Just wanted to say to say that this may be my favorite Staff Report ever. It gave me goosebumps! You play the Game well, Dex.
A very good column, Dex, but one minor quibble:
In “The Adventure of the Veiled Lodger,” Holmes & Watson never shared an adventure until they went to see the lodger. Holmes had discussed the case with the investigating officer, but did not mount an active investigation, although he admitted there were points that bothered him. That consultation is what Watson forgot.
Also, in “The Adventure of the Missing Three-Quarter,” Watson admits that he helped Holmes kick the addiction. (Watson had become alarmed when he saw Holmes with a hypodermic, but Holmes laughed and said he was not resuming bad habits. He used the hypodermic to put a strong-smelling substance on the wheels of a carriage so he coult track it with a dog.)
Finally, Dex, can you name any fictional detective before C. Augustin Dupin? You also forgot to name Wilkie Collnis’ The Moonstone (an excellent novel) and The Lady in White as two pre-Sherlockian detective stories that are still known today.
Ah, Peyote, but in saying “the consultation is what Watson forgot” you’re already making explanations for why Watson didn’t really goof when he said…
I didn’t want to go into the history of the detective story, that would be a whole 'nother column. Arguably, there are fictional detectives before Dupin – one could argue Biblical examples, for instance, such as Solomon tricking the false mother-claimant to reveal herself. But these are sort of far-fetched, I think. Most authorities – including Ellery Queen, in 101 Years Entertainment: the Great Detective Stories 1841 - 1941 call Murders in the Rue Morgue the first “real” detective story.
Bunny, thanks for the reminder, how could I have forgot! I’ll add Dracula to the Report.
And thanks to everyone for the kind words. Spoiler, it was one of the most fun to write for me, too. And I almost didn’t take it – when I read the letter, “Is Sherlock real?” I almost fell off my chair laughing. I mean, we get such STUPID questions. And then I thought… well… hmmmm…
Excellent staff report Dex! Thoroughly enjoyable and most informative.
To the matter of John/James, I see no problem with the simple explanation of “James” being a nickname or intimate name being used by Dr. Watson’s wife for her husband whose given name was “John”, and no need to impugn her honour by suggesting a prior love affair as does one of the speculators mentioned in your report.
My maternal grandfather, whose given names were “Alexander John” was called “Jack” by, to the best of my knowledge, absolutely everyone through his long life, until in his old age as he grew deaf, my grandmother began insisting on calling him “John”, which she claimed he could hear better.
Oh, and btw, did I say: great report. 
It had been my intention to inquire about the reference to Harry Flashman but, of course, several posters beat me to it.
As for discrepancies in names, early in The Man with the Twisted Lip Mrs. Watson refers to her husband as “James” when telling a friend that he will drive her home. It is also in this story that Holmes refers to Watson as disapproving of his drug habit.
Holmes also refered to his landlady as “Mrs. Thompson”. This was, I believe, in A Scandal in Bohemia, when he refers to the beer and cold cuts she prepared for lunch. As Holmes stated in A Study in Scarlet that he had been unaware that the Earth is round, and that he intends to forget it now that he’s learned, it seems possible that he was, in fact, tremendously absent-minded about a good many commonplace facts while retaining an encyclopedic knowledge of the things which interested him. It seems plausible that he actually had trouble remembering the name of his landlady.
As for historical discrepancies in The Seven Percent Solution, Watson, when commenting on Freud’s habit of assigning nicknames to his patients, refers to “The Wolf Man”. This patient, whose name refers to a dream he had involving wolves perched in a tree outside of his window, was one Freud first met after the period described in the novel.
(A similar post was mistakenly placed in the discussion of light as a wave and a particle. Oops).
Solomon and the baby points in the right direction, but the first solid stories of detection are where Daniel does some first-class work in the tales of Susannah & the Elders and Bel & the Dragon. (Found in the Book of Daniel in RC and Orthodox Bibles, but separately, in the Apocrypha – assuming that it’s there – in Protestant Bibles.)
My father was named John, and I’m named John, too, but he was called Jack, and, within the family only, I’m called Jay.
Semi-related to the Staff Report (good work, Dex! I try to give credit where it is due):
For anyone that wants to see a semi-interesting twist on Holmes and Watson, Stephen King has a story in his Nightmares & Dreamscapes collection, in which Watson actually solves the mystery before Holmes does.
I’ve always taken it for granted that Jack was just another version of John, from the same logic that makes Peggy short of Margret. I had a quote from Oscar Wilde to back me up, but I didn’t want to swing to strongly my first time out on these boards.
-Horatio
p.s. My friend John Gough (pronounced ‘goff’) got a lot of mileage out of this during middle-school.
This story appeared first in The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, an anthology that was published at Christmas 1987, on the 100th anniversary of Holmes’ first appearance. I believe it’s still in print.
John W. Kennedy – If I recall my Bible correctly, the stories of Solomon precede those of Daniel both in history and in the time of their assumed writing (by just about all parties).
Yes, but the baby story is iffy as a detective story. The Daniel stories, on the other hand, are textbook cases.
as I continue on my own tangent…
Another interesting thing about the episode “The Devil’s Foot” is that Brett’s Holmes, coming out of a hallucination caused by a toxic chemical, exclaims “John!” as Watson tries to get him out of the trip.
I don’t recall reading this one, which surprises me, as I thought that I had read all of Holmes’ adventures, and I have never seen this particular episode on A&E (which to my dismay doesn’t air the episodes anymore 
). A summary of the episode can be found here.
My one consolation is that the short story is in the public domain, and is available courtesy of Project Gutenberg. A scan of the text reveals no “John!” exclamations.
I would have guessed John-John 
-Banger, another Jr.
For those of you who may have been Doc Savage fans, Philip Jose Farmer wrote a book – Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life – wherein he traces Doc’s family tree and its ties to, among others, Sherlock Holmes, Nero Wolfe (IIRC), The Scarlet Pimpernel, and of course Lord Greystoke (Tarzan).
It’s a fun read, although I disagree with many of Farmer’s opinions in the book.
RR
Welcome to the Straight Dope Message Boards, Horatio G, glad to have you with us (anyone willing to quote Wilde is welcome, and anyone who is willing to refrain from quoting Wilde, more so.)
Your comment << I’ve always taken it for granted that Jack was just another version of John, from the same logic that makes Peggy short of Margret. >> Yes, that’s true, but in this case we’re not talking about Watson being called “Jack” but being called “James” which is not a nickname of John.
Nice try, though.
Hi All,
I am happy to have found this forum, and am pleased to be able to contribute.
As rcell noted, Harry Flashman is a fictional character, who first appeared in “Tom Brown’s School Days”. Sherlock Holmes is real, and currently living in retirement on the Sussex Downs.
For those of you who might be interested in discussion of the life and times of The Master, there are two internet groups of Sherlockian Scholars, The Hounds of the Internet and WelcomeHolmes.
DEX wrote
“…in this case we’re not talking about Watson being called “Jack” but being called “James” which is not a nickname of John”.
I must respectfully disagree.
Jacobus is the Latin for James. That is why the followers of the Scots king James were known as Jacobeans.
From the Hebrew Yochanon (Jacob) we get Jack, James and John.
John is Hebrew Jochanon, Greek Joannes.
Jacob and James are Hebrew Yakob, Greek Jakobos.
It is true that Jack is a widely used nickname for John in contemporary English, but it has no etymological justification.
Along similar lines, I remember reading a biography of Nero Wolfe that put forth the theory that Wolfe was the child of Holmes and Irene Adler.
I’ll go see if I can hunt up a cite for it.
That didn’t take long. This sounds like it: Nero Wolfe of West Thirty-Fifth Street: The Life and Times of America’s Largest Private Detective by William S. Baring-Gould.
It was Mrs. Turner in the edition I read.
And this was Watson naming the landlady, so it doesn’t matter if Holmes remembered it or not.
The answer as per the Game is that Mrs. Hudson was on vacation or something, and had a friend filling in.
Actually, the answer as per the Game would be incredibly complicated, and drag in practically everything from the Kennedy assasination to whether or not Holmes and Watson were lovers.
Regards,
Shodan