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KEY HISTORICAL REFERENCE OF THE CASE: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 abs