Minneapolis and Sherlock Holmes @ 50: Saturday Part The First

 Saturday morning began a little easier for "Sherlock Holmes @ 50" attendees as the conference moved from the library a few long blocks away to the host hotel, so all we had to do was make our way downstairs, grab something at the hotel Starbucks, and wander down the hall to the wide room of tables where we'd be spending our day.

After a little browsing of the dealer's tables at the outer edges of the room, I settled at one of the tables lucky enough to have black armbands waiting (in honor of the legend of the young men of the Strand upon the publication of "The Final Problem"). A little chat and Dick Sveum called us to order and very shortly got us to our first speaker, Eric Scace, who came all the way from Boulder, Colorado to speak on "Some Clues by Telegram: 50 Years of Canonical Connections." His deep dive into telegraphy and the way it occurs in the Canon actually started to get into some of my favorite turf: Sherlockian chronology. The Valley of Fear, for example, has a telegram key to its dating, coming at the end to tell of the loss at sea of Birdy Edwards/John Douglas. He seems to be targeting 1888, which agrees with my own dating of the tale so I like where he's headed.

Ivy Douglas embarking at Capetown and the $1,390 it would cost to send a cablegram to London is a real shocker. Eric discusses how she might have cut down her wording and gotten it down to $800, and then follows the transmission and the cables of how her message would have been sent north. We learn of tape sending machines, Zanzibar cable stations, the re-entering of the message at such stations from one cable
end to another. (Side note: After seeing Shark Attack 3: Megaladon, I have to wonder about sharks biting those early cables after being attracted to the electrical charge, which, apparently, did happen in those early days. AND ERIC JUST MENTIONED SHARKS BITING CABLES!!! Shark Attack 3: Megaladon finds validation.) 

Passing around a sample of cable just hit a dead end as our table passed it to an boxed-in "We've all seen it!" table, but Max Magee appeared like a superhero descending from the sky to help the poor young lady holding a cable with nowhere to go, and moved it across the room.

Max Magee, photographed from a safe distance

Meanwhile, Eric Scace is still tracking the route of the telegrams, shipping news, how late at night Mrs. Hudson brought up the note, and puts that message coming through at March 4-6, 1888. A lot to explore for our chronology friends. I wish I had taken better notes instead of blogging and re-sizing photos of Max. I will definitely be asking Eric where his talk might be published or how one might otherwise get a copy for reference. 

We get five minutes to stand up, so I'm standing up now.

Matt Hall, a great Sherlockian I just met for the first time at this conference, is our next speaker, on phosphorous and the hellhound from The Hound of the Baskervilles. Even though he's currently a resident of Maryland, Matt's still got just enough of his native Australian accent to give the conference some early international flavor. The question of the toxicology of phosphorous being applied to a dog is reached quickly, so he deep dives into chemistry and allotropes, an important factor in this case. (Google "allotropes.") Alchemists boiling down urine comes up and we get grossed out for a moment. And further grossed out by by said alchemists writing about applying it to their "privvy parts." Chemistry is apparently a lot yuckier than I remember, when one goes into the historical records. We get confirmation that no mammals or fairies have native bioluminescence, meaning that the Baskerville hound definitely needed some phosphorous.

Matt has dug into many a newspaper article on phosphorous being used in ghost pranks when fairly safe preparations of phosphorous were rubbed on people, sheets, and even bicycles, so earlier Sherlockian papers on phosphorous killing the poor hound it was applied to. 

Holmes was an experienced chemist, Matt points out, and he would have known how phosphrous was used. All in all, this talk was a great validation of The Hound of the Baskervilles having occurred as we have read it. In addition some healthy applause at the end of his talk, Matt got at least one "WOOO!" from the crowd, as well as the special challenge coin being handed to the speakers for their efforts.

Time to move along once more!