There’s another Holmes thread in progress, but since it is explicitly about Watson, I’m opening another thread.
I thought Lord Blackwood had some promise as a Holmes villain. A Hoodoo man with political ambitions would really complement Holmes’ character. Holmes enjoys a reputation as a debunker of charlatans (which is ironic, because Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was a bit of a dupe to Spiritualists of the era and no stranger to seances), but there are other aspects to Lord Blackwood that would have raised red flags all over the place.
He claimed a Lordship, but they didn’t just hand those out in Victorian England; his illegitimate birth (or rather his lack of a well-documented legitimate birth) would be quite the barrier to taking a seat in the House of Lords. Harlan Sanders’ Kentucky Colonel honorific held more water than Blackwood’s “Lordhip.” Was this explained away somehow without my noticing it?