HISTORICAL NOTES
The museum in which Sherlock is attacked by a bird of prey is based on my memories of the Passmore Edwards Museum in Stratford, East London. I remember being taken there on school trips back in the early 1970s, and my overriding impression is of the sheer number of stuffed animals scattered around the old Victorian hallways (that, and the very musty smell). I’ve since discovered that John Passmore Edwards (1823-1911) was a British journalist and newspaper owner whose bequests resulted in the construction of 70 major buildings (primarily hospitals, libraries, schools, convalescence homes and art galleries) as well as 11 drinking fountains and 32 marble busts. A true Victorian philanthropist.
The Necropolis Railway really did exist. Only the Victorians could have thought of having a railway specifically for the dead. To be fair, if the Egyptians had known about railways they probably would have thought of it too, but only the Victorians would have charged different ticket prices for First, Second and Third Class travel for the coffins. I first came across mention of the Necropolis Railway in a book about the things that are hidden beneath London’s streets, and have since chased up more details in other similar books. The important ones are:
London Under London: A Subterranean Guide by Richard Trench and Ellis Hillman
(John Murray, 1993)
Underground London: Travels Beneath the City Streets by Stephen Smith
(Abacus, 2005)
Necropolis: London and Its Dead by Catharine Arnold
(Pocket Books, 2005)
The King’s Theatre in Whitechapel is based to a large extent on the Theatre Royal, Stratford. When I was at school, I used to do a fair amount of amateur dramatics, and some of the shows we did were put on at the Theatre Royal. It was built in 1888, and I spent a lot of time wandering around the backstage areas soaking up the atmosphere.
Sherlock and Mycroft’s sojourn in Russia was, surprisingly, very difficult to research. The majority of history books on the country concentrate on the Russian revolution (1917), the years of the Soviet Union (principally concentrating on Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin), and the time since the Soviet Union fell apart. The mid-nineteenth century is a bit of a blank. Eventually I decided to come at it sideways, through the Crimean War (1853-56), but I did discover late in the day a book which took quotes from Russian writers of around the right time and wove them into a kind of descriptive document. For the record, the books were:
A Brief History of the Crimean War by Alexander Troubetzkoy
(Robinson, 2006)
Literary Russia: A Guide by Anna Benn, Rosamund Bartlett
(Gerald Duckworth amp; Co, 2007)
I do admit, with some shame, that Wikipedia provided quite a lot of background detail on the Tsar, his secret police, and the Alaska land deal. Late in the day I discovered some issues of the London Illustrated News online, dating from the 1850s. A couple of these had reports from a journalist who had travelled to Moscow, and I shamelessly borrowed some of his descriptions of the city and its inhabitants.
Count Pyotr Andreyevich Shuvalov was a real person, and he really was in charge of the Third Section, which was actually the Tsar’s secret police force. Shuvalov did spend some time in France, which is where he would have met Mycroft Holmes. Prince Yusupov was also a real person, and a well-known patron of the arts.
And on a non-historical note, I can echo Sherlock’s thoughts in the last chapter and reveal that the next book – which will probably be entitled Fire Storm – will tell (among other things) of how Sherlock finally confronts the unpleasant Mrs Eglantine.
Until then…
