“Father was a plumber in the tottenham Court Road”

My next choice was the Leandenhall Street Post Office, which is where the letters from Mr. Hosmer Angel were addressed to. Street Post Office did not show up on the map, so I cut it down to Leadenhall Street, the street on which Mr. Hosmer Angel worked, and got these results:

The first thing I noticed was the amount of information there was about crimes on or relating to Leadenhall Street. When I searched this location on the “Old Bailey Online,” over 1,100 results came back. While obviously not all these crimes had to take place on Leadenhall Street, and this location may just be a background detail to the case, it does show that the location is not remote.

While going through the “Old Bailey Online,” I’ve concluded that the majority of the crimes that happened on or in relation to Leadenhall Street are theft of some degree.

When searching the Charles Booth Online Archive, I first came across the notebook catalogue. Most of these entries are surveys or questionnaires about businesses regarding pay and working conditions. This leads me to believe that this is not a residential area.

Additionally, I searched the poverty maps on the Charles Booth Online Archive. While I found it was near impossible to find the street on the 1898-99 map, the 2000 map showed the street. Leadenhall Street itself was no colored in, but the surrounding areas ranged from comfortable to wealthy. This shows me that there is little to no poverty in this area. 

The information I learned during this research drew me to a few conclusions about the Sherlock Holmes stories. One of said conclusions is the accuracy of the locations in these stories. For example, since Leadenhall Street is not a residential area, it makes sense that Mr. Hosmer Angel would work in an office on this street. Moreover, the findings on theft on Leadenhall Street could be interpreted as symbolic. At the conclusion of the story, we find that Miss Mary Sutherland’s stepfather had been impersonating a fellow names Mr. Hosmer Angel in order to ensure that Miss Sutherland doesn’t stop paying him money for things such as rent. Therefore, her stepfather stole her money, her time, and her heart for a brief while.