Tiger-men of the Canon

It would seem that Victorian London . . . and maybe the world . . . was once populated by tiger-men.

One need only look to the evidences of the Watsonian record to see that it must be so. San Pedro had a tiger of a man ruling it for twelve hard years. A ferocious youth named Tiger Cormac prowled the mining country of Pennsylvania. Yet less obvious are those fellows with the tiger-spring in their legs. Jack McMurdo, Philip Green, and, of course, Sherlock Holmes.

That later set of tiger-men serve the side of good, and at least two of them bring out their tiger-springs due to caring for a woman. The other for the love of a friend, and also for justice, as do all three, really. The latter of those tiger-man even uses his tiger ability to take down another whom he recognizes as a tiger-man . . . perhaps a case of the younger, stronger cat taking down an old rival.

"The empty house is my tree and you are my tiger," Sherlock Holmes said to Sebastian Moran after leaping upon him like a tiger himself. Moran is a known killer of tigers, it is true, but we see the tiger-man metaphor used so much in the Canon of Holmes that one has to wonder if Moran's prey weren't fully bestial at all. When he's caught in "The Empty House," he's stalked and killed at least one two-legged prey and is attempting to take down another.

John Watson, whose military career met setback after setback in the land of tigers seemed to connect himself more with the tiger cub than the fully grown version of the beast, and when Sherlock Holmes quotes "There is danger for him who taketh the tiger cub . . ." one must wonder if he is musing upon Watson's departure from Baker Street. The second part of the quote, ". . . and danger also for whoso snatches delusion from a woman," might be Holmes cautioning himself against revealing some truth to the woman who took Watson from Baker Street, and nothing to do with Miss Mary Sutherland at all.

Watson is well aware of the tiger-men of England, as he lets on in his write-up of their night-time vigil in "The Adventure of Black Peter."

"What savage creature what is which might steal upon us out of the darkness? Was it a fierce tiger of crime, which could only be taken fighting hard with flashing fang and claw . . . ."

Does Watson see himself with those fangs and claws, or is it his companion, the man he has already spoken of as a tiger, knowing that Sherlock Holmes is the alpha tiger in whatever may come?

The use of men described as tigers in the Canon of Holmes happens enough that it is no mere happenstance. And the tiger-man who appears most often is easy to see -- he's the star of the show, as such a tiger should be. It makes for an interesting meditation, as we don't see nearly so many of that sort these days. Being a tiger-man probably isn't the most conducive thing to having tiger-babies, as a quick survey of the Canon will also tell you.

But at least we have some prose evidence that they did once exist.