Montague Street is a very short street, and – unlike the numerous possibilities that abound in Baker Street – there are very few choices of which particular entryway could have led to Holmes’s residence in the mid- to late-1870’s, during the time stretching from the events of “The Gloria Scott” in 1874 to when he departed for Baker Street in early 1881. Is there a way to decide which of these buildings is the location of Holmes’s first London residence? Happily, the field work has already been done for us.
In his book The London of Sherlock Holmes (p.11), Michael Harrison, through his own research of local postal records and Bedford Trust Rate Books, identified the specific house where Holmes resided as “. . . No. 24 Montague Street, Russell Square, a still-standing four-storey house of severely late-Georgian aspect which was incorporated (at the time of Harrison’s writing) into the Lonsdale Hotel some seventy years ago.” He explains that his research also revealed that, “[i]n 1875, Mrs. Holmes took a seven-year lease on No. 24, entering into possession of the eminently respectable house at Michaelmas (29 September) of that same year.” He then goes on to state that “[i]t would be stretching coincidence too far to assume that Mrs. Holmes was not related in some way to young Mr Holmes.”
No. 24 Montague Street
The black doorway with a fanlight at the center of the photograph
Photograph by David Marcum, September 8th, 2016)
No. 24 Montague Street is confirmed in David Sinclair’s Sherlock Holmes’s London, and also discussed as a possibility in Hot On The Scent by Arthur M. Alexander. In The World of Sherlock Holmes (pp. 86-88), Harrison elaborates on his investigative methods, explaining that he found this information by examining a London Post Office Directory, in which he discovered the entry for Mrs. Holmes and relevant information of address and length of lease. His further researches revealed that, while both the Bedford Estate records and the Bloomsbury rate-books of the time each confirmed the residency of a Mrs. Holmes, neither could provide any further information about her. However, Harrison then contradicted his earlier dating by stating that Mrs. Holmes’s occupancy began during Michaelmas 1877 instead of 1875.
Sadly, Harrison goes off the rails and into the weeds, so to speak, at this point, theorizing that the Mrs. Holmes in question is actually Sherlock Holmes’s wife. Harrison then elaborates on this idea by a series of “valid” – but not convincing at all – deductions, each building on the shaky ground preceding it to elaborate on his theory.
In The Game Is Afoot, David Hammer writes that “Thanks to the investigative efforts of Michael Harrison, there is no dispute about the London location of Holmes’s first London address.” Unfortunately, despite Hammer’s statement that Harrison’s efforts had left no dispute about the location of the Montague Street property, Hammer then goes on to dispute it, reiterating in his text that the lease begins in 1877, not 1875, and further writing that the property in question was at No. 26, and not No. 24. This is explained in a footnote, where Hammer refers to personal correspondence between Michael Harrison and publisher Jack Tracy, both now deceased, indicating that Harrison had changed his mind about the Montague Street house number. (Hammer repeats his belief – mistaken, in my opinion – in No. 26 in his later book, “A Deep Game”: The Travelers’ Companion to the London of Sherlock Holmes, 2002).
I believe that Harrison’s assertion from his books, when he was writing closer to his examination of the source material, is actually the correct one. I am satisfied that Holmes lived at No. 24 Montague Street, and Mrs. Holmes, whomever she was – certainly not Holmes’s wife, but possibly the wife of one of his father’s brothers, perhaps? – took the lease as Harrison originally stated in 1875, not 1877. This still leaves a gap of a year between that time in the summer of 1874 when Holmes realized his true calling during the events of “The Gloria Scott,” and 1875. However, this gap is not as long as the period between 1874 and 1877, the date that Harrison specified in his revised statement of when Mrs. Holmes acquired her lease for No. 24.
A Permanent Marker
In September 2013, I was finally able to travel to London, as part of my nearly life-long dream to make a Sherlock Holmes Pilgrimage. One of the most important places on my list of Sherlockian sites to visit – after Baker Street, of course – was Montague Street, since that was definitely specified as a residence of Mr. Sherlock Holmes.
Currently, No. 24 is part of the Ruskin Hotel, connected to No. 23 beside it. This joined combination of the two buildings no doubt occurred when the property was combined with the Lonsdale Hotel in the early 1900’s, as referred to by Harrison. I went to No. 24 on that 2013 Pilgrimage.
Following that visit, I contacted both the Bedford Estate and the Sherlock Holmes Society of London about the possibility of some sort of plaque being mounted at No. 24 to commemorate Holmes’s residence there in the late 1870’s. A representative of the Estate told me in September 2014 that: “The matter of placing a Blue Plaque at 24 Montague Street is something, in principle, the Estate would be prepared to support, subject to the exact appearance, wording, and positioning.” The Council of the Sherlock Holmes Society of London also addressed this matter in October 2014, and indicated to me then that “the general opinion is that it’s a nice idea, but
