Sherlock Holmes didn’t live at this address. He lived on Montague St in Bloomsbury, just around the corner from the British Museum.
“When I first came up to London I had rooms in Montague Street, just round the corner from the British Museum….“ MUSG.
Michael Harrison, in The London of Sherlock Holmes (Drake Publishers: New York, 1972), decides that Holmes lodged at 26 Montague Street, because his researches turned up an intriguing fact: in 1875, a certain Mrs. Holmes (Sherlock’s mother?) leased the house next door at 24 Montague Street. This is accepted Holmesian theory.
156 Montague is in a different part of London, near Spittalfields, and is not canon compliant. So why this address on the envelope in 221B? Two Holmes nerds would not make this mistake. It’s one of those things that any Holmesian would have picked up on.
Oh. 156-26=130 – a 130-year-old case, still unsolved?
And then TFP featured MUSG and Victor Trevor/GLOR, both pre-Watson – is it a hint that we have yet to see John’s version of The Final Problem then?
Nice thought! Maybe.
There was a screencap going around that Google Maps shows Faith’s flat at 156 Montague?
Yes. Thing is that address is 156 OLD Montague Street, which is a different street. Google maps brings it up as there isn’t a 156 on Montague Street, I think the highest number there is 30. Basically the British Museum is the canon link to the Bloomsbury Montague address. Not sure how we got over to Spittalfields for Faith’s flat.
Google Maps defaults to Faith’s flat because there’s no higher number than 30? Coincidence? Shall we add this to the list of intentional fuckiness?
Think so!!!
156 Old Montague Street is a red brick house but doesn’t look very much like Faith’s house we see in Sherlock’s window deduction. There’s some very scarce info on the building here.
Old Montague Street was called just Montague Street until 1874. In it’s vicinity stood one of the Whitechapel workhouses, that later became an infirmary. On it’s site was also the Whitechapel morgue, described as just a shed, where, in 1888, at least the body of one Ripper victim, Mary Ann Nichols, was examined. Other sources name even more victims who were brought to Old Montague Street morgue. Read up on it here.
That brick shed was accessed via Eagle Place. It’s all been since demolished, but I found a pic that shows where this mortuary was located, compared to the modern outlet of Old Montague Street. To me, this looks awfully like the block of houses to which 156 Old Montague Street belongs.
This is just the Google Maps location:
This overlay shows where the morgue was located:
So, there was a morgue, connected to Jack the Ripper, about 30 metres away from 156 Old Montague Street. Coincidence?
I’m not a Ripperologist, though, so I don’t know how reliable this research is. I tried to look up Eagle Place on the Booth Map but couldn’t find it. This is how the above area was mapped in 1889:
Green is the location of the workhouse/infirmary, red is the alleged location of the mortuary.
Any thoughts from people who know more about this?
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