Tag: SIXN

A Day by Day Chronology of Mr Sherlock Holmes, According to Zeisler and Christ, compiled and edited by William S Dorn, BSI and DWNP, once again gives us multiple events for the day:

June 10, 1889: Hall Pycroft was supposed to start work with Mawson and Williams. [STOC]

“Quite so. Why? When we answer that, we have made some progress with our little problem. Why? There can be only one adequate reason. Someone wanted to learn to imitate your writing, and had to procure a specimen of it first. And now if we pass on to the second point, we find that each throws light upon the other. That point is the request made by Pinner that you should not resign your place, but should leave the manager of this important business in the full expectation that a Mr. Hall Pycroft, whom he had never seen, was about to enter the office upon the Monday morning.”

Isaac Asimov provides us a summary in verse:

First young Pycroft had no job, then two,
And that puts him, it seems, in a stew.
First they want him no doubt.
But then Paris is out.
It’s a puzzle ___ Does Holmes get the clue?

June 10, 1900: Beppo destroyed two more busts of Napoleon. [SIXN]

Some little time ago he purchased from Morse Hudson two duplicate plaster casts of the famous head of Napoleon by the French sculptor Devine. One of these he placed in his hall in the house at Kennington Road, and the other on the mantelpiece of the surgery at Lower Brixton. Well, when Dr. Barnicot came down this morning he was astonished to find that his house had been burgled during the night, but that nothing had been taken save the plaster head from the hall. It had been carried out, and had been dashed savagely against the garden wall, under which its splintered fragments were discovered.
[…]I thought it would please you. But I have not got to the end yet. Dr. Barnicot was due at his surgery at twelve o’clock, and you can imagine his amazement when, on arriving there, he found that the window had been opened in the night, and that the broken pieces of his second bust were strewn all over the room. It had been smashed to atoms where it stood.

Another day with two cases in two years on the same day. Confused yet? Here we go.

June 7 1889: Arthur Pinner offered Hall Pycroft a job with Franco-Midland Hardware Company [STOC]

Well, I was sitting doing a smoke that very evening after I had been promised the appointment, when up came my landlady with a card which had `Arthur Pinner, financial agent,’ printed upon it. I had never heard the name before, and could not imagine what he wanted with me, but of course I asked her to show him up. In he walked – a middle-sized, dark-haired, dark-eyed, black-bearded man, with a touch of the sheeny about his nose. He had a brisk kind of way with him and spoke sharply, like a man that knew the value of time.

[The description of Pinner includes an offensive slang term for a Jewish person. I always disliked comments like that even if those descriptions were in common use at the time. -Chips]

June 7, 1900: Beppo destroyed the first bust of Napoleon. [SIXN]

“The first case reported was four days ago,” said he. “It was at the shop of Morse Hudson, who has a place for the sale of pictures and statues in the Kennington Road. The assistant had left the front shop for an instant when he heard a crash, and, hurrying in, found a plaster bust of Napoleon, which stood with several other works of art upon the counter, lying shivered into fragments.

A Day by Day Chronology of Mr Sherlock Holmes, According to Zeisler and Christ, compiled and edited by William S Dorn, BSI and DWNP, gives us two entries for Sherlockian events in two different years. So here we go.

June 6, 1889: Hall Pycroft received a letter offering him a berth with Mawson and Williams. [STOC]

“At last I saw a vacancy at Mawson and Williams’, the great stockbroking firm in Lombard Street. I daresay E.C. is not much in your line, but I can tell you that this is about the richest house in London. The advertisement was to be answered by letter only. 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. No one knows how these things are worked. Some people say the manager just plunges his hand into the heap and takes the first that comes. Anyhow, it was my innings that time, and I don’t ever wish to feel better pleased. The screw was a pound a week rise, and the duties just about the same as at Coxon’s.

Question from Chips: In the last sentence of the quote above, a rise in pay is referred to as “a screw”. Why?

Answer from the English Oxford Living Dictionaries:

British – dated, informal [in singular]
An amount of salary or wages.
‘he’s offered me the job with a jolly good screw’

June 6, 1890: Busts of Napoleon were sold to Morse Hudson and the Harding Brothers. [SIXN]

“Now, Watson, let us make for Gelder and Co., of Stepney, the source and origin of busts. I shall be surprised if we don’t get some help down there.”
[…] A reference to his books showed that hundreds of casts had been taken from a marble copy of Devine’s head of Napoleon, but that the three which had been sent to Morse Hudson a year or so before had been half of a batch of six, the other three being sent to Harding Brothers, of Kensington.

June 10, 1889: Hall Pycroft was supposed to start work with Mawson & Williams (STOC)
June 10, 1900: Beppo destroyed two more busts of Napoleon (SIXN)

June 7, 1889: Arthur Pinner offered Hall Pycroft a job with Franco-Midland Hardware Company (STOC)
June 7, 1900: Beppo destroyed the first bust of Napoleon (SIXN)

June 6, 1889: Hall Pycroft received a letter offering him a berth with Mawson & Williams (STOC)
June 6, 1890: Napoleon busts were sold to Morse Hudson and the Harding Brothers (SIXN)