four, (2) the three month duration of Watson’s marriage, and (3) the fact Watson hasn’t seen Holmes at all in that time, as he builds his practice.
Taking those last three details into account, and simply looking at the dates which the Smash has already assigned to the cases we’ve looked at thus far, the starting date of STOC is fairly plain: Saturday, June 1, 1889.
(Once more I’m taking Holmes and Watson’s weather reporting as a somewhat subjective phenomenon, and allowing that a man can reasonable say "so wet a June as this" at any given time during the month, even the very first day.)

"The ‘Gloria Scott’"
SEASON OF THE TELLING:
"I have some papers here," said my friend Sherlock Holmes as we sat one winter’s night on either side of the fire."
"I had often endeavoured to elicit from my companion what had first turned his mind in the direction of criminal research, but had never caught him before in a communicative humour."
"Those are the facts of the case, Doctor, and if they are of any use to your collection, I am sure that they are very heartily at your service."
POINT IN HOLMES’S CAREER:
"But why did you say just now that there were very particular reasons why I should study this case?"
"Because it was the first in which I was ever engaged."
POINT IN HOLMES’S EDUCATION:
"You never heard me talk of Victor Trevor? He was the only friend I made during the two years I was at college . . . and that only through the accident of his bull terrier freezing on to my ankle one morning as I went down to chapel.
"I was laid by the heels for ten days."
"Before the end of the term we were close friends."
"Finally he invited me down to his father’s place at Donnithorpe, in Norfolk, and I accepted his hospitality for a month of the long vacation."
SPORTING OPPORTUNITIES AVAILABLE:
"There was excellent wild-duck shooting in the fens, remarkably good fishing . . ."
HOLMES’S DEPARTURE FROM DONNITHORPE:
"At last I became so convinced that I was causing him uneasiness that I drew my visit to a close."
"All this occurred during the first month of the long vacation. I went up to my London rooms, where I spent seven weeks working out a few experiments in organic chemistry. One day, however, when the autumn was far advanced and the vacation drawing to a close, I received a telegram from my friend imploring me to return to Donnithorpe . . ."
"He met me with the dog-cart at the station, and I saw at a glance that
the last two months had been very trying ones for him.
THE DATING OF THE GLORIA SCOTT:
"Some particulars of the voyage of the bark Gloria Scott, from her leaving Falmouth on the 8th October, 1855, to her destruction in N. Lat. 15 degrees 20’, W. Long. 25 degrees 14’, on Nov. 6th."
"It was the year ‘55, when the Crimean War was at its height, and the old convict ships had been largely used as transports in the Black Sea."
YEARS PAST SINCE THE SHIP’S DESTRUCTION:
"Why, it’s thirty year and more since I saw you last."
"The case might have been dealt leniently with, but the laws were more harshly administered thirty years ago than now, and on my twenty-third birthday I found myself chained as a felon with thirty-seven other convicts in the ‘tween-decks of the bark Gloria Scott, bound for Australia."
"We prospered, we travelled, we came back as rich colonials to England, and we bought country estates. For more than twenty years we have led peaceful and useful lives, and we hoped that our past was forever buried."
WHAT THE BARING-GOULD ANNOTATED SAYS:
July 12, 1874.
WHAT ZEISLER, THE KING OF CHRONOLOGY, SAYS:
Summer 1876.
THE BIRLSTONE RAILWAY’S TIMETABLE:
Here’s a fascinating little problem. Trevor distinctly dates the destruction of the Gloria Scott on November 6, 1855. He backs up the general period with the statement that the Crimean War was at its height, which it was in 1855. Yet both he and Hudson refer to that experience as being thirty years ago, which means this case would occur in 1885 . . . while Holmes and Watson were together.
Previous chronologers have dismissed the thirty years as a mutual mistake on the parts of Hudson and Trevor, but what about young Trevor, the physical evidence of those twenty peaceful years in England? The elder Trevor needed more than a few years to find fortune, travel, and eventually feel changed enough to head back to England as a colonial. He thought his past was well behind him, and that means his wife and son were certainly additions to his life after the return to England.
But what if the "thirty years" was not a mistake, but a simple rounding up of a number like twenty-seven or twenty-eight? Sound reasonable enough. In fact, any comparison between the 1850s and the 1880s would seem a bit like three decades, wouldn’t it? Of course, that would make Sherlock Holmes a college student when he first met Dr. Watson . . . but what was it Watson wrote in A Study in Scarlet?
"There was only one student in the room . . ."
Holmes speaks of coming back to his London rooms from Donnithorpe, most probably his Montague Street rooms (which we’ll later learn he had when he "first came up to London"), where he works on organic chemistry, much as he was doing when Watson first met him. Back when we were discussing A Study in Scarlet, I became convinced that Holmes and Watson first met in the summer of 1881. Would it be so impossible, then, that Holmes’s vacation in Donnithorpe took place in the summer of 1880?
Since Holmes’s trip to Donnithorpe begins with the traditional English university long vacation, I’m going to place both the trip and this case on Saturday, July 3, 1880.

"The Musgrave Ritual"
TIME PASSES ON BAKER STREET:
"It was only once in every year or two that he would muster energy to docket and arrange them." "Month after month his papers accumulated until every corner of the room was stacked with bundles of manuscript which were on no account to be burned, and which could not be put away save by their owner."
SEASON OF THE TELLING:
"I have some papers here," said my friend Sherlock Holmes as we sat together by the fire, I ventured to suggest to him that, as he had finished pasting extracts into his commonplace book, he might employ the next two hours in making our room a little more habitable."
THE STORY’S PLACE IN HOLMES’S BOX OF CASES: "Here’s the record of the Tarleton murders, and the case of Vamberry, the wine merchant, and the adventure of the old Russian woman, and the singular affair of the aluminum crutch, as well as a full account of Ricoletti of the club-foot, and his abominable wife. And here—ah, now, this really is something a little recherche." "He dived his arm down to the bottom of the chest . . ."
REFERENCES TO OTHER CASES:
"You may remember how the affair of the Gloria Scott, and my conversation with the unhappy man whose fate I told you of, first turned my attention in the direction of the profession which has become my life’s work." "Even when you knew me first, at the time of the affair which you have commemorated in ‘A Study in Scarlet,’ I had already established a considerable, though not a very lucrative, connection."
HOLMES’S RESIDENCE AT THE TIME OF THE CASE: "When I first came up to London I had rooms in Montague Street, just round the corner from the British Museum . . ."
THE SOURCE OF THE CASE:
"Now and again cases came in my way, principally through the introduction of old fellow-students, for during my last years at the university there was a good deal of talk there about myself and my methods. The third of these cases was that of the Musgrave Ritual . . ."
LENGTH OF TIME SINCE HOLMES SAW MUSGRAVE: "For four years I had seen nothing of him until one morning he walked into my room in Montague Street."
TIME SINCE MUSGRAVE’S FATHER DIED:
"He was carried off about two years ago."
THE MONTHS OF BRUNTON’S LOVE LIFE:
"A few months ago we were in hopes that he was about to settle down again, for he became engaged to Rachel Howells, our second housemaid; but he has thrown her over since then and taken up with Janet Tregellis . . ."
THE SOMETIMES-SUPPRESSED COUPLET:
"What was the month?"
"Sixth from the first."
THE DAY MUSGRAVE CATCHES BRUNTON:
"One day last week—on Thursday night, to be more exact."
BRUNTON’S PLEA FOR TIME:
"Only a week, sir? A fortnight—say at least a fortnight!"
THE DAYS AFTER MUSGRAVE CAUGHT BRUNTON:
"For two days after this Brunton was most assiduous in his attention to his duties. I made no allusion to what had passed and waited with some curiosity to see how he would cover his disgrace. On the third morning, however, he did not appear . . ."
DAYS AFTER BRUNTON’S DISAPPEARANCE
THAT RACHEL DISAPPEARS:
"For two days Rachel Howells had been so ill, sometimes delirious, sometimes hysterical, that a nurse had been employed to sit up with her at night. On the third night after Brunton’s disappearance, the nurse, finding her patient sleeping nicely, had dropped into a nap . . ."
DAYS AFTER RACHEL’S DISAPPEARANCE
BEFORE HOLMES CALLED IN:
"Although we made every possible search and inquiry yesterday, we know nothing of the fate either of Rachel Howells or of Richard Brunton."
HOLMES GETS DOWN TO BUSINESS:
"The same afternoon saw us both at Hurlstone."
ORIGINS OF HURLSTONE:
"Over the low, heavy-lintelled door, in the centre of this old part, is chiselled the date, 1607, but experts are agreed that the beams and stonework are really much older than this."
AGE OF THE OAK:
"It was there at the Norman Conquest in all probability."
TIME WITHOUT AN ELM:
"It was struck by lightning ten years ago."
WHAT THE BARING-GOULD ANNOTATED SAYS:
October 2, 1879.
WHAT ZEISLER, THE KING OF CHRONOLOGY, SAYS: October 2, 1879.
THE BIRLSTONE RAILWAY’S TIMETABLE:
This pretty little puzzle was handled with such impressive mathematical and cosmological skill by Ernest Bloomfield Zeisler that even Baring-Gould bowed to his mastery in The Annotated Sherlock Holmes. But the Smash must follow a different path, as always, and this time that path leads all the way back to Charles the First.
"What was the month?" asks the ancient ritual, in a passage mysteriously suppressed in many editions. The answer: "Sixth from the first." And while others might debate what exactly was the first month on the calendar back in 1649 A.D., my preferred thought is that "the first" refers to the man whom this whole ritual revolves around: Charles the First. While some might argue that he wasn’t called "Charles the First" immediately following his death, the passage merely refers to "the first," and, indeed, Charles was first in the minds of his followers, and as Holmes says, the advent of Charles II was already foreseen. Charles the First died on January 30, 1649. Six months later would have been June 30.
After dating "The Gloria Scott" in July of 1880 and discussed Holmes meeting Watson in the summer of 1881 back when A Study in Scarlet was the topic, it seems that I’m going to have to go with June of 1881 for this case’s placement. Brunton begs for "at least a fortnight" more on the job, presumably to finish his treasure hunt — a treasure hunt that needs to be performed on as close to January 28th as possible. A fortnight (fourteen days) before that is June 16th, a Thursday. (How perfect is that? Brunton was discovered on a Thursday.) Counting the days in Musgrave’s narrative, it then follows that Holmes took up the case on Thursday, June 23, 1881 — just in time to recreate the ritual on his own.

"The Reigate Squires"
A YEAR, A MONTH, AND A DAY
"It was some time before the health of my friend Mr. Sherlock Holmes recovered from the strain caused by his immense exertions in the spring of ‘87."
"On referring to my notes I see that it was upon the fourteenth of April that I received a telegram from Lyons which informed me that Holmes was lying ill in the Hotel Dulong. Within twenty-four hours I was in his sick-room and was relieved to find that there was nothing formidable in his symptoms. Even his iron constitution, however, had broken down under the strain of an investigation which had extended over two months, during which period he had never worked less than fifteen hours a day and had more than once, as he assured me, kept to his task for five days at a stretch."
BACK TO BAKER STREET, OFF TO REIGATE
"Three days later we were back in Baker Street together . . . a week after our return from Lyons we were under the colonel’s roof."
THE DAY OF THE BURGLARY
"Old Acton, who is one of our county magnates, had his house broken into last Monday."
CUNNINGHAM CORRECTS HOLMES’S BOGUS NOTE
"You see you begin, ‘Whereas, at about a quarter to one on Tuesday morning an attempt was made,’ and so on. It was at a quarter to twelve, as a matter of fact."
WHAT THE BARING-GOULD ANNOTATED SAYS:
April 14, 1887.
WHAT ZEISLER, THE KING OF CHRONOLOGY, SAYS:
April 25, 1887.
THE BIRLSTONE RAILWAY’S TIMETABLE:
Watson begins the sequence of events leading to "Reigate Squires" with an exact date that Canonical chronologists do not dispute in the least: Thursday, April 14, 1887. Watson made it to Holmes’s bedside by the 15th, they were back in Baker Street by the 18th, and in Reigate a week later, on Monday the 25th, a week after old Acton’s house was burgled. That night at 11:45 William Kirwan is killed, which Holmes purposefully mis-writes as 12:45 Tuesday morning.
The only question is when does one consider that the case actually started? When we first hear of Holmes on the 14th? Upon hearing of the Acton burglary on the 25th? Or when Holmes actually gets involved on the 26th? Personally, I’ll take Tuesday, April 26, 1887.

"The Crooked Man"
STATE OF WATSON’S MARRIAGE AND CAREER:
"One summer night, a few months after my marriage, I was seated by my own hearth smoking a last pipe and nodding over a novel, for my day’s work had been an exhausting one. My wife had already gone upstairs, and the sound of the locking of the hall door some time before told me that the servants had also retired."
TIME OF HOLMES’S VISIT:
"It was a quarter to twelve."
SIGNIFICANT OBSERVATITIONS FROM HOLMES:
"You still smoke the Arcadia mixture of your bachelor days, then! There’s no mistaking that fluffy ash upon your coat. It’s easy to tell that you have been accustomed to wear a uniform, Watson."
WATSON’S CURRENT SUBSTITUTE:
"I have no doubt Jackson would take my practice."
DURATION OF THE BARCLAY MARRIAGE:
"I may add that she was a woman of great beauty, and that even now, when she has been married for upward of thirty years, she is still of a striking and queenly appearance."
DURATION OF BARCLAY’S COMMISSION:
"It was commanded up to Monday night by James Barclay, a gallant veteran, who started as a full private, was raised to commissioned rank for his bravery at the time of the Mutiny."
DURATION OF BARCLAY’S RESIDENCE:
"The first battalion of the Royal Munsters (which is the old One Hundred and Seventeenth) has been stationed at Aldershot for some years. The married officers live out of barracks, and the colonel has during all this time occupied a villa called ‘Lachine,’ about half a mile from the north camp."
THE DAY OF THE CRIME:
"Now for the events at Lachine between nine and ten on the evening of last Monday."
THE DAY OF THE INVESTIGATION:
"That was the state of things, Watson, when upon the Tuesday morning I, at the request of Major Murphy, went down to Aldershot to supplement the efforts of the police."
DURATION OF WOOD’S SUPPOSED DEATH:
"I thought you had been dead this thirty years, Henry."
WHAT THE BARING-GOULD ANNOTATED SAYS:
September 11, 1889.
WHAT ZEISLER, THE KING OF CHRONOLOGY, SAYS:
June 26, 1889.
THE BIRLSTONE RAILWAY TIMETABLE:
With the Sepoy Mutiny beginning in 1857, and Mrs. Barclay’s clear statement that she thought Henry Wood had been dead for thirty years (and she had better reason to remember than anyone), the logical year for this case would be 1887. (Holmes’s statement of "upward of thirty years" has to be taken as an estimation — he’s good, but he doesn’t track wedding anniversaries.) Beyond that, one must look to the details of Watson’s married life, and, as always, that’s where it gets tricky.
While other chronologers have gone with 1889, Anstruther seemed to be Watson’s fill-in doctor that particular summer, as we have seen in "The Boscombe Valley Mystery," and Watson is using Jackson in this case. Holmes’s reference to Watson’s military career and bachelor days also mark this as a tale from earlier times, when Watson had only been married for the first time and was still not so long out of uniform. His wife then, was that Mrs. Watson from "Five Orange Pips" who went on a visit to her mother’s and never seems to have returned. Watson is more easily tired in those early days, still showing the effects of the war. Looking at the above details, 1887 still seems a likely choice for the year. As for the day within that year?
Well, a few months have passed since Watson’s marriage, a marriage that had obviously not taken place at the time of "Reigate Squires" in the last part of April. Watson’s attentions seem totally unencumbered by romance as he takes Holmes to the country in that tale, so I would even go so far as to say that he had yet to meet his future wife (or at least had yet to start dating her).
It’s also not long before Mrs. Watson runs off to her mother’s, I’d wager, as Watson is exhausted yet still not headed for the bedroom at nearly midnight. Definitely sounds like trouble in paradise. The "long series of cases" dealt with by Holmes and Watson in 1887 probably didn’t help matters any, and Holmes’s sudden appearance that Wednesday morning at breakfast may have been the last straw, sending the current Mrs. Watson packing for mother’s house.
Given all of the above, I’d place this case on Tuesday, August 30, 1887.

"The Resident Patient"
STATEMENT OF THE MONTH:
"It had been a close, rainy day in October."
CURRENT STATE OF LONDON:
"The paper was uninteresting. Parliament had risen. Everybody was out of town, and I yearned for the glades of the New Forest or the shingle of Southsea." A depleted bank account had caused me to postpone my holiday."
CURRENT STATE OF WATSON’S CAREER:
"You are yourself, I presume, a medical man?"
"A retired army surgeon."
THE START OF TREVELYAN’S PRACTICE:
"I won’t weary you with the account of how we bargained and negotiated. It ended in my moving into the house next Lady Day, and starting in practice on very much the same conditions as he had suggested."
"A few good cases and the reputation which I had won in the hospital brought me rapidly to the front, and during the last few years I have made him a rich man."
"Some weeks ago Mr. Blessington came down to me in, as it seemed to me, a state of considerable agitation. He spoke of some burglary which, he said, had been committed in the West End . . . For a week he continued to be in a peculiar state of restlessness . . . ."
"Two days ago I received the letter which I now read to you."
"He proposes to call at about a quarter-past six to-morrow evening . . ."
"You can imagine my amazement when, at the very same hour this evening, they both came marching into my consulting-room . . ."
THE YEAR OF THE ORIGINAL CRIME:
"This was in 1875. They were all five arrested, but the evidence against them was by no means conclusive. This Blessington or Sutton, who was the worst of the gang, turned informer. On his evidence Cartwright was hanged and the other three got fifteen years apiece. When they got out the other day, which was some years before their full term, they set themselves, as you perceive, to hunt down the traitor and to avenge the death of their comrade upon him."
DISTANCE OF WATSON’S WRITING FROM THE CASE:
"From that night nothing has been seen of the three murderers by the police, and it is surmised at Scotland Yard that they were among the passengers of the ill-fated steamer Norah Creina, which was lost some years ago with all hands upon the Portuguese coast, some leagues to the north of Oporto."
WHAT THE BARING-GOULD ANNOTATED SAYS:
October 6, 1886.
WHAT ZEISLER, THE KING OF CHRONOLOGY, SAYS:
October 29, 1887.
THE BIRLSTONE RAILWAY’S TIMETABLE:
It’s October. It’s before 1890. Watson is seriously depressed, in that way that only a man who has been without female companionship for some time can be depressed. The year 1887 seems full of female contact for Watson, if past Chronology Corners are to be believed, and Watson’s feelings of being cooped up in the sitting room sound a lot like the early Watson of Baker Street, still nursing his post-war health. Given the fact that they wouldn’t have let the Worthingdon bank gang out of prison *too* early, I’ll have to place this case in 1886.
As to the day in 1886, the heat seems to indicate earlier in the month, the kaliedescope of evening activity on the Strand seems to say Saturday night. Based entirely on those thoughts and a touch of male intuition, I’m going to call this one taking place on Saturday, October 2, 1886.

"The Greek Interpreter"
TIME HOLMES AND WATSON HAVE BEEN FRIENDS:
"During my long and intimate acquaintance with Mr. Sherlock Holmes I had never
heard him refer to his relations, and hardly ever to his own early life."
THE SEASON OF THE CASE:
"It was after tea on a summer evening . . ."
A SIGNIFICANT ORBITAL COMMENT:
"The conversation, which had roamed in a desultory, spasmodic fashion from golf clubs to the causes of the change in the obliquity of the ecliptic . . ."
THE NIGHT OF THE CASE:
"This is Wednesday evening," said Mr. Melas. "Well, then, it was Monday
night — only two days ago, you understand — that all this happened."
THE RESIDENTS OF 221B:
"We had reached our house in Baker Street . . ."
AND A MUCH LATER EVENT:
"Months afterwards a curious newspaper cutting reached us from Buda-Pesth."
WHAT THE BARING-GOULD ANNOTATED SAYS:
September 12, 1888.
WHAT ZEISLER, THE KING OF CHRONOLOGY, SAYS:
August 15, 1888.
THE BIRLSTONE RAILWAY’S TIMETABLE:
The obliquity of the ecliptic isn’t something that comes up every day in casual conversation. In fact, it really is only particularly pertinent on two days of the year: the summer solstice and the winter solstice, the high and low points of the Earth’s cock-eyed spin around the sun. Well, we know it’s summer. We know that summer solstice usually occurs on June 21. And we know it’s Wednesday. The only pre-Reichenbach date on which the summer solstice occurs on a Wednesday is in 1882 — far too early for Holmes and Watson to have had a "long and intimate acquaintance."
The years 1887 and 1888 are somewhat likely candidates, as Wednesday falls the day after and the day before summer solstice, respectively, in those years. But Holmes, being a forward-thinking individual, was most likely anticipating the solstice that would occur in the early morning hours of the next day. Therefore, I’m calling this one as beginning on Wednesday, June 20, 1888.

"The Naval Treaty"
THE MARRIAGE CONNECTION:
"The July which immediately succeeded my marriage was made memorable by three cases of interest, in which I had the privilege of being associated with Sherlock Holmes and of studying his methods. I find them recorded in my notes under the headings of ‘The Adventure of the Second Stain,’ ‘The Adventure of the Naval Treaty,’ and ‘The Adventure of the Tired Captain.’"
THE TIME FOR TELLING SECOND STAIN:
"The new century will have come, however, before the story can be safely told."
THE DATE OF THE TREATY PASSING:
"Nearly ten weeks ago—to be more accurate, on the twenty-third of May— he called me into his private room, and, after complimenting me on the good work which I had done, he informed me that he had a new commission of trust for me to execute."
DURATION OF THE BRAIN FEVER:
"Here I have lain, Mr. Holmes, for over nine weeks, unconscious, and raving with brain-fever."
WATSON’S POINT IN GETTING TO KNOW HOLMES:
"I had never before seen him show any keen interest in natural objects."
THE SLOW SEASON FOR THE MEDICAL BUSINESS:
"I was going to say that my practice could get along very well for a day or two, since it is the slackest time in the year."
COUNTING HOLMES’S CASES:
"On the contrary," said Holmes, "out of my last fifty-three cases my name has only appeared in four, and the police have had all the credit in forty-nine."
WHAT THE BARING-GOULD ANNOTATED SAYS:
July 30, 1889.
WHAT ZEISLER, THE KING OF CHRONOLOGY, SAYS:
July 29, 1889.
THE BIRLSTONE RAILWAY’S TIMETABLE:
While the time of year in "The Naval Treaty" seems abundantly clear from Percy Phelps’s tale, again we come to a case where the dating of Watson’s marriage would seem to be necessary to pinpointing the year. Of course, with evidence in other cases of a Watson marriage in both 1887 and 1889, choices still have to be made. As Holmes has but fifty-three cases on his books in which he worked with the police at this point, I have to take the earlier choice on this one.
Given the facts that Watson said this case took place in July, that the last day of July 1887 is exactly ten weeks past the theft of the treaty (which took place "nearly ten weeks ago," and that the case seems to take three days, I’d have to put the start of this case at Friday, July 29, 1887.

"The Final Problem"
THE DATES OF THE NEWSPAPER ACCOUNTS:
"As far as I know, there have been only three accounts in the public press: that in the Journal de Geneve on May 6th, 1891, the Reuter’s dispatch in the English papers on May 7th, and finally the recent letters to which I have alluded."
THE MARRIAGE, 1890, AND THE DATE OF THE CASE:
"It may be remembered that after my marriage, and my subsequent start in private practice, the very intimate relations which had existed between Holmes and myself became to some extent modified. He still came to me from time to time when he desired a companion in his investigations, but these occasions grew more and more seldom, until I find that in the year 1890 there were only three cases of which I retain any record. During the winter of that year and the early spring of 1891, I saw in the papers that he had been engaged by the French government upon a matter of supreme importance, and I received two notes from Holmes, dated from Narbonne and from Nimes, from which I gathered that his stay in France was likely to be a long one. It was with some surprise, therefore, that I saw him walk into my consulting-room upon the evening of April 24th."
THE MORIARTY CAMPAIGN:
"You crossed my path on the fourth of January,’ said he. ‘On the twenty-third you incommoded me; by the middle of February I was seriously inconvenienced by you; at the end of March I was absolutely hampered in my plans; and now, at the close of April, I find myself placed in such a position through your continual persecution that I am in positive danger of losing my liberty.’"
THE TIMETABLE FOR ENDING MORIARTY’S REIGN:
"This morning the last steps were taken, and three days only were wanted to complete the business."
"’You must drop it, Mr. Holmes,’ said he, swaying his face about. ‘You really must, you know.’
"’After Monday,’ said I."
THE EUROPEAN TOUR DATES:
"We made our way to Brussels that night and spent two days there, moving on upon the third day as far as Strasbourg. On the Monday morning Holmes had telegraphed to the London police . . ."
"For a charming week we wandered up the valley of the Rhone, and then, branching off at Leuk, we made our way over the Gemmi Pass, still deep in snow, and so, by way of Interlaken, to Meiringen."
"It was on the third of May that we reached the little village of Meiringen ... on the afternoon of the fourth we set off together, with the intention of crossing the hills and spending the night at the hamlet of Rosenlaui. We had strict injunctions, however, on no account to pass the falls of Reichenbach . . ."
WHAT THE BARING-GOULD ANNOTATED SAYS:
April 24, 1891.
WHAT ZEISLER, THE KING OF CHRONOLOGY, SAYS:
April 24, 1891.
THE BIRLSTONE RAILWAY TIMETABLE:
Some things you just can’t argue with. Gravity. Semi-trucks. The dating of "The Final Problem." The only fellow ever to try it was named J. Christ (J. Finley Christ, to be specific, but you can see why he might have tried to pull off a miracle of chronology). Me, I’m going with Watson’s clear and accurate dates. This one starts on Friday, April 24, 1891.

"The Adventure of the Empty House"
STATEMENT OF THE YEAR:
"It was in the spring of the year 1894 that all London was interested, and the fashionable world dismayed, by the murder of the Honourable Ronald Adair under most unusual and inexplicable circumstances."
THE TIME OF THE WRITING:
"Only now, at the end of nearly ten years, am I allowed to supply those missing links which make up the whole of that remarkable chain."
"... had I not been barred by a positive prohibition from his own lips, which was only withdrawn upon the third of last month."
TIME AND DATE OF THE MURDER:
"Yet it was upon this easy-going young aristocrat that death came, in most strange and unexpected form, between the hours of ten and eleven-twenty on the night of March 30, 1894."
WATSON TAKES A HAND:
"All day I turned these facts over in my mind . . . . In the evening I strolled across the Park, and found myself about six o’clock at the Oxford Street end of Park Lane."
HOLMES’S SPEEDY RETURN:
"I spent some months in a research into the coal-tar derivatives, which I conducted in a laboratory at Montpellier, in the south of France. Having concluded this to my satisfaction and learning that only one of my enemies was now left in London, I was about to return when my movements were hastened by the news of this very remarkable Park Lane Mystery, which not only appealed to me by its own merits, but which seemed to offer some most peculiar personal opportunities. I came over at once to London."
"The credit of the execution is due to Monsieur Oscar Meunier, of Grenoble, who spent some days in doing the moulding. It is a bust in wax. The rest I arranged myself during my visit to Baker Street this afternoon."
THE MONTH OF HOLMES’S REAPPEARANCE:
"Such was the remarkable narrative to which I listened on that April evening . . ."
WHAT THE BARING-GOULD ANNOTATED SAYS:
April 5, 1894.
WHAT ZEISLER, THE KING OF CHRONOLOGY, SAYS:
April 3, 1894.
THE BIRLSTONE RAILWAY TIMETABLE:
With such a clear date for the murder that came to be known as the "Park Lane Mystery," finding the beginning of this case seems to hinge on just how quickly Holmes could have found out about the murder and returned to England. As Holmes was planning his return to London, anyway, it’s entirely possible he was in Grenoble picking up the wax bust when word came of the air-gun murder. There was also probably not delay in his receipt of the news, as brother Mycroft had been surely keeping an eye on possible air-gun deaths.
Holmes’s progress from London to Switzerland in "The Final Problem" gives us a good yardstick with which to measure a trip back from Grenoble. A day from London to Brussels. A day from Brussels to Strasbourg. Another day could have surely gotten Holmes to Grenoble. The return trip would have therefore been a maximum of three days, and that was certainly a leisurely rate. A travelling Holmes intent on his destination could have made much better time, I’m sure.
The other factor to consider in this matter is the fact that Watson and the street loafers are still interested in the Park Lane Mystery on the day Holmes arrives back in London. The murder occurred on Friday, March 30. Mycroft could have telegraphed Holmes on Saturday, March 31. Even if Holmes was already in travel mode and in Grenoble, he probably couldn’t have begun the trip until late in the day. Travelling on Sunday and Monday, a Tuesday afternoon arrival seems not at all unlikely, and still within the range of days when Watson might still be following the case. That said, I’m going to have to go with Tuesday, April 3, 1894.

"The Adventure of the Norwood Builder"
THE MORIARTY REFERENCE POINT:
"London has become a singularly uninteresting city since the death of the late lamented Professor Moriarty."
TIME SINCE "EMPTY HOUSE":
"At the time of which I speak, Holmes had been back for some months, and I at his request had sold my practice and returned to share the old quarters in Baker Street."
THE STATE OF THE PARTNERSHIP:
"Our months of partnership had not been so uneventful as he had stated, for I find, on looking over my notes, that this period includes the case of the papers of ex-President Murillo, and also the shocking affair of the Dutch steamship Friesland, which so nearly cost us both our lives. His cold and proud nature was always averse, however, from anything in the shape of public applause, and he bound me in the most stringent terms to say no further word of himself, his methods, or his successes—a prohibition which, as I have explained, has only now been removed."
MCFARLANE AT HIS OFFICE:
"I was very much surprised, therefore, when yesterday, about three o’clock in the afternoon, he walked into my office in the city."
HOLMES’S STATEMENT OF THE MONTH:
"I crawled about the lawn with an August sun on my back, but I got up at the end of an hour no wiser than before."
THOSE JIBES AT WATSON:
"I fear that the Norwood Disappearance Case will not figure in that chronicle of our successes which I foresee that a patient public will sooner or later have to endure."
"Perhaps I shall get the credit also at some distant day, when I permit my zealous historian to lay out his foolscap once more — eh, Watson?"
"If ever you write an account, Watson, you can make rabbits serve your turn."WHAT THE BARING-GOULD ANNOTATED SAYS:
August 20, 1895.
WHAT ZEISLER, THE KING OF CHRONOLOGY, SAYS:
July 2, 1894.
THE BIRLSTONE RAILWAY TIMETABLE:
It’s August and it is "some months" after Holmes’s return in April of 1894. Since we’ll later learn that 1894 was a very busy year for the Holmes-Watson partnership, it seems unlikely that Watson would have selected anything but an 1894 case to talk about his return to 221B, so we can surely take his "some months" to mean months, and not a year or more as some chronologists have theorized. But what day in August of 1894?
Well, there’s an interesting little thing going on behind the scenes in this tale, hinted at by Holmes’s multiple references to Watson’s writings. In the month that would follow, September 1894, The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes would have its second edition published in America . . . an edition that suddenly wouldn’t have "The Cardboard Box" in it any more. (Oddly enough, "Cardboard Box" took place in August, too.) Whatever debate it was that caused that story to be pulled from the American edition was undoubtedly what had Holmes thinking of Watson’s writings anew, and with a negative outlook at that. It may have been the remaining Cushing sister who finally showed up at 221B to express her outrage at the tale’s publication, or it might have been some other scandalized reader, but either way Holmes probably didn’t wind up on the good side of the encounter. And he’s still smarting at the time of "Norwood Builder."
Giving Watson as much time as possible to deal with his American publishers after the anti-"Cardboard" event that set Holmes off, I’d have to date this case as early in August as possible: Wednesday, August 1, 1894.

"The Adventure of the Dancing Men"
WHAT HAPPENED THE YEAR BEFORE:
"Last year I came up to London for the Jubilee . . ."
THE HASTY WEDDING:
"In some way we became friends, until before my month was up I was as much in love as man could be. We were quietly married at a registry office, and we returned to Norfolk a wedded couple."
THE MONTH, AND DURATON OF THE MARRIAGE:
"Well, we have been married now for a year, and very happy we have been. But about a month ago, at the end of June, I saw for the first time signs of trouble."
THE DANCING MEN COMETH:
"About a week ago — it was the Tuesday of last week—I found on one of the window-sills a number of absurd little dancing figures like these upon the paper."
"None did come for a week, and then yesterday morning I found this paper lying on the sundial in the garden."
"When I got back after my visit to you, the very first thing I saw next morning was a fresh crop of dancing men."
"Two mornings later, a fresh inscription had appeared."
TIME BETWEEN CUBITT VISITS:
"The interview left Sherlock Holmes very thoughtful, and several times in the next few days I saw him take his slip of paper from his notebook and look long and earnestly at the curious figures inscribed upon it. He made no allusion to the affair, however, until one afternoon a fortnight or so later. I was going out when he called me back."
TIME BETWEEN MESSAGES:
"But there was a delay in that answering telegram, and two days of impatience followed, during which Holmes pricked up his ears at every ring of the bell. On the evening of the second there came a letter from Hilton Cubitt."
WHAT THE BARING-GOULD ANNOTATED SAYS:
July 27, 1898.
WHAT ZEISLER, THE KING OF CHRONOLOGY, SAYS:
July 27, 1898.
THE BIRLSTONE RAILWAY TIMETABLE:
As the matching dates of Zeisler and the B-G Annotated might infer, the paths of "Dancing Men" chronology are well trod along common paths. The year is determined by adding one to the year of the Jubilee. (The Diamond Jubilee in 1897 is the usual choice, as Watson seems so very married the year following the Golden Jubilee in 1887 — also, the "Return" cases would have to be post-hiatus for Watson to title them so, wouldn’t they?) The month is found in "a month ago, at the end of June," and the day in "about a week ago—it was the Tuesday of last week."
To me, the phrase "about a week ago" or "about a month ago" would tend to mean "almost a week ago" or "almost a month ago," or else Hilton Cubitt would use the phrase "more than a week ago," "a little over a month ago," or something along those lines. Other chronologists would dispute such logic, claiming that "almost" Tuesday can’t be Monday because Watson played billiards the night before at his club.
For people who can’t say exactly which club Watson belonged to, however, or what his position in said club might have been, the lack of billiard availability on a Sunday night seems a bit of a stretch. Even if English law forbade open clubs or billiards on Sunday night, we still can’t say for certain that Watson and Thurston didn’t sneak into their club for a private game. Thus, I’m going to have to go with Monday for "almost Tuesday."
The last one in July of 1898 is nearly a week ahead of month-end, making it a good candidate for "about a month ago" following the same logic, so I’m going with Monday, July 25, 1898.

"The Adventure of the Solitary Cyclist"
THE BUSY EIGHT YEARS:
"From the years 1894 to 1901 inclusive, Mr. Sherlock Holmes was a very busy man. It is safe to say that there was no public case of any difficulty in which he was not consulted during those eight years, and there were hundreds of private cases, some of them of the most intricate and extraordinary character, in which he played a prominent part."
THE STATEMENT OF THE DATE:
"On referring to my notebook for the year 1895, I find that it was upon Saturday, the 23d of April, that we first heard of Miss Violet Smith."
THE CASE JUST BEFORE THIS ONE:
"Her visit was, I remember, extremely unwelcome to Holmes, for he was immersed at the moment in a very abstruse and complicated problem concerning the peculiar persecution to which John Vincent Harden, the well known tobacco millionaire, had been subjected."
UNCLE RALPH’S TIME AWAY:
"My mother and I were left without a relation in the world except one uncle, Ralph Smith, who went to Africa twenty-five years ago, and we have never had a word from him since."
A CONFIRMATION OF THE MONTH:
"Excuse me," said Holmes. "When was this interview?"
"Last December — four months ago."
THE DAYS OF THE CASE
"You must know that every Saturday forenoon I ride on my bicycle to Farnham Station, in order to get the 12:22 to town ... Two weeks ago I was passing this place, when I chanced to look back over my shoulder, and about two hundred yards behind me I saw a man, also on a bicycle ... on my return on the Monday, I saw the same man on the same stretch of road. My astonishment was increased when the incident occurred again, exactly as before, on the following Saturday and Monday."
"Thursday brought us another letter from our client."
"I think, Watson, that we must spare time to run down together on Saturday morning and make sure that this curious and inclusive investigation has no untoward ending."
"Two days ago Woodley came up to my house with this cable, which showed that Ralph Smith was dead."
WHAT THE BARING-GOULD ANNOTATED SAYS:
April 13, 1895.
WHAT ZEISLER, THE KING OF CHRONOLOGY, SAYS:
April 23, 1898.
THE BIRLSTONE RAILWAY TIMETABLE:
Well, Watson seems to have done us all a favor in this case and said it plainly: Saturday, April 23, 1895. There’s just one problem: in 1895, the 23rd falls on a Tuesday. The Saturdays are April 6, 13, 20, and 27. And our two friendly Chronology Corner past masters, Baring-Gould and Zeisler, each take a different route in deciding what the error is. Baring-Gould claims it’s the first digit in day, Zeisler goes with the last digit in year. In both cases, the error comes down to a single digit, someone mistaking a "2" for a "1" or an "8" for a "5."
So why doesn’t anyone think that maybe that "3" could have been a "0"?
The day is a lot easier to mess up than the year, so I’m leaning toward the B-G hypothesis, but mistaking a "1" for a "2"? Nope. I have to go with Saturday, April 20, 1895 for this one, the closest possible Saturday to the one Watson put in print.

"The Adventure of the Priory School"
FROM HOLMES’S ENCYCLOPAEDIA:
"’Holdernesse, 6th Duke, K.G., P.C.’—half the alphabet! ‘Baron Beverley, Earl of Carston’ — dear me, what a list! ‘Lord Lieutenant of Hallamshire since 1900. Married Edith, daughter of Sir Charles Appledore, 1888. Heir and only child, Lord Saltire. Owns about two hundred and fifty thousand acres. Minerals in Lancashire and Wales. Address: Carlton House Terrace; Holdernesse Hall, Hallamshire; Carston Castle, Bangor, Wales. Lord of the Admiralty, 1872; Chief Secretary of State for — —’ Well, well, this man is certainly one of the greatest subjects of the Crown!"
HUXTABLE AND SALTIRE FIRST CROSS PATHS:
"On May 1st the boy arrived, that being the beginning of the summer term."
AND THEN THEY PART WAYS:
"He was last seen on the night of May 13th — that is, the night of last Monday."
"His absence was discovered at seven o’clock on Tuesday morning."
THE DAY HOLMES TAKES THE CASE:
"Now, on Thursday morning, we are as ignorant as we were on Tuesday."
WHAT THE BARING-GOULD ANNOTATED SAYS:
May 16, 1901.
WHAT ZEISLER, THE KING OF CHRONOLOGY, SAYS:
May 17, 1900.
THE BIRLSTONE RAILWAY TIMETABLE:
May 13th occurs on a Monday during Holmes’s Canonical period activity in 1889, 1895, 1901, and 1907, and 1912. The latter two years are easily dismissed as Holmes is well known to have been in Sussex and America, respectively. As Holmes’s encyclopaedia refers to "1900," one can hardly place the case before that year, which leaves us with 1901.
While Zeisler may dispute such hard evidence, being a bit over-enthralled with subjective statements about the moon, few other chronologers have, and I find myself inclined to agree with the pack on this one: This case began on Thursday, May 16, 1901.

"The Adventure of Black Peter"
IT WAS A VERY GOOD YEAR:
"I have never known my friend to be in better form, both mental and physical, than in the year ‘95."
"In this memorable year ‘95, a curious and incongruous succession of cases had engaged his attention, ranging from his famous investigation of the sudden
death of Cardinal Tosca — an inquiry which was carried out by him at the express desire of His Holiness the Pope — down to his arrest of Wilson, the notorious canary-trainer, which removed a plague-spot from the East End of London. Close on the heels of these two famous cases came the tragedy of Woodman’s Lee, and the very obscure circumstances which surrounded the death of Captain Peter Carey."
THE STATEMENT OF THE MONTH:
"During the first week of July, my friend had been absent so often and so long from our lodgings that I knew he had something on hand."
THE DATES OF PETER CAREY:
"He was born in ’45 — fifty years of age. He was a most daring and successful seal and whale fisher. In 1883 he commanded the steam
sealer Sea Unicorn, of Dundee. He had then had several successful voyages in succession, and in the following year, 1884, he retired. After that he travelled for some years, and finally he bought a small place called Woodman’s Lee, near Forest Row, in Sussex. There he has lived for six years, and there he died just a week ago to-day."
THE DAYS OF CAREY’S DEATH:
"You remember that a stonemason, named Slater, walking from Forest Row
about one o’clock in the morning—two days before the murder ... this refers to the Monday, and the crime was done upon the Wednesday."
"On the Tuesday, Peter Carey was in one of his blackest moods, flushed with drink and as savage as a dangerous wild beast. He roamed about the house, and the women ran for it when they heard him coming. Late in the evening, he went down to his own hut. About two o’clock the following morning, his daughter, who slept with her window open, heard a most fearful yell from that direction ..."
THE MONTH OF NELIGAN’S FINAL FATE:
"On the first page were written the initials ‘J. H. N.’ and the date ‘1883.’"
"It struck me that if I could see what occurred in the month of August, 1883, on board the Sea Unicorn, I might settle the mystery of my father’s fate."
"It was in ‘83 that it happened — August of that year. . . We were coming out of the ice-pack on our way home, with head winds and a week’s southerly gale, when we picked up a little craft that had been blown north. There was one man on her —a landsman. . . So far as I know, the man’s name was never mentioned, and on the second night he disappeared as if he had never been . . . Only one man knew what had happened to him, and that was me, for, with my own eyes, I saw the skipper tip up his heels and put him over the rail in the middle watch of a dark night, two days before we sighted the Shetland Lights."
CAIRNS MEETS CAREY:
"The first night he was reasonable enough, and was ready to give me what would make me free of the sea for life. We were to fix it all two nights later."
LENGTH OF HOLMES’S INVOLVEMENT IN THE MATTER:
"There, Watson, this infernal case has haunted me for ten days."
WHAT THE BARING-GOULD ANNOTATED SAYS:
July 3, 1895.
WHAT ZEISLER, THE KING OF CHRONOLOGY, SAYS:
July 10, 1895.
THE BIRLSTONE RAILWAY TIMETABLE:
This one isn’t too hard to calculate: The year is definitely 1895, both in Watson’s words and in Black Peter’s birth year plus his age. Watson also says his friend had been absent much during the first week of July. Holmes tells us he spent ten days on the case. Carey was killed on a Wednesday "a week ago."
Put all this together and look at a calendar, you’ll come up with Wednesday, July 10, 1895, just like Zeisler did, and just like I did. (Those folks that say July 3 just weren’t listening closely enough to Watson.)

"The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton"
WATSON TOSSES OUT A CHALLENGE:
"The reader will excuse me if I conceal the date or any other fact by which he might trace the actual occurrence."
THE STATEMENT OF THE SEASON:
"We had been out for one of our evening rambles, Holmes and I, and had returned about six o’clock on a cold, frosty winter’s evening."
THE CURRENT MURDERER COUNT:
"I’ve had to do with fifty murderers in my career, but the worst of them never gave me the repulsion which I have for this fellow."
THE TIME UNTIL THE MARRIAGE OF LADY EVA:
"She is to be married in a fortnight to the Earl of Dovercourt."
THE DATES WATSON WAS GOING TO CONCEAL:
"My dear sir, it is painful for me to discuss it, but if the money is not paid on the 14th, there certainly will be no marriage on the 18th."
THE DEADLINE RUNS OUT:
"To-morrow is the last day of grace, and unless we can get the letters to-night, this villain will be as good as his word and will bring about her ruin."
THE DAYS OF ESCOTT:
"For some days Holmes came and went at all hours in this attire, but beyond a remark that his time was spent at Hampstead, and that it was not wasted, I knew nothing of what he was doing. At last, however, on a wild, tempestuous evening, when the wind screamed and rattled against the windows, he returned from his last expedition."
THE PHYSICAL CONDITION OF HOLMES AND WATSON:
"It was a six-foot wall which barred our path, but he sprang to the top and over. As I did the same I felt the hand of the man behind me grab at my ankle, but I kicked myself free and scrambled over a grass-strewn coping. I fell upon my face among some bushes, but Holmes had me on my feet in an instant, and together we dashed away across the huge expanse of Hampstead Heath. We had run two miles, I suppose, before Holmes at last halted and listened intently."
WHAT THE BARING-GOULD ANNOTATED SAYS:
January 5, 1899.
WHAT ZEISLER, THE KING OF CHRONOLOGY, SAYS:
January 6, 1886.
THE BIRLSTONE RAILWAY’S TIMETABLE:
Finding a date for "Charles Augustus Milverton" is a work that must be based upon the observation of trifles. Watson has said from the outset that he’s concealling the date from us, and the number of blackmail victims, combined with the burglary on the part of he and Holmes, give him ample reasons to do so. So how does one date this case? By looking to the case’s primary focus, of course.
As smart as Milverton was, there is no way his operation and personal safety continued for as long as it did with Milverton as an independent operator. Especially prior to 1891, when there was but one king of all London crime, and that king wouldn’t have taken kindly to an independent operator making as much as Milverton did without proper tribute being paid.
Yes, it is very hard to see Charles Augustus Milverton operating in Moriartian London without ties to the Professor, and given the amount of money that Milverton brought in with his blackmail business, one would suspect those ties were very close. So close, and so profitable, would be such a connection that I’m sure Moriarty would have felt "incommoded" by Milverton’s sudden demise and the burning of his papers.
And when was Moriarty "incommoded"? On January 23, 1891.
"But," one might argue, "Watson acts like he hadn’t seen Holmes for many months before ‘The Final Problem.’" If you look closely at what Watson writes in that tale, he says he only retained records of three cases with Holmes in 1890. He says he read of Holmes in the paper and received notes from him in 1891, but he never really says he didn’t see Holmes in 1891. We also know, from "The Valley of Fear," that Watson abbreviated his awareness of Holmes’s battle against Moriarty in FINA, and I think CHAS was another example of that abbreviation (especially when one remembers that FINA was written to clear Holmes’s reputation ... a record of him committing a burglary would hardly have helped).
If one needs further evidence of Watson dropping CHAS from his published accounts of the Moriarty war, examine Holmes’s comment in FINA with a mind to CHAS: "I must further beg you to be so unconventional as to allow me to leave your house presently by scrambling over your back garden wall."
If one of Watson’s last adventures with Holmes involved the two of them scrambling over a back garden wall, as CHAS did, this suddenly becomes a clever little in-joke between the two men worthy of Holmes’s sense of humor.
Once one then looks at the winter setting of CHAS, it all seems to fall into place. Watson may have supplied false dates in this story with Milverton’s "the money is not paid on the 14th, there certainly will be no marriage on the 18th," but he had already given us a true one in "The Final Problem." And from there we can easily work backwards.
Although the "14th . . . 18th" statement is incorrect as to the exact dates (as Watson told us he was going to be), one can still get the timetable of Milverton’s demands and Watson’s involvement from it. The wedding is two weeks from the day Watson became involved, and Milverton wanted his money four days before the wedding. The night Milverton dies begins the evening before "the last day of grace" . . . four days before the wedding, and Milverton’s post-midnight demise makes January 23, 1891 three days before the wedding. Adding those three days gives us a wedding on January 26 and subtracting the fortnight (14 days) that Holmes says remains before the wedding when the case begins, we can pretty surely say that "The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton" began on Monday, January 12, 1891.

"The Adventure of the Six Napoleons"
THE BUST-BUSTING SEQUENCE:
"The first case reported was four days ago," said he. "It was at the shop of Morse Hudson, who has a place for the sale of pictures and statues in the Kennington Road."
"The second case, however, was more serious, and also more singular. It occurred only last night."
"The development for which my friend had asked came in a quicker and an infinitely more tragic form than he could have imagined. I was still dressing in my bedroom next morning . . ."
THE LENGTH OF BEPPO’S SENTENCE:
"It was more than a year ago now. He knifed another Italian in the street . . . . The man lived and he got off with a year.
THE DATES OF BUST SALES AND ARRESTS:
"When you referred in your ledger to the sale of those casts I observed that the date was June 3rd of last year. Could you give me the date when Beppo was arrested?"
"I could tell you roughly by the pay-list. Yes, he was paid last on May 20th."
"Mr. Horace Harker is a customer of ours. We supplied him with the bust some months ago. We ordered three busts of that sort from Gelder & Co., of Stepney."
THE PRIDE OF THE YARD:
"We’re not jealous of you at Scotland Yard. No, sir, we are very proud of you, and if you come down to-morrow, there’s not a man, from the oldest inspector to the youngest constable, who wouldn’t be glad to shake you by the hand."
WHAT THE BARING-GOULD ANNOTATED SAYS:
June 8, 1900.
WHAT ZEISLER, THE KING OF CHRONOLOGY, SAYS:
June 11, 1900.
THE BIRLSTONE RAILWAY’S TIMETABLE:
In finding the year of this case, I found myself irresistably drawn to that statement of Lestrade from the case’s conclusion. Every man at Scotland Yard wanted to shake Holmes’s hand. They’ve known him for years. He’s been successful before. And the men of the Yard haven’t even heard of his solution to the Borgia pearl businesss. Why are they suddenly so "not jealous?" Why are they so eager to shake his hand?
Only one reason seems satisfying enough, and that reason can be found in "The Adventure of the Three Garridebs," where Watson writes: "I remember the date very well, for it was in the same month that Holmes refused a knighthood for services which may perhaps some day be described. I only refer to the matter in passing, for in my position of partner and confidant I am obliged to be particularly careful to avoid any indiscretion. I repeat, however, that this enables me to fix the date, which was the latter end of June, 1902, shortly after the conclusion of the South African War."
It was a June in which Holmes was offered a knighthood. It is also June in which "Six Napoleons" takes place, if we add a year to Beppo’s arrest for his jail time. The men of Scotland Yard would all know of such an event as Holmes’s impending knighthood. And one would think, as Lestrade says, that they would be very proud of their advisor of so many years. Since it’s after June 3 (or else the reference to "June 3rd of last year" would have been unnecessary) and still before the June Honours are presented, I’d have to say that this case starts on Wednesday, June 4, 1902.

"The Adventure of the Three Students"
THE STATEMENT OF THE YEAR:
"It was in the year ‘95 that a combination of events, into which I need not enter, caused Mr. Sherlock Holmes and myself to spend some weeks in one of our great university towns, and it was during this time that the small but instructive adventure which I am about to relate befell us. It will be obvious that any details which would help the reader exactly to identify the college or the criminal would be injudicious and offensive."
THE EXAM’S SCHEDULE:
"I must explain to you, Mr. Holmes, that to-morrow is the first day of the examination for the Fortescue Scholarship."
"To-day, about three o’clock, the proofs of this paper arrived from the printers."
FOOD OF THE SEASON:
"By Jove! My dear fellow, it is nearly nine, and the landlady babbled of green peas at seven-thirty."
YOUNG GILCHRIST’S ODD CLAIM:
"I have been offered a commission in the Rhodesian Police, and I am going out to South Africa at once."
WHAT THE BARING-GOULD ANNOTATED SAYS:
April 5, 1895.
WHAT ZEISLER, THE KING OF CHRONOLOGY, SAYS:
March 27, 1895.
THE BIRLSTONE RAILWAY TIMETABLE:
Watson shows a lot of kindliness towards the athletic young Gilchrist in his write-up this tale, and treats the little cheater far better than he deserves. One almost would think Holmes and Watson believe the young blackguard’s announcement of self-imposed exile to South Africa to escape a charge of cheating. He’s lying, of course, but in his choice of lies we can find one helpful grain of truth: the date that this case began.
Like any energetic young "Animal House" college liar, Gilchrist grabbed for his lies any fact which had recently been added to the upper layer of his brain. And on Friday, May 3, 1895, certain territories belonging to the British South Africa Company were finally proclaimed "Rhodesia" after the company’s general manager, Cecil Rhodes. Give Gilchrist a few days to hear about it in a bar somewhere, as well as allowing for the proofs coming back from the printer on the day the case started, combined with the start of the exam the next day, and one comes to the inevitable result: This case began on Monday, May 6, 1895, well in season for those green peas the landlady babbled of.

"The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez"
THE STATEMENT OF THE YEAR:
"When I look at the three massive manuscript volumes which contain our work for the year 1894, I confess that it is very difficult for me, out of such a wealth of material ... I see my notes upon the repulsive story of the red leech and the terrible death of Crosby, the banker. Here also I find an account of the Addleton tragedy, and the singular contents of the ancient British barrow. The famous Smith-Mortimer succession case comes also within this period, and so does the tracking and arrest of Huret, the Boulevard assassin—an exploit which won for Holmes an autograph letter of thanks from the French President and the Order of the Legion of Honour. . . . none of them unites so many singular points of interest as the episode of Yoxley Old Place."
THE STATEMENT OF THE MONTH:
"It was a wild, tempestuous night, towards the close of November."
THE WEATHER REPORT:
"The gale had blown itself out next day, but it was a bitter morning when we started upon our journey."
A REFERENCE TO A PAST CASE:
"We saw the cold winter sun rise over the dreary marshes of the Thames and the long, sullen reaches of the river, which I shall ever associate with our pursuit of the Andaman Islander in the earlier days of our career."
WHAT THE BARING-GOULD ANNOTATED SAYS:
November 14, 1894.
WHAT ZEISLER, THE KING OF CHRONOLOGY, SAYS:
October 27, 1894.
THE BIRLSTONE RAILWAY TIMETABLE:
It’s November, it’s 1894, and Watson is not a happy man. The sun is cold, the marshes dreary, and even the river is sullen to him. Why is Watson so depressed, at a time when he and Holmes have begun anew, and are taking on adventures and investigations at a tremendous rate? He seems to be writing wuite a bit. He’s keeping up on his medical skills. Why is he so glum?
There’s only one thing that makes a man this mopey, and it can be seen in his reference to the Andaman Islander . . . someone whom he probably wasn’t thinking of at all as they crossed the river. The true center of his thoughts should be plain: Watson proposed marriage to Mary Morstan during a September not long after that river chase he writes of in GOLD. It is likely they married in November, a month that gives them enough time to plan their future without interfering with holiday activity. The cause of Watson’s suddenly melancholy musings on a river than was always near at hand anyway suggest that the day this case starts was special in some way — the way a wedding anniversary is special.
Saturday is the traditional day of weddings, and the latest Saturday in November of 1888 was the 24th. Curiously enough, November 24th also falls on a Saturday in 1894, giving Watson even more reason to sadly remember what would have been his sixth anniversary, had his wife still been with him. Thus, I’m dating the beginning of this case on Friday, November 23, 1894.

"The Adventure of the Missing Three-Quarter"
THE STATEMENT OF MONTH AND (SORT-OF) YEAR:
"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."
THE SCOTLAND YARD REFERRAL:
"I’ve been down to Scotland Yard, Mr. Holmes. I saw Inspector Stanley Hopkins. He advised me to come to you."
THE STATE OF HOLMES’S BUSINESS:
"Even the most insignificant problem would be welcome in these stagnant days."
"Things had indeed been very slow with us, and I had learned to dread such periods of inaction, for I knew by experience that my companion’s brain was so abnormally active that it was dangerous to leave it without material upon which to work. For years I had gradually weaned him from that drug mania which had threatened once to check his remarkable career."
"Well, well, I have a clear day, and I shall be happy to look into the matter."
THE RUGBY SCHEDULE:
"To-morrow we play Oxford. Yesterday we all came up, and we settled at Bentley’s private hotel."
REFERENCE TO A PAST VILLAIN:
"I have not seen a man who, if he turns his talents that way, was more calculated to fill the gap left by the illustrious Moriarty."
THE SEASON REITERATED:
"‘Come, Watson,’ said he, and we passed from that house of grief into the pale sunlight of the winter day."
PUBLICATION DATE OF THE STORY:
August 1904.
WHAT THE BARING-GOULD ANNOTATED SAYS:
December 8, 1896.
WHAT ZEISLER, THE KING OF CHRONOLOGY, SAYS:
December 8, 1896.
THE BIRLSTONE RAILWAY TIMETABLE:
The year of this case can quickly be narrowed with a little math and a nod to Moriarty’s reign. It was plainly past 1894, as the mention of the late Professor indicates. And since it was published in 1904, the phrase "some seven or eight years ago" means it could not have been later than 1897. Past scholars have taken the history of Oxford-Cambridge rugby over the word of Watson in this case, choosing December over February, and selecting the year by who won. But trusting Watson must always be the first choice for the Sherlockian chronologer, or we discredit our best witness. Unless an old evening paper can be found with the exact wording Watson has transcribed in his text, we therefore must assume that the Oxford-Cambridge game was a special exhibition one, or even a purely student-organized bit of fun, that occurred in February and was not included in known records outside of the Canon.
We can eliminate the year 1895, as Watson has earlier spoken of what great form, physically and mentally, Holmes was in that year, and in "Missing Three-Quarter," Watson is very concerned about Holmes returning to drug use. And while 1896 is a good possibility, the recommendation of Stanley Hopkins is a sign that Holmes was on Hopkins’s mind. And the February that we’ll soon be finding out Holmes was on Hopkins’s mind was February 1897. (More in the "Abbey Grange" segment.)
Having already broken with the official rugby schedules in favor of Watson, I’m going to have to climb further out on that limb to say that Overton and his team-mates came up to London on Friday for a weekend in the city followed by a Sunday game. February would be heating up for Holmes by the second weekend of 1897 (as we’ll see next story), so I’m going to have to date this one on Saturday, February 6, 1897. (But not without admitting that this has to be the toughest case that this chronologist has encountered thus far.)

"The Adventure of the Abbey Grange"
THE STATEMENT OF THE SEASON AND YEAR:
"It was on a bitterly cold night and frosty morning, towards the end of the winter of ‘97."
HOW QUICKLY HOLMES IS CALLED IN:
"The crime was committed before twelve last night."
THE CURRENT HOPKINS COUNT:
"Hopkins has called me in seven times, and on each occasion his summons has been entirely justified."
THE MAID’S TERM OF SERVICE:
"She has been with her all her life," said Hopkins. "Nursed her as a baby, and came with her to England when they first left Australia, eighteen months ago. Theresa Wright is her name, and the kind of maid you don’t pick up nowadays."
DURATION OF THE BRACKENSTALL MARRIAGE:
"He was all honey when first we met him—only eighteen months ago, and we both feel as if it were eighteen years. She had only just arrived in London. Yes, it was her first voyage—she had never been from home before. He won her with his title and his money and his false London ways. If she made a mistake she has paid for it, if ever a woman did. What month did we meet him? Well, I tell you it was just after we arrived. We arrived in June, and it was July. They were married in January of last year."
"I have been married about a year."
WHEN THE BOAT SAILED:
"In June of ‘95, only one of their line had reached a home port. It was the Rock of Gibraltar, their largest and best boat. A reference to the passenger list showed that Miss Fraser, of Adelaide, with her maid had made the voyage in her. The boat was now somewhere south of the Suez Canal on her way to Australia. Her officers were the same as in ‘95, with one exception. The first officer, Mr. Jack Crocker, had been made a captain and was to take charge of their new ship, the Bass Rock, sailing in two days’ time from Southampton."
WHAT THE BARING-GOULD ANNOTATED SAYS:
January 23, 1897.
WHAT ZEISLER, THE KING OF CHRONOLOGY, SAYS:
January 15th or 24th, 1897.
THE BIRLSTONE RAILWAY TIMETABLE:
Sometimes it’s the exact dates that are troubling when one is putting dates to Watson’s cases, sometimes it’s more subtle things. Watson writes that this case took place towards the end of winter. Theresa Wright says Mary Fraser met Sir Eustace eighteen months before, in July, which would make it January. Hopkins says Fraser and Wright left Australia eighteen months before (in June), which would make it December. And neither month really qualifies for the end of winter.
Theresa says the Brackenstalls were married in "January of last year," and Lady Mary says the wedding is "about a year" old. Yet both of these women are lying throughout the investigation, so their testimony must be looked at with a suspicious eye. Good old Watson’s "towards the end of winter" must be our best guide here, and that puts the case a little later than January. The bitter cold and ice seem to make it more likely February than March, but the best judge of what day it is must come from one of the worst lies in the entire Canon of Holmes.
"One day out in a country lane I met Theresa Wright, her old maid," Jack Crocker says, of his reacquaintance with Mary Fraser’s maid. Seems mighty coincidental, doesn’t it? Especially when coming from the lips of a man who also said, "Every day of that voyage I loved her more, and many a time since have I kneeled down in the darkness of the night watch and kissed the deck of that ship because I knew her dear feet had trod it."
This man’s obsession with Mary Fraser was not the sort of thing that lets a reunion come based on a casual encounter. No, Crocker’s visit to Abbey Grange was most surely planned, and that planning could only have been done with one late-winter goal in mind: February 14th, and a Valentine’s Day reunion.
Thus, I’m going to sentimentally date this case on Monday, February 15, 1897.

"The Adventure of the Second Stain"
DATE OF PUBLICATION:
December 1904
TIMING OF THE PUBLICATION:
"I had intended "The Adventure of the Abbey Grange" to be the last of those exploits of my friend, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, which I should ever communicate to the public. This resolution of mine was not due to any lack of material, since I have notes of many hundreds of cases to which I have never alluded, nor was it caused by any waning interest on the part of my readers in the singular personality and unique methods of this remarkable man. The real reason lay in the reluctance which Mr. Holmes has shown to the continued publication of his experiences. So long as he was in actual professional practice the records of his successes were of some practical value to him, but since he has definitely retired from London and betaken himself to study and bee-farming on the Sussex Downs, notoriety has become hateful to him, and he has peremptorily requested that his wishes in this matter should be strictly observed. It was only upon my representing to him that I had given a promise that "The Adventure of the Second Stain" should be published when the times were ripe, and pointing out to him that it is only appropriate that this long series of episodes should culminate in the most important international case which he has ever been called upon to handle, that I at last succeeded in obtaining his consent that a carefully guarded account of the incident should at last be laid before the public."
STATEMENT OF THE SEASON AND DAY OF THE WEEK:
"It was, then, in a year, and even in a decade, that shall be nameless, that upon one Tuesday morning in autumn we found two visitors of European fame within the walls of our humble room in Baker Street."
THE TIMING OF THE LETTER:
"The letter—for it was a letter from a foreign potentate — was received six days ago."
"Each member of the Cabinet was informed of it yesterday, but the pledge of secrecy which attends every Cabinet meeting was increased by the solemn warning which was given by the Prime Minister."
"It was taken, then, yesterday evening between seven-thirty and eleven-thirty, probably near the earlier hour, since whoever took it evidently knew that it was there and would naturally secure it as early as possible."
THE STATE OF HOLMES’S PRACTICE:
"You are two of the most busy men in the country, and in my own small way I have also a good many calls upon me. I regret exceedingly that I cannot help you in this matter, and any continuation of this interview would be a waste of time."
THE STATEMENT OF THE SEASON:
", , , And yet as we saw it that autumn morning . . ."
THE STATE OF WATSON’S RELATIONSHIPS:
"Now, Watson, the fair sex is your department."
A PAST UNTOLD CASE:
"And you must have observed, Watson, how she manoeuvred to have the light at her back. She did not wish us to read her expression. . . . You remember the woman at Margate whom I suspected for the same reason. No powder on her nose — that proved to be the correct solution."
TIME PASSES:
"All that day and the next and the next Holmes was in a mood which his friends would call taciturn, and others morose."
"So for three mornings the mystery remained, so far as I could follow it in the papers. . . . Upon the fourth day there appeared a long telegram from Paris"
"But if I have told you nothing in the last three days, it is because there is nothing to tell. . . . Only one important thing has happened in the last three days, and that is that nothing has happened."
THE DAYS FROM THE DAILY TELEGRAPH:
"Yesterday a lady, who has been known as Mme. Henri Fournaye, occupying a small villa in the Rue Austerlitz, was reported to the authorities by her servants as being insane. . . . On inquiry, the police have discovered that Mme. Henri Fournaye only returned from a journey to London on Tuesday last. . . . Her movements upon the Monday night have not yet been traced, but it is undoubted that a woman answering to her description attracted much attention at Charing Cross Station on Tuesday morning by the wildness of her appearance and the violence of her gestures. . . . There is evidence that a woman, who might have been Mme. Fournaye, was seen for some hours upon Monday night watching the house in Godolphin Street."
LADY HILDA’S VIGIL:
"For two days I watched the place, but the door was never left open. Last night I made a last attempt."
TRELAWNEY HOPE’S TIME AWAY FROM THE BOX:
"Have you examined the box since Tuesday morning?"
"No. It was not necessary."
AN IMPORTANT BIT FROM ANOTHER STORY (NAVA):
"The July which immediately succeeded my marriage was made memorable by three cases of interest, in which I had the privilege of being associated with Sherlock Holmes and of studying his methods. I find them recorded in my notes under the headings of "The Adventure of the Second Stain," "The Adventure of the Naval Treaty," and "The Adventure of the Tired Captain." The first of these, however, deals with interests of such importance and implicates so many of the first families in the kingdom that for many years it will be impossible to make it public. No case, however, in which Holmes was engaged has ever illustrated the value of his analytical methods so clearly or has impressed those who were associated with him so deeply. I still retain an almost verbatim report of the interview in which he demonstrated the true facts of the case to Monsieur Dubugue of the Paris police, and Fritz von Waldbaum, the well-known specialist of Dantzig, both of whom had wasted their energies upon what proved to be side-issues. The new century will have come, however, before the story can be safely told."
WHAT THE BARING-GOULD ANNOTATED SAYS:
October 12, 1886.
WHAT ZEISLER, THE KING OF CHRONOLOGY, SAYS:
A Tuesday in July 1889.
THE BIRLSTONE RAILWAY TIMETABLE:
Though the details of "The Adventure of the Second Stain" mentioned in "Naval Treaty" seem almost like they come from a very different "The Adventure of the Second Stain," there are also enough points of similarity to accept it as the same case for chronological purposes. Watson plainly still couldn’t (or wouldn’t, for the sake of a good story) write everything, even after the turn of the century, but that which he did is close enough to the original reference to go with his "same month as Naval Treaty" date.
So, with the "Naval Treaty" connection, and its dating of July 29, 1887 as a starting point, certain questions regarding the "Second Stain" mystery letter start to come up: Which foreign potentate was raging about British colonialism in that letter which everyone so feared? The Premier seems to point that potentate’s identification in the direction of Europe, but is that mere subterfuge, one quickly seen through by Holmes? For if any potentate was liable to get stirred up by British colonialism in July, wouldn’t it be one who’s very patriotism helped the matter along in that very month?
Especially, for example, on July 4th?
Try this scenario on for size: Grover Cleveland has a bit too much to drink before fireworks on Monday, July 4th. Afterwards, in a fit of patriotic passion, he writes a fiery letter to the British Prime Minister. It goes into the mail the next day, taking a little over a week to cross the Atlantic and get to the Minister on Wednesday, July 13. Six days later, the Prime Minister comes to 221B Baker Street on Tuesday, July 19, 1887.

Hmmm, I think like it. Anybody else go for this one?

The Hound of the Baskervilles
MORTIMER’S TERM OF SERVICE AT CHARING CROSS:
"Mortimer, James, M.R.C.S., 1882, Grimpen, Dartmoor, Devon. House surgeon, from 1882 to 1884, at Charing Cross Hospital."
"And he left five years ago—the date is on the stick."
"Just under the head was a broad silver band, nearly an inch across. "To James Mortimer, M.R.C.S., from his friends of the C.C.H.," was engraved upon it, with the date ‘1884.’"
THE DATE OF SIR CHARLES’S DEATH:
"This is the Devon County Chronicle of May 14th of this year. It is a short account of the facts elicited at the death of Sir Charles Baskerville which occurred a few days before that date."
OUT OF THE COUNTRY IN MAY:
"I had observed some newspaper comment at the time, but I was exceedingly preoccupied by that little affair of the Vatican cameos, and in my anxiety to oblige the Pope I lost touch with several interesting English cases."
TIME PASSES IN LONDON:
"How long will it take you to make up your mind?"
"Twenty-four hours. At ten o’clock to-morrow, Dr. Mortimer, I will be much obliged to you if you will call upon me here, and it will be of help to me in my plans for the future if you will bring Sir Henry Baskerville with you."
ANOTHER PAST CASE:
"Ah, Wilson, I see you have not forgotten the little case in which I had
the good fortune to help you? . . . I have some recollection, Wilson, that you had among your boys a lad named Cartwright, who showed some ability during the investigation."
DAY OF DEPARTURE FOR BASKERVILLE HALL:
"To go to Baskerville Hall."
"And when?"
"At the end of the week."
"Then on Saturday, unless you hear to the contrary, we shall meet at the ten-thirty train from Paddington."
AND THE TIME UNTIL THAT DEPARTURE:
"I have made some inquiries myself in the last few days . . ."
"I can swear to one thing, and that is that we have not been shadowed during the last two days."
A "MILVERTON" REARING HIS UGLY HEAD:
"At the present instant one of the most revered names in England is being besmirched by a blackmailer, and only I can stop a disastrous scandal."
LENGTH OF TIME SELDEN HAD BEEN LOOSE WHEN WATSON ARRIVED:
"There’s a convict escaped from Princetown, sir. He’s been out three days now ..."
THE DATE ON WATSON’S FIRST LETTER:
" October 13th"
TIME SINCE SELDEN’S ESCAPE AT THAT WRITING:
"A fortnight has passed since his flight . . ."
THE DATE ON WATSON’S SECOND LETTER:
"Oct. 15th."
THE DINNER DATE DAY:
"We are to dine at Merripit House next Friday . . ."
THE SEASON REITERATED:
"We hurried through the dark shrubbery, amid the dull moaning of the autumn wind and the rustle of the falling leaves."
THE CURRENT DATE:
The extract from my private diary which forms the last chapter has brought my narrative up to the eighteenth of October, a time when these strange events began to move swiftly towards their terrible conclusion.
AFTER THE CASE:
"It was the end of November, and Holmes and I sat, upon a raw and foggy night, on either side of a blazing fire in our sitting-room in Baker Street. Since the tragic upshot of our visit to Devonshire he had been engaged in two affairs of the utmost importance, in the first of which he had exposed the atrocious conduct of Colonel Upwood in connection with the famous card scandal of the Nonpareil Club, while in the second he had defended the unfortunate Mme. Montpensier from the charge of murder which hung over her in connection with the death of her step-daughter, Mlle. Carere, the young lady who, as it will be remembered, was found six months later alive and married in New York."WHAT THE BARING-GOULD ANNOTATED SAYS:
September 25, 1888.
WHAT ZEISLER, THE KING OF CHRONOLOGY, SAYS:
September 25, 1900.
THE BIRLSTONE RAILWAY TIMETABLE:
The math on this one seems pretty straightforward: 1884 plus "five years ago" gives you 1889. October 15 minus a fortnight, plus three days (courtesy of Watson’s diary and the convict escape references), rounding it to a nearby Saturday for the train trip to Dartmoor, and you get October 5 for the travel day. Subtract two days without anyone following Sir Henry, back up one day to the day they were followed, and back up one more day to Mortimer’s visit with Holmes and Watson . . . the result?
Tuesday, October 1, 1889.
Baring-Gould once went with that same date, but the "What about Watson’s marriage?" crowd pressured him into a change of heart. Given Watson’s marital track record as we’ve seen it thus far, however, I’d hate to discount anything as plain as the above mathematics for the sake of domestic bliss that may in doubt anyway. Tuesday, October 1, 1889, it is!

The Valley of Fear
WATSON’S KNOWLEDGE OF MORIARTY:
"You have heard me speak of Professor Moriarty?"
PORLOCK’S PAST PERFORMANCE:
"Led on by some rudimentary aspirations towards right, and encouraged by the judicious stimulation of an occasional ten-pound note sent to him by devious methods, he has once or twice given me advance information which has been of value—that highest value which anticipates and prevents rather than avenges crime."
THE STATEMENT OF THE MONTH AND DAY:
"Being the seventh of January, we have very properly laid in the new almanac."
THE STATEMENT OF THE DECADE:
"Those were the early days at the end of the ‘80’s, when Alec MacDonald was far from having attained the national fame which he has now achieved."
MACDONALD’S PAST PERFORMANCE:
"Twice already in his career had Holmes helped him to attain success . . ."
THE LENGTH OF THE MORIARTY STUDY COURSE:
"Sometime when you have a year or two to spare I commend to you the study of Professor Moriarty."
THE STATE OF HOLMES’S CAREER ACTIVITY:
"A long series of sterile weeks lay behind us, and here at last there was a fitting object for those remarkable powers . . ."
WATSON’S LITERARY FAME:
"I am sure we are honoured by your presence and to show you all we know," said White Mason cordially. "Come along, Dr. Watson, and when the time comes we’ll all hope for a place in your book."
"We thought that it was probably you, as your friendship with Mr. Sherlock Holmes is so well known."
"He took a good look at us all, and then to my amazement he advanced to me and handed me a bundle of paper. ‘I’ve heard of you . . . You are the
historian of this bunch. Well, Dr. Watson, you’ve never had such a story as that pass through your hands before, and I’ll lay my last dollar on that. Tell it your own way; but there are the facts, and you can’t miss the public so long as you have those. "I’ve been cooped up two days, and I’ve spent the daylight hours— as much daylight as I could get in that rat trap — in putting the thing into words. You’re welcome to them — you and your public. There’s the story of the Valley of Fear."
THE YEARS OF DOUGLAS’S LIFE:
"He had been engaged five years before, when Douglas first came to Birlstone."
"How long were you with Douglas in California?"
"Five years altogether."
"Then when he left so suddenly for Europe . . ."
"That was six years ago?"
"Nearer seven."
"And then you were together five years in California, so that this business dates back not less than eleven years at the least?"
"That is so."
"I guessed I’d fight through it all right on my own, my luck was a proverb in the States about ‘76."
IMPRISONMENT OF THE SCOWRERS:
"For ten years they were out of the world, and then came a day when they were free once more . . ."
THE TIME OF THE INTENDED READING:
"And now, my long-suffering readers . . . I wish you to journey back some twenty years in time . . ."
"It was the fourth of February in the year 1875."
BIRDY EDWARDS’S AGE AT THAT TIME:
"He is . . . not far, one would guess, from his thirtieth year."
THE TIME OF THE EPILOGUE:
"Two months had gone by, and the case had to some extent passed from our minds."
"They started together for South Africa in the Palmyra three weeks ago . . . The ship reached Cape Town last night."
HOLMES’S VOW TO BEAT MORIARTY:
"I don’t say that he can’t be beat. But you must give me time — you must give me time!"
WHAT THE BARING-GOULD ANNOTATED SAYS:
January 7, 1888.
WHAT ZEISLER, THE KING OF CHRONOLOGY, SAYS:
January 7, 1888.
THE BIRLSTONE RAILWAY TIMETABLE:
We start this tale with a very clear month and day: January 7. The year would then seem a simple calculation using all the dates of John Douglas/Birdy Edwards. He took down the Scowrers in 1875. Scowrer associates who weren’t imprisoned chased him from Chicago (his bit of luck in 1876). He spent five years in California (making it 1881), then "nearly seven" in England, making it early 1888.
As A Study in Scarlet was published in December of 1887, Watson would have been undergoing his first flush of notoriety as an author in January of 1888, and although the general public wouldn’t have taken to him just yet, you can bet the men of Scotland Yard were all reading about their friends Lestrade and Gregson. Some, like MacDonald, probably even looked forward to a place in Watson’s next book, as his comments show. No mention of short stories just yet!
The Moriarty question is worth mentioning in dating this tale, as Watson’s seeming ignorance of him in "The Final Problem" in 1891 seems to weigh heavily against this case’s authenticity. But looking at Scotland Yard’s treatment of Holmes’s view of Moriarty between the two stories is enlightening on that point. In "The Valley of Fear," the men of the Yard think Holmes has "a bee in his bonnet" about Moriarty. It’s pretty much a joke to them, and Moriarty himself isn’t taking Holmes seriously either. Moriarty might even still have his university chair at this time. Holmes is rather frustrated about the whole thing, as his comments at the tale’s end demonstrate.
By the time of "The Final Problem," however, Holmes seems to have convinced the police of Moriarty’s guilt and the now "ex-Professor" himself now views Holmes as a threat. (One wonders if Holmes wasn’t responsible for those "dark rumors" which cost Moriarty his University job.) But years have passed, in which a married-and-gone Watson has had time to forget about the "scientific criminal" that no one ever took Holmes seriously about. Watson’s quote of Holmes saying, "You never heard . . . ?" was probably a paraphrase of "You don’t remember . . . ?"
Whatever Watson’s reasons for the slip, this case seems pretty solid in starting on Saturday, January 7, 1888.

"The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge"
STATEMENT OF THE MONTH AND YEAR:
"I find it recorded in my notebook that it was a bleak and windy day towards the end of March in the year 1892."
"It is late in March, so quarter-day is at hand."
"It was a cold, dark March evening, with a sharp wind and a fine rain beating upon our faces, a fit setting for the wild common over which our road passed and the tragic goal to which it led us."
"It was about five o’clock, and the shadows of the March evening were beginning to fall, when an excited rustic rushed into our room."
THE INVITATION AND THE VISIT:
"Within two days of our meeting he came to see me at Lee. One thing led to another, and it ended in his inviting me out to spend a few days at his house, Wisteria Lodge, between Esher and Oxshott. Yesterday evening I went to Esher to fulfil this engagement."
DURATION OF THE INVESTIGATION:
"Day succeeded day, and my friend took no step forward. One morning he spent in town, and I learned from a casual reference that he had visited the British Museum."
"I’m sure, Watson, a week in the country will be invaluable to you."
"I must admit, however, that I was somewhat surprised when, some five days after the crime, I opened my morning paper to find in large letters . . ."
WHAT THE BARING-GOULD ANNOTATED SAYS:
March 24, 1890.
WHAT ZEISLER, THE KING OF CHRONOLOGY, SAYS:
March 6, 1902.
THE BIRLSTONE RAILWAY TIMETABLE:
It’s March, that much seems pretty plain. It’s March when the case begins, and it’s March five days later when the case ends. Quarter-day, March 25, is "at hand." Getting as close as we can "towards the end of March," remaining before quarter-day, and having five days left for the investigation, Thursday, March 24, 1892 seems the best candidate for this case’s beginning.
That’s the easy part with this case. The hard part is explaining just how it is that Sherlock Holmes is at Baker Street during the time he was thought dead to all of his countrymen but one, and was, in reality, travelling through Asia. Personally, I’ve always been of the opinion that Watson didn’t take Holmes’s death all that well. He even attempted to carry on the consulting detective business himself for a while, which added to the strain placed upon him. His wife wasn’t in the best of health, as she doesn’t seem to have lived through Holmes’s hiatus. And Mycroft has Mrs. Hudson keeping Holmes’s rooms just as if the detective still lives there. Put all that together, and what do you get?
Watson cracked. In Watson’s mind, Holmes was with him during the investigation of "Wisteria Lodge." (And a couple of Chronology Corners from now, we’ll see that Holmes wasn’t the only person in the story whose presence was a Watsonian delusion.) It explains why Baynes seems to be doing all the work in this case, and Holmes’s peculiar distance from it ... he was, in fact, very, very distant from it altogether. (For those of you who hate to see poor Watson gone temporarily insane, call it an astral projection from the real Holmes who was meditating in Tibet. That works, too.)

"The Adventure of the Cardboard Box"
THE STATEMENT OF THE MONTH:
"It was a blazing hot day in August."
THE STATE OF WATSON’S FINANCES:
"A depleted bank account had caused me to postpone my holiday ..."
SOME CURRENT EVENTS:
"Parliament had risen. Everybody was out of town, and I yearned for the glades of the New Forest or the shingle of Southsea.
THE DAY OF THE CASE:
"To-day is Friday. The packet was posted on Thursday morning. The tragedy, then, occurred on Wednesday or Tuesday, or earlier."
WATSON’S PUBLISHED WORKS:
"The case," said Sherlock Holmes as we chatted over our cigars that night in our rooms at Baker Street, "is one where, as in the investigations which you have chronicled under the names of ‘A Study in Scarlet’ and of ‘The Sign of Four,’ we have been compelled to reason backward from effects to causes."
THE BOAT SCHEDULE:
"It had been ascertained at the shipping offices that Browner had left aboard of the May Day, and I calculate that she is due in the Thames to-morrow night."
"I went down to the Albert Dock yesterday at 6 P.M., and boarded the S. S. May Day, belonging to the Liverpool, Dublin, and London Steam Packet Company."
A PREVIOUS CASE WITH LESTRADE:
"He is a big, powerful chap, clean-shaven, and very swarthy—something like Aldridge, who helped us in the bogus laundry affair."
WHAT THE BARING-GOULD ANNOTATED SAYS:
August 31, 1889.
WHAT ZEISLER, THE KING OF CHRONOLOGY, SAYS:
August 10, 1888.
THE BIRLSTONE RAILWAY TIMETABLE:
The curious thing about "Cardboard Box" is the way Watson is living the bachelor life at Baker Street, complaining of his weak bank account and reminiscing about his days in the military, yet he’s already written both STUD and SIGN. That fact alone means the tale could not have occurred before August of 1889 (according to my own dating of SIGN), but however you date it, Watson did pick up a wife in SIGN, and that wife is now absent.
As CARD was originally published as the second story of the Memoirs series, during Holmes’s 1891-1894 hiatus (in the beginning of which, Watson also had a wife), the latest August in which the events could have taken place would be that of 1890.
So when was it, August 1889 or August 1890? And why was Watson at Baker Street while his wife was obviously a part of the "everybody" who was out of town? For the answers, we need only look to Cox and Company, and the sadly empty account Watson kept there along with his tin dispatch box.
In "The Sign of the Four," when Watson met Mary Morstan, he complained of being "an army surgeon with a weak leg and a weaker banking account." And once he let romance sweep him into marriage and active medical practice, his fortunes did not immediately change. By August of 1889, the good doctor needed an influx of capital and, as luck would have it, an opportunity presented itself. This opportunity, however, would require him both to stay in town during his planned holiday *and* require him to curry Holmes’s favor a bit, so a stay at Baker Street would definitely be in order.
Using that rationale, I would have to place this case’s beginning on Friday, August 30, 1889 — the day Watson’s literary agent signed to contract to publish The Sign of the Four.
P.S. The brisk and capable Dr. Wood has pointed out to me that the possibilities for a train ride between Liverpool and New Brighton weren’t likely before 1891. Yet with "Cardboard Box" being published in January 1893 and the whole Holmes hiatus thing, that fact seems to leave us with another Watsonian faux pas. But in pondering this conundrum, it suddenly struck me that Watson isn’t the man who claimed a train went from Liverpool to New Brighton. The man who made that statement was Jim Browner, a drunkard whose head was known to "have all Niagara whizzing and buzzing" in it. Maybe the kill-crazed Browner *thought* he was on a train instead of a river ferry, with all the noises in his head. Maybe he like to refer to seats as "cars." Whatever the case, I must trust Watson over a madman transcribed by a Scotland Yard clerk of unknown abilities.

"The Adventure of the Red Circle"
THE STATE OF HOLMES’S BUSINESS:
"I really have other things to engage me."
"So spoke Sherlock Holmes and turned back to the great scrapbook in which he was arranging and indexing some of his recent material."
A PREVIOUS CASE:
"You arranged an affair for a lodger of mine last year," she said — "Mr. Fairdale Hobbs."
LUCCA’S ARRIVAL:
"You say that the man came ten days ago and paid you for a fortnight’s board and lodging?"
"He has been there for ten days, and neither Mr. Warren, nor I, nor the girl has once set eyes upon him."
HOLMES’S DAILY ROUTINE:
"He took down the great book in which, day by day, he filed the agony columns of the various London journals."
THE SCHEDULE OF PERSONAL ADS:
"That is two days after Mrs. Warren’s lodger arrived."
"Yes, here we are — three days later."
"Nothing for a week after that. Then comes something much more definite ..."
"That was in yesterday’s paper, and there is nothing in to-day’s."
MRS. WARREN’S TIME AT HER CURRENT RESIDENCE:
"Well, we’ve lived there fifteen years and no such happenings ever came before."
STATEMENT OF THE SEASON:
". . . the gloom of a London winter evening had thickened into one gray curtain . . ."
THE LUCCAS’ AMERICAN PERIOD:
"We fled together, were married at Bari, and sold my jewels to gain the money which would take us to America. This was four years ago, and we have been in New York ever since."
THE STATEMENT OF THE NIGHT, BY COMPOSER:
"By the way, it is not eight o’clock, and a Wagner night at Covent Garden! If we hurry, we might be in time for the second act."
WHAT THE BARING-GOULD ANNOTATED SAYS:
September 24, 1902.
WHAT ZEISLER, THE KING OF CHRONOLOGY, SAYS:
Winter 1895-1901.
THE BIRLSTONE RAILWAY TIMETABLE:
"Winter" is the only plain reference to the date Watson gives us in this tale, and a very weak reference it is. Holmes mentions "Wagner night at Convent Garden," but was he necessarily referring to Richard Wagner? For all we know he could have known a cellist named Violet Wagner whose part in the orchestra he especially liked to hear no matter what was being played. So we must once again turn to the subtler details to date this case.
Holmes claims he has "other things to engage me," but does he really mean other cases? Given the focussed, driven aspect of Holmes’s personality, would he be pasting clippings into his scrapbook if he really had a case to occupy him? In fact, the very act of clipping agony columns to past in a scrapbook fairly sings of a younger Holmes, just starting out in his career, taking in all possible data which might be useful to him. For the later, busier Holmes of the 1890s, clipping agony columns surely didn’t balance benefits versus time spent enough to really be of profit to him.
Another sign of a younger Holmes is the way Sherlock is excited to meet the Pinkerton, Mr. Leverton, who seems to be the famous one in that exchange. Leverton doesn’t appear to have heard of Holmes at all, while Holmes is quite the fan.
A third element that marks this as an earlier case is Inspector Gregson. Gregson doesn’t make any documentable appearances after Holmes’s hiatus that ended in 1894. He is the first detective in the Canon to summon Holmes. He is Scotland Yard’s smartest in Holmes’s opinion, and the two men get along wonderfully. Which leads one to wonder why Holmes was working with Lestrade alone at the time of "The Final Problem." We see Gregson investigating organized crime in REDC and suddenly he’s gone in FINA, a tale of Holmes’s biggest battle against organized crime. Might Gregson have been killed by Moriarty during the late 1880s? I think so. Past "Greek Interpreter" in 1888, Watson only mentions Gregson in "Wysteria Lodge" in 1892 — a case wherein Watson was hallucinating the presence of Holmes himself, another of Moriarty’s victims. I think the Gregson of 1892 might have even been a ghost from Watson’s distraught mind overlaid upon another Scotland Yarder.
Yet why is this younger Holmes so reluctant to look into Mrs. Warren’s case? In those days he was all for the commonplace matters and not being put off by anyone’s personal qualities. The best excuse I can find for young Holmes looking to spend a lazy day at Baker Street is that it’s his birthday, and with that, and the previous considerations in mind, I’m going to place this one on Tuesday, January 6, 1885.

"The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans"
THE EXPLANATION OF THE DATE:
"In the third week of November, in the year 1895, a dense yellow fog settled down upon London. From the Monday to the Thursday I doubt whether it was ever possible from our windows in Baker Street to see the loom of the opposite houses. The first day Holmes had spent in cross-indexing his huge book of references. The second and third had been patiently occupied upon a subject which he had recently made his hobby — the music of the Middle Ages. But when, for the fourth time, after pushing back our chairs from breakfast we saw the greasy, heavy brown swirl still drifting past us and condensing in oily drops upon the window-panes . . ."
THE DAYS OF WEST’S LIFE AND DEATH:
"Cadogan West was the young man who was found dead on the Underground on Tuesday morning."
"He left Woolwich suddenly on Monday night."
REITERATION OF THE MONTH:
"All the long November evening I waited, filled with impatience for his return."
WHAT THE BARING-GOULD ANNOTATED SAYS:
November 21, 1895.
WHAT ZEISLER, THE KING OF CHRONOLOGY, SAYS:
November 21, 1895.
THE BIRLSTONE RAILWAY TIMETABLE:
Occasionally Watson likes to give us poor chronologists a break, and "Bruce-Partington Plans" is just such an occasion.
November of 1895 starts on a Friday, so the Thursday falling in the third week of that month is indisputably Thursday, November 21, 1895. Were all Watson’s records like this, Sherlockian chronologers would be out of a job.

"The Adventure of the Dying Detective"
THE MARRIAGE TO GUIDE US:
"I listened earnestly to her story when she came to my rooms in the second year of my married life . . ."
LENGTH OF HOLMES’S ILLNESS:
"For three days he has been sinking, and I doubt if he will last the day."
"For these three days neither food nor drink has passed his lips."
"Poor Victor was a dead man on the fourth day — a strong, hearty young fellow."
THE STATEMENT OF THE DAY:
"He took to his bed on Wednesday afternoon and has never moved since."
"Do you remember a box—an ivory box? It came on Wednesday."
THE STATEMENT OF THE MONTH:
"In the dim light of a foggy November day the sick room was a gloomy spot, but it was that gaunt, wasted face staring at me from the bed which sent a chill to my heart."
WHAT THE BARING-GOULD ANNOTATED SAYS:
November 19, 1887.
WHAT ZEISLER, THE KING OF CHRONOLOGY, SAYS:
November 29, 1890.
THE BIRLSTONE RAILWAY TIMETABLE:
"The Adventure of the Dying Detective" — was it just another case, or the last one Holmes ever undertook at Baker Street?
Previous chronologists have tried to shoehorn this case into the 1880s, thinking that the "second year" of Watson’s married life puts it past the end of Holmes’s career when Watson’s latest marriage is used as a guide. But at its most basic level, the phrase "in the second year" simply means that the case fell after his first wedding anniversary, which leaves it as hardly any impediment to that later period at all.
And there is much about "The Dying Detective" that feels like a later story: Holmes’s certainty of his friends’ reactions to his illness. His use of Morton instead of Lestrade, a good friend in those later days who might not have let him pull his charade on Watson. The sureness with which Watson expects he can get any doctor in London to treat Sherlock Holmes. And the simple fact that all the other tales in His Last Bow (with the notable exception of CARD, for well-known reasons) occur in the later period of Holmes’s career.
We know from "Illustrious Client" that Watson had moved out of Baker Street by September of 1902. As Holmes says later that Watson deserted him for a wife, we know that Watson’s move was at least preparatory for a marriage, if not due to the marriage itself. In September of 1903, Holmes is investigating "The Adventure of the Creeping Man," which is "One of the very last cases handled by Holmes before his retirement from practice."
But not "the" last case.
One intriguing fact about "The Adventure of the Dying Detective" is that Holmes might not have really been investigating anything at all when it came upon him. He seems to have aired some opinions about Victor Savage’s death, which Victor’s uncle has taken exception to, but we have no real evidence that Holmes was ever wandering dockside alleys looking into anything. Indeed, his later fictions en route to convincing Mrs. Hudson and Dr. Watson of his illness would make the Rotherhithe story seem just another ruse.
In September of 1903, Watson has begun publishing the "Return" stories, so the public knows Holmes is alive again. With that unwanted publicity, any thoughts of retirement Sherlock Holmes was holding onto probably took center stage. By November of 1903, he might have even been packing for Sussex (which, given the litter upon his bedroom mantlepiece, wouldn’t be surprising). But when a criminal attempts your life by sending you a poisoned box in the mail, you just have to do something about it.
"It was clear to me, however, that by pretending that he had really succeeded in his design I might surprise a confession," Holmes explains at the case’s end. "That pretence I have carried out with the thoroughness of the true artist."
It is his last little cock-a-doodle-doo of victory, to be followed by one last victory dinner at Simpson’s.
Since Holmes took to his bed on Wednesday afternoon, then was "sinking" and not eating or drinking for three whole days, I’m going to also buck the chronology crowd on the day of this one and say Sunday was the day Mrs. Hudson came to Watson for help. And as Holmes wouldn’t be too excited about staying in a Strand-Magazine-filled London for any longer than he had to, I’m going to set it on the first Sunday of the month it occurred: November 8, 1903.
(An interesting corroboration of sorts: while no new Holmes cases were published in 1912 or 1914-1916, "Dying Detective" appeared in November 1913 — on the tenth anniversary of the actual case.)

"The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax"
ONE EXCELLENT QUESTION FROM HOLMES:
"Why the relaxing and expensive Turkish rather than the invigorating home-made article?"
AND AN EXCELLENT ANSWER FROM WATSON:
"Because for the last few days I have been feeling rheumatic and old. A Turkish bath is what we call an alterative in medicine — a fresh starting-point, a cleanser of the system."
ANOTHER EXCELLENT QUESTION FROM HOLMES:
"You say that you have had it because you need a change. Let me suggest that you take one. How would Lausanne do, my dear Watson — first-class tickets and all expenses paid on a princely scale?"
WATSON’S TRIP BEGINS:
"Two days later found me at the Hotel National at Lausanne, where I received every courtesy at the hands of M. Moser, the well-known manager."
GREEN’S TIME ON THE JOB IN LONDON:
"For two days the Hon. Philip Green (he was, I may mention, the son of the famous admiral of that name who commanded the Sea of Azof fleet in the Crimean War) brought us no news."
LIFESPAN OF AN OLD NURSE:
"We brought her round here, called in Dr. Horsom, of 13 Firbank Villas — mind you take the address, Mr. Holmes — and had her carefully tended, as Christian folk should. On the third day she died . . ."
WHAT THE BARING-GOULD ANNOTATED SAYS:
July 1, 1902.
WHAT ZEISLER, THE KING OF CHRONOLOGY, SAYS:
August 1895 or 1897-1901.
THE BIRLSTONE RAILWAY TIMETABLE:
The hard chronological evidence in "Lady France Carfax" is scant indeed: No years. No months. No days of the week. What we do get, however, is a Watson living at Baker Street who feels old and in need of a change. We also have a Holmes who wants to know why anyone would favor a Turkish bath to the convenience and efficiency of the homemade article. Is that enough evidence to fix a date for this case? It just might be.
September 3 of 1902, we find Holmes and Watson enjoying a Turkish bath at a time when Watson has moved out to his own rooms in Queen Anne Street, in "Illustrious Client." Holmes has obviously been intrigued by Watson’s earlier recommendation. In June of that same year, Holmes refuses a knighthood and Watson gets shot in the leg by Killer Evans. It’s the kind of thing that gets you thinking, "I’m too old for this business," and I’d wager that in July of 1902, that’s exactly what Watson was thinking. It was time for a "fresh starting point."
Holmes, on the other hand, probably feeling more than a little guilt for getting Watson shot. And what would please Watson more than a first-class trip to Europe and the chance to rescue a damsel in distress?
Giving Watson’s wound a bit of time to heal, taking Saturday as the day Watson might pick for a thoroughly cleansing bath prior to a big night on the town, and considering Monday as a natural day for arriving in Lausanne to begin an investigation, I’d have to place this case on Saturday, July 26, 1902.

"The Adventure of the Devil’s Foot"
THE DAY PERMISSION WAS GRANTED:
"It was, then, with considerable surprise that I received a telegram from Holmes last Tuesday . . ."
THE STATEMENT OF THE SEASON, YEAR, AND MONTH:
"It was, then, in the spring of the year 1897 that Holmes’s iron constitution showed some symptoms of giving way in the face of constant hard work of a most exacting kind, aggravated, perhaps, by occasional indiscretions of his own. In March of that year Dr. Moore Agar, of Harley Street, whose dramatic introduction to Holmes I may some day recount, gave positive injunctions that the famous private agent lay aside all his cases and surrender himself to complete rest if he wished to avert an absolute breakdown."
TIME OF THE WRITING:
"Now, after thirteen years, I will give the true details of this inconceivable affair to the public."
DATE OF PUBLICATION:
December 1910.
DAY THE CASE BEGINS:
"These were the two men who entered abruptly into our little sitting-room on Tuesday, March the 16th, shortly after our breakfast hour . . ."
WHAT THE BARING-GOULD ANNOTATED SAYS:
March 16, 1897.
WHAT ZEISLER, THE KING OF CHRONOLOGY, SAYS:
April 17, 1897.
THE BIRLSTONE RAILWAY TIMETABLE:
Here’s a tale where the quirkiness of Ernest B. Zeisler’s chronology really comes through. Watson tells us that the case began on "Tuesday, March the 16th" in "the spring of the year 1897." Could it be any more plainly stated?
Yet out of all that, Zeisler homes in on the word "spring." March 16th is not spring, he contends. He then accepts Watson’s judgement of when spring is over Watson’s judgement of when Tuesday, March 16th, is. Personally, I think Watson was probably better with days and dates than vernal equinoxes. But Zeisler, being a "millenium isn’t until 2001" kind of guy, just can’t let our good doctor call March 16th spring.
I can.
Tuesday, March 16, 1897, it is.

"His Last Bow"
THE STATEMENT OF DAY AND MONTH:
"It was nine o’clock at night upon the second of August—the most terrible August in the history of the world."
THE STATEMENT OF THE MONTH AND YEAR:
"Well, I chose August for the word, and 1914 for the figures, and here we are."
WHAT THE BARING-GOULD ANNOTATED SAYS:
August 2, 1914.
WHAT ZEISLER, THE KING OF CHRONOLOGY, SAYS:
August 2, 1914.
THE BIRLSTONE RAILWAY TIMETABLE:
While "His Last Bow" might be a harbinger of war as far as its place in history, when it comes to chronology this tale is a moment of truce between every Sherlockian chronologist past and present. It’s is the only tale where every blessed one of them agrees to the year, month, and day of the case. It’s hard to argue with both Watson and the start of World War One, and I shan’t attempt it either.
Sunday, August 2, 1914 it is.

"The Adventure of the Illustrious Client"
THE WORLD’S MOST PERFECT DATE STATEMENT:
"On the upper floor of the Northumberland Avenue establishment there is an isolated corner where two couches lie side by side, and it was on these that we lay upon September 3, 1902, the day when my narrative begins."
THE PLACE OF WATSON’S RESIDENCE:
"I was living in my own rooms in Queen Anne Street at the time . . ."
THE STATE OF WATSON’S CAREER:
"I had some pressing professional business of my own, but I met him by appointment that evening at Simpson’s, where, sitting at a small table in the front window and looking down at the rushing stream of life in the Strand."
AND A SECOND MENTION OF SIMPSON’S:
"I did not see Holmes again until the following evening when we dined once more at our Strand restaurant."
THAT "KENNEDY ASSASSINATION" MOMENT:
"I think I could show you the very paving-stone upon which I stood when my eyes fell upon the placard, and a pang of horror passed through my very soul. It was between the Grand Hotel and Charing Cross Station, where a one-legged news-vender displayed his evening papers. The date was just two days after the last conversation."
TIME OF HOLMES’S INVALIDITY:
"For six days the public were under the impression that Holmes was at the door of death."
"On the seventh day the stitches were taken out, in spite of which there was a report of erysipelas in the evening papers. The same evening papers had an announcement which I was bound, sick or well, to carry to my friend. It was simply that among the passengers on the Cunard boat Ruritania, starting from Liverpool on Friday, was the Baron Adelbert Gruner . . . ."
"Friday! Only three clear days."
THE TIME UNTIL FINAL RESOLUTION:
"Three days later appeared a paragraph in the Morning Post to say that the marriage between Baron Adelbert Gruner and Miss Violet de Merville would not take place."
WHAT THE BARING-GOULD ANNOTATED SAYS:
September 3, 1902.
WHAT ZEISLER, THE KING OF CHRONOLOGY, SAYS:
September 13, 1902.
THE BIRLSTONE RAILWAY TIMETABLE:
When Watson says "September 3, 1902" at the beginning of a case, I have to go with Wednesday, September 3, 1902. As always, the good Zeisler wants to contradict Watson’s best fact based on a more trivial fact, counting off the days from the case’s beginning and deciding what beginning date fits the "Friday" reference. Too many details lie in figuring that day count, and all takes is one of them to be off to make the Zeisler thesis wrong. Better to go with Watson’s solid date, don’t you think?

"The Adventure of the Blanched Soldier"
STATEMENT OF THE MONTH AND YEAR:
"I find from my notebook that it was in January, 1903, just after the conclusion of the Boer War ... The good Watson had at that time deserted me for a wife, the only selfish action which I can recall in our association. I was alone."
CONFIRMATION OF MONTH AND YEAR:
"When I joined up in January, 1901—just two years ago . . ."
DODD’S VISIT TO TUXBURY OLD PARK:
"That was what took me down on Monday."
DELAY OF GAME AND OTHER CASES:
"It happened that at the moment I was clearing up the case which my friend Watson has described as that of the Abbey School, in which the Duke of Greyminster was so deeply involved. I had also a commission from the Sultan of Turkey which called for immediate action, as political consequences of the gravest kind might arise from its neglect. Therefore it was not until the beginning of the next week, as my diary records, that I was able to start forth on my mission . . ."
WHAT THE BARING-GOULD ANNOTATED SAYS:
January 7, 1903.
WHAT ZEISLER, THE KING OF CHRONOLOGY, SAYS:
January 7, 1903.
THE BIRLSTONE RAILWAY TIMETABLE:
January 1903, the month and year of this case, come from our most unimpeachable source — Holmes himself — and are backed up by the historical details of the Boer War and its end in May of 1902. The day it begins is easily determined by adding Dodd’s two nights at Tuxbury Old Place to his arrival there on a Monday: thus Holmes begins the case on a Wednesday. But which Wednesday in January of 1903?
Other chronologists have gone for the first Wednesday of that month, Zeisler doing his usual detailed lunar calculations based on a comment from Dodd about a half-moon. The thing I find hard to accept about an early January date for this case, however, is Holmes’s involvement in the Abbey School case. As the spring term of the Abbey School may not have even begun by January seventh, the lads there would have had hardly any time to get into trouble that required Holmes to clear up. Thus, I would think the second half-moon of the month, which appeared later in the evening on the twentieth according to Zeisler, would be the more likely candidate (even if it means a late supper for the residents of Tuxbury Old Park).
Thus, I’m going to place this case as beginning on Wednesday, January 21, 1903.

"The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone"
WATSON’S ABSENCE FROM BAKER STREET:
"It was pleasant to Dr. Watson to find himself once more in the untidy room of the first floor in Baker Street which had been the starting-point of so many remarkable adventures."
A CERTAIN TIMELESSNESS:
"It all seems very unchanged, Billy. You don’t change, either. I hope the same can be said of him?"
THE STATEMENT OF THE SEASON:
"It was seven in the evening of a lovely summer’s day . . ."
A REFERENCE TO A PAST WAX DUMMY:
"We used something of the sort once before."
"Before my time," said Billy.
THE STATE OF WATSON’S PRACTICE:
"You bear every sign of the busy medical man, with calls on him every hour."
THE CAREER OF NEGRETTO SYLVIUS:
"It’s all here, Count. The real facts as to the death of old Mrs. Harold, who left you the Blymer estate, which you so rapidly gambled away. . . And the complete life history of Miss Minnie Warrender. . . . Here is the robbery in the train de-luxe to the Riviera on February 13, 1892. Here is the forged check in the same year on the Credit Lyonnais."
"No; you’re wrong there."
"Then I am right on the others!"
WHAT THE BARING-GOULD ANNOTATED SAYS:
Summer 1903.
WHAT ZEISLER, THE KING OF CHRONOLOGY, SAYS:
Summer 1903.
THE BIRLSTONE RAILWAY TIMETABLE:
"The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone" is perhaps the most sadly neglected case in the world of Sherlockian chronology. While the elder chronologists have jumped through hoops to date many another case on scant facts, they seem to collectively toss up their hands at this one and say, "Why bother!"
Well, if their Associated Shades are reading this from some Sherlockian houseboat on the river Styx, I’m going to tell them why. For the same reason one tries to date any story in the Canon . . . because it’s there. And while it may be disrespectful to call one’s elders "gurly men chronologists" ala Hans and Franz, I’m going to do just that. And then I’m going to date this case, if I have to give myself brain fever to do it. So here goes nothing . . .
First, we know that the story takes place after February 13, 1892. Watson is returning to Baker Street after an absence, an absence of long enough that he’s surprised to find it unchanged. Billy is still there, as well.
While Watson did desert Holmes for a wife in 1902, he wasn’t gone from Baker Street long enough for him to be quite so amazed in returning to Baker Street at any time before Holmes left those rooms for Sussex. No, Watson’s reaction harkens back to a time when he was still surprised to find 221B unchanged after its chief tenant had been dead for three years. A time of air guns and wax dummies. And a time when the flat disc gramophone was just taking off.
The year 1894.
"Before my time," Billy says of the use of a wax dummy in "Empty House," yet we saw in "The Valley of Fear" that the page was around during Moriarty’s career. If Billy was Holmes’s employee, rather than Mrs. Hudson’s, it would make sense that he would be let go at Holmes’s "death" and hired back shortly after the events of "Empty House" — thus the first dummy was before his time (and after his time as well). Billy’s return and Watson’s first encounter with him also explains Watson’s reiteration of how unchanged 221B is, even though we know the doctor has been here before since Holmes’s return.
So it’s summer of 1894, yet early enough in summer that Watson and Billy are just becoming reacquainted as Sherlock Holmes rebuilds his life. As busy as 1894 was for Holmes and Watson, that would be extremely early . . . something possibly as early as June 1. And as June 1, 1894 fell on a Friday, which times out nicely with Sylvius’s projected timetable for cutting the diamond up in Amsterdam by Sunday, I’m going to place "Mazarin Stone" on that very date.

"The Adventure of the Three Gables"
WATSON’S CONTACT WITH HOLMES:
"I had not seen Holmes for some days and had no idea of the new channel into which his activities had been directed."
"I saw no more of Holmes during the day . . ."
REFERENCE TO AN OLD, OLD CASE:
"I believe that my late husband, Mortimer Maberley, was one of your early clients."
"I remember your husband well, madam, though it is some years since he used my services in some trifling matter."
STATE OF HOLMES’S CASELOAD:
"He is one of the Spencer John gang and has taken part in some dirty work of late which I may clear up when I have time."
THE DECLINE OF DOUGLAS MABERLY:
"In a single month I seemed to see my gallant boy turn into a worn-out cynical man."
THE DEATH OF DOUGLAS MABERLY:
"He was attache at Rome, and he died there of pneumonia last month."
ARRIVAL OF DOUGLAS’S THINGS:
"‘Milano.’ ‘Lucerne.’ These are from Italy."
"They are poor Douglas’s things."
"You have not unpacked them? How long have you had them?"
"They arrived last week."
THE DETAILS OF THE MABERLY HOUSE:
"I have been in this house more than a year now, and as I wished to lead a retired life I have seen little of my neighbours. Three days ago I had a call from a man who said that he was a house agent."
"Yesterday the man arrived with the agreement all drawn out."
"You have been in this house a year."
"Nearly two."
THE QUICK WORK OF THE STOCKDALE BUNCH:
"Your letter to me had the 10 P. M. postmark. And yet Susan passes the word to Barney. Barney has time to go to his employer and get instructions; he or she — I incline to the latter from Susan’s grin when she thought I had blundered — forms a plan. Black Steve is called in, and I am warned off by eleven o’clock next morning."
THE BUSTLING, RUBICUND INSPECTOR’S TIME ON THE FORCE:
"In twenty-five years’ experience I have learned my lesson."
WHAT THE BARING-GOULD ANNOTATED SAYS:
May 26, 1903.
WHAT ZEISLER, THE KING OF CHRONOLOGY, SAYS:
Near June 1, 1896.
THE BIRLSTONE RAILWAY TIMETABLE:
Sherlock Holmes isn’t acting very much like Sherlock Holmes in this case. He lets Mrs. Maberly search for clues for him. He goes to Langdale Pike for what amounts to the solution to the case. A prize-fighter is involved, but Holmes’s own boxing connections are never brought up. Holmes seems something of a sociality in the way he knows of young Maberly without consulting his commonplace book. Baker Street is never specifically mentioned. There’s just something very wrong about it all, and it should be fairly apparent what that something is:
Sherlock Holmes is not actually involved in this case.
In an earlier Chronology Corner, we saw how Watson was hallucinating Holmes’s presence in March of 1892 during "Wisteria Lodge," and in "The Adventure of the Three Garridebs," he’s taken it a step further. No mere hallucination could account for Holmes’s bizarre behaviour in this case. I would propose that in his attempts to come to grips with Holmes’s loss, Dr. Watson used the royalties from his now successful writing career to set up shop with a new detective as a partner, a pseudo-Sherlock.
"I remember your husband well, madam," the faux-Sherlock lies to Mrs. Maberly at one point, "though it is some years since he used my services in some trifling matter." Luckily for "Sherlock," she had not met Holmes before, as her husband had been one of his early clients.
Mrs. Maberly’s son has died of pneumonia a month earlier in Rome, which isn’t exactly a cold city. The average minimum temperature there in January doesn’t even hit the freezing mark. Sure, one can die of pneumonia any time of the year, but a vital young man like Maberly, even a beaten, heartbroken one probably could use the extra encouragement of winter to die in such a way in Rome.
Christmas is a time for marriage proposals, and an especially tragic time for a rejection. Maberly persists after the object of his affection, insisting that she be his and his alone. A week later, on New Year’s Eve, Douglas Maberly is beaten outside of his former love’s window, winding up lying on that cold London street long enough to catch a chill that will start him on his downward trend. His mother accompanies him to Rome, getting her first taste of travel but seeing her "gallant boy turn into a worn-out cynical man." Once in Rome, all the son does is decline and write, sending the book off to Isadora the moment his pen leaves the last page. Without his vengeful purpose of writing left to sustain him further, Douglas Maberly dies.
His mother returns to London, hires fresh servants (at which time the spy, Susan, enters her household), and a month later, consults "Sherlock Holmes" on Wednesday, March 15, 1893.
Why March 15? You surely didn’t think the prophecy "Beware the ides of March!" was about a mere Roman emperor, did you? It was a warning that future generations would have to endure "The Adventure of the Three Gables."

"The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire"
DATE OF THE FIRST NOTE:
"Nov. 19th. "
THE PAST CASE REFERENCES:
"I leaned back and took down the great index volume to which he referred. Holmes balanced it on his knee, and his eyes moved slowly and lovingly over the record of old cases, mixed with the accumulated information of a lifetime."
"Voyage of the Gloria Scott . . . Victor Lynch, the forger. Venomous lizard or gila. Remarkable case, that! Vittoria, the circus belle. Vanderbilt and the Yeggman. Vipers. Vigor, the Hammersmith wonder. Hullo! Hullo! Good old index. You can’t beat it. Listen to this, Watson. Vampirism in Hungary. And again, Vampires in Transylvania."
"Matilda Briggs was not the name of a young woman, Watson. It was a ship which is associated with the giant rat of Sumatra, a story for which the world is not yet prepared."
LENGTH OF THE FERGUSON MARRIAGE:
"This gentleman married some five years ago a Peruvian lady the daughter of a Peruvian merchant, whom he had met in connection with the importation of nitrates."
BALLPARK OF THE FIRST FERGUSON MARRIAGE:
"The gentleman had been married twice and he had one son by the first wife. This boy was now fifteen . . . ."
THE WATSONIAN REST PERIOD:
"Send him that wire and let the matter rest till morning."
PERIOD OF THE DOG’S AFFLICTION:
"It may have been four months ago."
AGE OF THE BABY AND THE ATTACK:
"This was a small matter, however, compared with her conduct to her own child, a dear boy just under one year of age. On one occasion about a month ago this child had been left by its nurse . . ."
THE SIMULTANEOUS SPORTS CAREERS:
"Watson played Rugby for Blackheath when I was three-quarter for Richmond."
DURATION OF THE FERUSON RELATIONSHIPS:
"I gather that you did not know your wife well at the time of your marriage?"
"I had only known her a few weeks."
"How long had this maid Dolores been with her?"
"Some years."
STATEMENT OF THE MONTH:
"It was evening of a dull, foggy November day when, having left our bags at the Chequers, Lamberley, we drove through the Sussex clay of a long winding lane and finally reached the isolated and ancient farmhouse in which Ferguson dwelt."
AGE OF THE HOUSE:
"Here, in a huge old-fashioned fireplace with an iron screen behind it dated 1670 . . ."
DATE OF HOLMES’S WRAP-UP:
"Nov. 21st.
"Referring to your letter of the 19th, I beg to state that I have looked into the inquiry of your client, Mr. Robert Ferguson, of Ferguson and Muirhead, tea brokers, of Mincing Lane, and that the matter has been brought to a satisfactory conclusion."
WHAT THE BARING-GOULD ANNOTATED SAYS:
November 19, 1896.
WHAT ZEISLER, THE KING OF CHRONOLOGY, SAYS:
November 19, 1896 or 1901.
THE BIRLSTONE RAILWAY TIMETABLE:
When looking for the year of "The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire," the best source to begin our search would have to be Holmes’s good old index. That eclectic compendium of criminal data has much to tell the observant scholar, so let’s observe.
"Voyage of the Gloria Scott" comes first. As Holmes’s very first case, that comes as no surprise, but it also tells us there is a certain time-related sequence to the events therein. But at what point did Holmes include "Vampirism in Transylvania"? Well, a good many of his own cases fill the pages before we get to it. Given the relative low occurrence of the letter "V" in phone books, dictionaries, etc., we can safely say that piece wasn’t placed there early in his career. Later in his career, we would expect such data to come less from his studies than from newspapers and periodicals. And why would newspapers and periodicals suddenly be writing about vampires?
Bram Stoker’s Dracula, first published in 1897, would seem the logical inspiration for a sudden return of ancient myths to current events. So if the vampire reference tends to make the case post 1897, where to go from there?
Well, the history of Peru doesn’t look too good up until the early 1890s. Things didn’t really stabilize there until 1895, when a new president stepped in after a year of power struggles. Throw in the five year marriage of the Fergusons, and the most likely year for this case quickly starts to look like 1901, a time when Watson and Holmes were both still at Baker Street.
Given that marvelous London mail service, and the November 19th letter’s delivery by the last post, this one looks like Tuesday, November 19, 1901 to me.

"The Adventure of the Three Garridebs"
STATEMENT OF THE MONTH AND YEAR:
"I repeat, however, that this enables me to fix the date, which was the latter end of June, 1902, shortly after the conclusion of the South African War. Holmes had spent several days in bed, as was his habit from time to time . . ."
TIME OF HOLMES’S VISIT TO LITTLE RYDER:
"Well, we shall be round about six."
STATEMENT OF THE SEASON:
"It was twilight of a lovely spring evening, and even Little Ryder Street, one of the smaller offshoots from the Edgware Road, within a stone-cast of old Tyburn Tree of evil memory, looked golden and wonderful in the slanting rays of the setting sun."
MEETING OF THE GARRIDEBS:
"I went after him two days ago and explained the whole matter to him."
"He called last Tuesday."
CRIME AND SENTENCING FOR KILLER EVANS:
"You shot this man Prescott, did you not?"
"Yes, sir, and got five years for it."
OTHER KILLER EVANS FACTS:
"Aged forty-four. . . . Came to London in 1893. Shot a man over cards in a night-club in the Waterloo Road in January, 1895. Man died, but he was shown to have been the aggressor in the row . . . . Killer Evans released in 1901."
NATHAN GARRIDEB’S TENANCY:
"Our client, as he told us, has been there five years. It was unlet for a year before then."
WHAT THE BARING-GOULD ANNOTATED SAYS:
June 26, 1902.
WHAT ZEISLER, THE KING OF CHRONOLOGY, SAYS:
June 26, 1902.
THE BIRLSTONE RAILWAY TIMETABLE:
A combination of three factors give us the date of "The Adventure of the Three Garridebs":
1. The case starts two days after the Tuesday meeting of the Garridebs.
2. The case starts in the second half of June 1902.
3. Watson refers to it as spring.
Putting those three factors together gives us one date, and one date only: Thursday, June 19, 1902.
The sun seems to be setting as Holmes gets to Garrideb’s apartment at the pre-arranged time of six o’clock, which doesn’t correspond to near-equinox June whatsoever. This, however, we simply must ascribe to Holmes’s tardiness.

"The Problem of Thor Bridge"
STATEMENT OF THE MONTH:
"It was a wild morning in October, and I observed as I was dressing how the last remaining leaves were being whirled from the solitary plane tree which graces the yard behind our house."
WATSON’S PLACE OF RESIDENCE:
"I descended to breakfast prepared to find my companion in depressed spirits . . ."
HOLMES’S RECENT PAST:
"After a month of trivialities and stagnation the wheels move once more."
RECENT HIRINGS AND RECENT PUBLICATIONS:
"There is little to share, but we may discuss it when you have consumed the two hard-boiled eggs with which our new cook has favoured us. Their condition may not be unconnected with the copy of the Family Herald which I observed yesterday upon the hall-table."
THE DATE ON THE LETTER AND THE APPOINTMENT SET:
"October 3rd."
"Well, I’ll come at eleven to-morrow . . ."
J. NEIL GIBSON’S CURRENT FINANCIAL RANKING:
"This man is the greatest financial power in the world."
NEIL GIBSON’S TIME IN HAMPSHIRE:
"He bought a considerable estate in Hampshire some five years ago."
LENGTH OF MARIA PINTO GIBSON’S LOVE:
"She adored me in those English woods as she had adored me twenty years ago on the banks of the Amazon."
THE SEASON REITERATED:
"The sun was setting and turning the rolling Hampshire moor into a wonderful autumnal panorama."
WHAT THE BARING-GOULD ANNOTATED SAYS:
October 4, 1900.
WHAT ZEISLER, THE KING OF CHRONOLOGY, SAYS:
October 4, 1901.
THE BIRLSTONE RAILWAY TIMETABLE:
Twenty years before "The Adventure of Thor Bridge," a young, passionate J. Neil Gibson was supposedly gold-hunting on the banks of the Amazon River. As he’s romancing a city official’s daughter, we can probably assume he was hunting gold that other people had already found, hence his time spent in the city, rather than the jungle. In the fifteen years that followed, he returned to the United States and was elected to the U.S. Senate for a number of years. After that (as one wouldn’t think he could get elected with such activities in his past) Gibson broke "communities, cities, even nations" in his rabid pursuit of profit, ruining "ten thousand men" in the process. Having surely made enough enemies in America, Gibson moved to England for five years.
And when Dr. Watson first meets him, J. Neil Gibson is looking a lot like Abraham Lincoln.
Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in 1865. As a boy of no more than fourteen at the time of the shocking assassination, Gibson would still regard Lincoln as pure hero, and carry that regard into manhood, doing things like running for Congress and growing a beard to complete his resemblance the Great Emancipator’s best known image, even while indulging in ruthless business practices that were far from Lincoln’s style.
But J. Neil Gibson’s superficial Lincoln-worship didn’t just stop with Congress or a beard. He would also propose to a girl of local social prominence named Mary ("Maria" being the Manaos, Brazil equivalent) at age twenty-nine, just as Lincoln had. Twenty years later, Gibson would regret his arbitrary Lincoln emulating, even though the girl had seemed a perfect catch at the time.
Following this Lincoln-inspired path of J. Neil Gibson’s life, I would place this case in the year 1900, when October 3 fell on a Wednesday, and the case began the following day: Thursday, October 4, 1900.
(This would mean, of course, that the cook had to leave the house to pick up a copy of the Family Herald, which was published on Wednesday, but for the reader ardent enough to screw up breakfast the next morning because she just has to read the latest "love romance," that should pose no problem.)

"The Adventure of the Creeping Man"
STATEMENT OF THE WEEKDAY, MONTH, AND YEAR:
"It was one Sunday evening early in September of the year 1903 that I
received one of Holmes’s laconic messages . . ."
TIME UNTIL THE WRITING:
"Mr. Sherlock Holmes was always of opinion that I should publish the singular facts connected with Professor Presbury, if only to dispel once for all the ugly rumours which some twenty years ago agitated the university and were echoed in the learned societies of London."
DATES FROM THE ADMIRABLE BENNETT:
"Thus I have it here that it was on that very day, July 2d, that Roy attacked the professor as he came from his study into the hall. Again, on July 11th, there was a scene of the same sort, and then I have a note of yet another upon July 20th."
"I have said, sir, that it was the night before last—that is, September 4th."
"There was a period of excitement upon August 26th."
"This excellent young man’s diary shows that there was trouble upon July 2d, and from then onward it seems to have been at nine-day intervals, with, so far as I remember, only one exception. Thus the last outbreak upon Friday was on September 3d, which also falls into the series, as did August 26th, which preceded it."
AND ONE FROM HOLMES:
"The date being September 5th . . ."
THE FOLLOWING DAY:
"To-morrow, Mr. Bennett, will certainly see us in Camford."
"Monday morning found us on our way to the famous university town."
THE DAY OF HOLMES’S RETURN:
"Unless I am mistaken, next Tuesday may mark a crisis. Certainly we shall be in Camford on that day."
"I saw nothing of my friend for the next few days, but on the following Monday evening I had a short note asking me to meet him next day at the train."
WHAT THE BARING-GOULD ANNOTATED SAYS:
September 6, 1903.
WHAT ZEISLER, THE KING OF CHRONOLOGY, SAYS:
September 6, 1903.
THE BIRLSTONE RAILWAY TIMETABLE:
For a somewhat outlandish tale, "The Adventure of the Creeping Man" could give us no clearer set of dates, all nicely corresponding to the days of the week cited. It was a Sunday early in September of 1903 and "the night before last" was the 4th, so it must be Sunday, September 6, 1903.

"The Adventure of the Lion’s Mane"
STATEMENT OF THE MONTH AND YEAR:
"Towards the end of July, 1907, there was a severe gale, the wind blowing up-channel, heaping the seas to the base of the cliffs and leaving a lagoon at the turn of the tide. On the morning of which I speak the wind had abated, and all Nature was newly washed and fresh."
THE DAY OF THE WEEK:
"Tuesday was to-day, and I had meant to meet him to-night."
WHAT THE BARING-GOULD ANNOTATED SAYS:
July 27, 1909.
WHAT ZEISLER, THE KING OF CHRONOLOGY, SAYS:
July 27, 1909.
THE BIRLSTONE RAILWAY TIMETABLE:
In dating previous cases, I’ve always followed the motto, "Trust Watson." One can hardly do less with Holmes, as the detective himself would have to be an even more precise observer — and this case is all Holmes. If Sherlock Holmes says there was a gale in late July of 1907, then we can surely assume there was a gale in late July of 1907, even if standard weather historians have missed it. Thus, we can place this case on Tuesday, July 30, 1907, and let disbelievers like Baring-Gould and Zeisler think what they like.

"The Adventure of the Veiled Lodger"
THE LENGTH OF HOLMES’S CAREER:
"When one considers that Mr. Sherlock Holmes was in active practice for twenty-three years, and that during seventeen of these I was allowed to cooperate with him and to keep notes of his doings, it will be clear that I have a mass of material at my command."
THE STATEMENT OF THE YEAR:
"One forenoon — it was late in 1896 — I received a hurried note from Holmes asking for my attendance."
LENGTH OF THE VEILED LODGING:
"You say that Mrs. Ronder has been your lodger for seven years and that you have only once seen her face."
THE DAYS OF RONDER:
"He was the rival of Wombwell, and of Sanger, one of the greatest showmen of his day."
THE PERIOD OF THE TRAGEDY:
"On this particular night, seven years ago, they both went, and a very terrible happening followed, the details of which have never been made clear."
WATSON’S LOCATION DURING THE TRAGEDY:
"And yet you were with me then."
THE DOINGS OF THE CIRCUS:
"They were on their way to Wimbledon, travelling by road, and they were simply camping and not exhibiting, as the place is so small a one that it would not have paid them to open."
THE DELAY OF THE INVESTIGATION:
"It was six months before she was fit to give evidence, but the inquest was duly held, with the obvious verdict of death from misadventure."
THE END OF LEONARDO:
"He was drowned last month when bathing near Margate. I saw his death in the paper."
WATSON CHECKS UP ON HOLMES:
"Two days later, when I called upon my friend, he pointed with some pride to a small blue bottle upon his mantelpiece."
WHAT THE BARING-GOULD ANNOTATED SAYS:
October 1896.
WHAT ZEISLER, THE KING OF CHRONOLOGY, SAYS:
October 1896.
THE BIRLSTONE RAILWAY TIMETABLE:
Finding the date of "The Adventure of the Veiled Lodger" seems to be intimately connected to finding the date of the original Abbas Parva tragedy. Previous chronologists have used Watson’s presence at Baker Street as a key indicator in this search, but the true answers lie far from that locale, as far away as the circus itself where the tragedy occurred.
Mrs. Ronder’s worsening mental state would have to be attributed to a powerful combination of two events: the death notice of Leonardo the strong man and the coming anniversary of the tragedy itself. So when did the tragedy occur? Though we generally think of circuses running in a season from March to October, I’ve run into at least one source that mentions Boxing Day, December 26, as the official start of the circus season. While that may seem plenty early, Ronder’s fellow showman George Sanger ran his circus for a nine-month season, which — if it indeed began in late December to catch the holiday crowds — would bring it to an end as October rolled around.
If October meant the end of the cirus season for Ronder’s Wild Beast Show, it would make sense that Eugenia and Leonardo wanted to kill Ronder before the season’s end, sometime in late September. If the tragedy’s anniversary fell in late September, and Eugenia Ronder’s dread of it began earlier in the month, Leonardo’s death while swimming would have occurred, quite naturally, in August, a fine month for swimming.
As the Ronder show was "camping and not exhibiting" on the night of the tragedy, one would expect it to be a Sunday night — the traditional night off for circuses of the day — as even near a small town, a slavedriver like Ronder would hope to pick up a few coins. With the Wimbledon shows still ahead of them, that would most likely place the tragedy on Sunday, September 22, 1889.
"On this particular night, seven years ago," Holmes says with enough appropriate drama to make one believe that the day Mrs. Merrilow has come to see them is the actual anniversary of the tragedy: Tuesday, September 22, 1896.
(Watson says "it was late in 1896," yes, but the remark is so casual as to let one believe in could be anywhere in the later half of 1896, and September certainly qualifies.)

"The Adventure of Shoscombe Old Place"
A CURRENT MATTER AND A PAST ONE
"In the St. Pancras case you may remember that a cap was found beside the dead policeman. The accused man denies that it is his. But he is a picture-frame maker who habitually handles glue."
"My friend, Merivale, of the Yard, asked me to look into the case. Since I ran down that coiner by the zinc and copper filings in the seam of his cuff they have begun to realize the importance of the microscope."
WATSON’S FORMER VACATION HOME
"I know it well, for my summer quarters were down there once."
SIR ROBERT’S RIDING PAST:
"He is about the most daredevil rider in England — second in the Grand National a few years back."
STATEMENT OF THE MONTH:
"Thus it was that on a bright May evening Holmes and I found ourselves alone in a first-class carriage and bound for the little "halt-on-demand" station of Shoscombe."
THE RECENCY OF SIR ROBERT’S LATEST OUTRAGE:
"We only found it out yesterday—after I had written to you. Yesterday Sir Robert had gone to London, so Stephens and I went down to the crypt.
LENGTH OF SERVICE OF THE MAID:
"There is her maid, Carrie Evans. She has been with her this five years."
DAYS AND NIGHTS OF MR. JOHN MASON:
"Because I have seen him, Mr. Holmes. It was on that second night."
"We only found it out yesterday — after I had written to you. Yesterday Sir Robert had gone to London, so Stephens and I went down to the crypt."
"We expect him back to-day."
"When did Sir Robert give away his sister’s dog?"
"It was just a week ago to-day."
THE TIMING OF SIR ROBERT’S STORY:
"Well, Mr. Holmes, my sister did die just a week ago."
"If I could stave things off for three weeks all would be well."
WHAT THE BARING-GOULD ANNOTATED SAYS:
May 6, 1902.
WHAT ZEISLER, THE KING OF CHRONOLOGY, SAYS:
May 6, 1902.
THE BIRLSTONE RAILWAY TIMETABLE:
"The Adventure of Shoscombe Old Place" begins in May, according to Watson, and two weeks and one day before the Derby, according to Sir Robert’s desire for three week’s time when his sister died. To figure out which year Sir Robert’s Derby took place, one could calculate the phases of the moon, the times the moon would rise on all the appropriate evenings and the amount of light each of those moonrises would project through recorded cloud cover in Berkshire. Or one could take the route Holmes takes in this case and just go fishing.
Wait a minute . . . Holmes goes fishing during this case? He hasn’t been fishing since Trevor senior first put him on to the detective biz, way back in "The Gloria Scott"! Sherlock Holmes suddenly deciding to go fishing while on the job is a perfect example of what a 9-to-5 office denizen would call "vacation mode." He can see the finish line, and he’s starting to slack off in anticipation of it. He’s headed for that life of nature in Sussex, and sees an opportunity to slip a little nature in early.
On that basis, and that basis alone, this case has to take place in 1903, the detective’s last year in active practice. Derby Day in 1903 took place on June 3, which then places the case’s beginning two weeks and a day earlier on Tuesday, May 26, 1903.

"The Adventure of the Retired Colourman"
THE YEARS OF HIS LIFE:
"He made his little pile, retired from business at the age of sixty-one . . ."
"Retired in 1896, Watson. Early in 1897 he married a woman twenty years younger than himself — a good-looking woman, too, if the photograph does not flatter. A competence, a wife, leisure — it seemed a straight road which lay before him. And yet within two years he is, as you have seen, as broken and miserable a creature as crawls beneath the sun."
"The couple went off together last week."
HOLMES’S OTHER CASE:
"You know that I am preoccupied with this case of the two Coptic Patriarchs, which should come to a head to-day."
THE STATEMENT OF THE SEASON:
"And so it was that on a summer afternoon I set forth to Lewisham, little dreaming that within a week the affair in which I was engaging would be the eager debate of all England."
THE ENTERTAINMENT CALENDAR:
"On that particular evening old Amberley, wishing to give his wife a treat, had taken two upper circle seats at the Haymarket Theatre."
"Carina sings to-night at the Albert Hall."
WATSON’S PLACE OF RESIDENCE:
"In the morning I was up betimes, but some toast crumbs and two empty egg-shells told me that my companion was earlier still."
THE SCHEDULE OF THE PAPER:
"A couple of days later my friend tossed across to me a copy of the bi-weekly North Surrey Observer."
WHAT THE BARING-GOULD ANNOTATED SAYS:
Thursday, July 28, 1898.
WHAT ZEISLER, THE KING OF CHRONOLOGY, SAYS:
July or August 1898.
THE BIRLSTONE RAILWAY’S TIMETABLE:
The summer of 1898 was not a good time for Sherlock Holmes. In mid-August, his too-late deciphering of the "Dancing Men" code had resulted in a man’s death and the horrible wounding of his wife. Was that event the cause of his melancholy at the beginning of "Retired Colourman" and words like "But is not all life pathetic and futile?" I think so.
Other chronologers have used the closing of Barrie’s "The Little Minister" at the Haymarket theater as their base in dating this case, but as the ticket Amerberly shows Watson is for a seat that didn’t exist in the Haymarket as we know it, that seems a bit more unreliable than Holmes’s sincere depression occurring so near to a tragedy which he himself could have stopped.
As bi-weekly newspapers tend to have a mid-week edition in my experience, and five days (one for Carina, one for Little Purlington, one for the arrest, and two for the paper to come out) prior to that gives us Saturday, the perfect evening for Holmes to distract himself with a concert, I’m going to place this case on Saturday, August 20, 1898.

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