Sherlock Holmes

GIS Blog for Piccadilly Circus

~ Annie Swafford

 

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In the Sherlock Holmes stories this is where John Watson hears about Sherlock for the first time as he is looking for a flatmate to move in with. Gaining insight from the Historical Eye webpage I learned a lot about this area in the past and how it is like today. One of the main attractions of Piccadilly Circus is the Burlington house, which still remains today the home of the Royal Academy as it did during Victorian times. A site for entertainment in 1812 was the Egyptian Hall which is no longer there today. The area in general was a place for shopping and entertainment. The London Pavillion was a variety theatre which was very popular during the 1800’s. In the middle of Piccadilly Circus still remains the bronze Shaftesbury Memorial fountain made by Alfred Gilbert.  The Historical Eye gave a very brief overview of the area, but it was helpful for finding more information because I knew what to look for.

I then used the British History online database and found more information about the area along with more pictures. From the pictures, this area seemed very busy and loud. It reminds me of an older version of Times Square in New York, with all the illuminated advertising and signs everywhere. According to the British History online database there was a lot of controversy about these illuminated advertisements because the lights could cause danger to drivers. Laws were created due to the new additions of lights to advertisements. Due the the lavishness of the lights and the types of buildings, it can be concluded that the area was fairly well to do and could afford to have electricity and the means to keep all the storefronts and entertainment businesses up and running.

 

 

“Piccadilly to Oxford Street.” Historicaleye.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 09 Nov. 2014.

 

‘The rebuilding of Piccadilly Circus and the Regent Street Quadrant’, Survey of London: volumes 31 and 32: St James Westminster, Part 2 (1963), pp. 85-100. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=41456&strquery=piccadilly circus Date accessed: 10 November 2014.

Mapping Fleet Street in the Victorian Age

~ Annie Swafford

I chose to search the popular London location Fleet Street which is mentioned in the Sherlock Holmes story “The Red-Headed League.” This tale is one of the less dramatic mysteries that Holmes explores, and when I first read it, the mention of Fleet Street caught my eye. I primarily knew the street as home to Stephen Sondheim’s Demon Barber and Mrs. Lovett’s meat pies. In the story of The Red-Headed League, a man gets tricked into working at an office on Fleet Street, assisting with the manual copying of the Encyclopedia Britannica. His new “league” mysteriously disbands very suddenly and with a turn of events, we learn that the office on Fleet Street was a decoy for another crime to take place. As the map from Victorian Google Maps below shows, Fleet Street is broad and stretches across several intersections in central London.

Fleet Street on the Victorian Google Maps
Fleet Street in the Victorian Age, Courtesy of Victorian Google Maps

Fleet Street was known as “a tavern street, as well as a literary centre,” according to historicaleye.com, a website composed of a compilation of academic works about various historical events/locations. Through exploring this and several other sites, I learned that Fleet Street is known as more than Sweeney Todd’s home. In fact, by 1896 several notable writers are cited as having inhabited the street’s pubs; “Shakespeare, Ben Johnson, Raleigh, Dryden, Johnson, Goldsmith…are closely associated with this famous street” (historialeye.com). In regards to this website as a scholarly archive tool, the section on Fleet Street and The Strand on historicaleye.com is difficult to find if accidentally navigated away from. There seem to be two very different parts  of this website – the Then and Now section about London that features historical summaries of London locations in 1896, and the newly “renovated” part of the site that is exposed when clicking on the home button. With no search bar on either of these parts of historicaleye.com, exploration was left only to clicking around the tabs most relevant to London.

The interesting combination of literary greats and taverns is reflected in the socioeconomic status of Fleet Street. Using the Charles Booth Online Archive (http://goo.gl/Jg­RmhL), I looked for the street to learn about its economic makeup in the 1890s. Based on the Charles Booth Poverty Classification Legend, the map below shows that the end of Fleet Street where it converges with the Strand had many middle-class/well-to-do individuals living here, as noted by the red markings. Both Victorian Google Maps and the Charles Booth map note that there are many banks on the part of Fleet Street that approaches The Strand, so the increase in well-to-do individuals correlates well.  Though the map is not very clear to read, I interpret the light blue/gray along the center of Fleet Street to represent the “poor 18-21 year olds” from the Booth Poverty Classification Legend. To the right of Fleet Street as it approaches St. Bride Street, all of light pink represents the population of people who were “fairly comfortable” with “good ordinary earnings.” From well-to-do individuals to poor young adults, this street had a variety of people passing through it in the late 1800’s, further  verifying the reputation of taverns and great Victorian writers in one place.

Using Charles Booth's Poverty Classification Legend, this map shows that the end of Fleet Street that converges to The Strand had many middle-class/well-to-do individuals living here as noted by the red markings.
Fleet Street on a 1898-1899 Map of London

 

The broad range of socioeconomic status on Fleet Street prompted interest for me to explore the types of crime that were documented at the time of the Charles Booth Poverty map. Below are cases that either took place on or involved Fleet Street and therefore surfaced as search results on Old Bailey Online (www.oldbaileyonline.org/static/London-life19th.jsp), an archive that houses centuries of London court cases. Limiting my search to 1896-1898 to coincide with the Poverty Classification map, I found an interesting trend in crimes in the late 1890s on Fleet Street. If I were topic modeling the cases below, it’d be easy to detect the highest trending topic for court cases…theft. Two counts of burglary, two counts of pocketpicking, and two counts of fraud all point to the majority of crimes revolving around stealing money on this street. The somewhat broad range of socioeconomic status may have been responsible for these crimes. These court case crimes, including the extreme manslaughter charge and then perjury and larceny charges all sound like the London that Arthur Conan Doyle depicts by means of Sherlock’s cases, while also relating to the variation of inhabitants’ economic statuses at the time.

A list of cases from the Old Bailey Online Archive that were documented as taking place on Fleet Street in the Victorian Age
A list of cases from the Old Bailey Online Archive that were documented as taking place on Fleet Street in the Victorian Age

 

Sources:

“Booth Poverty Map & Modern Map (Charles Booth Online Archive).” London School of Economics & Political Science, Web. 09 Nov. 2014.

 

Rees, Simon. “Fleet Street and the Strand.” Historicaleye.com. Simon Rees. Web. 09 Nov. 2014.

 

Tim Hitchcock, Robert Shoemaker, Clive Emsley, Sharon Howard and Jamie McLaughlin, et al., The Old Bailey Proceedings Online, 1674-1913 (www.oldbaileyonline.org, version 7.0, 24 March 2012). 09 Nov. 2014.

 

 

 

Investigating Covent Garden

~ Annie Swafford ~ 2 Comments

For this project I chose to look closely at Covent Garden which is a district in London that is mentioned in The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. When Mr. Henry Baker approaches Holmes about the advertisement for the missing hat, he provides Holmes with valuable information for further investigation of the missing blue carbuncle that leads him to Covent Garden. Below is a screenshot of the area as seen on Victorian Google Maps:

coventgarden

After navigating all of the various digital archives to further research Covent Garden, I found the Charles Booth Online Archive and the British History archive to be particularly useful.   The other archives were either difficult to navigate or did not offer information that I found interesting enough to connect with the story. The Historical Eye archive failed to incorporate a type of search feature which would have been helpful in my research. This was one flaw of the archive in my opinion. The Old Bailey Online archive discussed criminal and law records which are interesting yet not something I wanted to discuss in this example. The Locating London archive only seemed to provide me with a map of where Covent Garden was located around this time period. It did not yield much qualitative information that I was seeking.

 

The British History Online archive is a great digital tool with a lot of rich data. It has a very sophisticated search engine that lets you precisely refine your results to find anything that you are looking for in the context of all British history. On this archive I was able to quickly search for Covent Garden and be presented with a lot of history about it. I discovered that the late 1800s was the greatest period of expansion in the entire history of the market. People could visit the market for fruits, produce, flowers, and other goods. The history provided by the archive was able to paint a nice image in my head of what Covent Garden looked like during the turn of the 20th century. Having that imagery allows me to gain a better understanding of the Holmes story and how society must have operated during this time period.

 

The map of Covent Garden on the Charles Booth Online Archive shows the range of poverty and wealth in the area circa 1898-99. As you can see on the screenshot below, this district of London was comprised mostly of middle class, well-to-do people. There are some poor and very poor areas interspersed throughout the district as well as a few places that are of the lowest class. This map and archive allows the researcher to develop an understanding of class and location in the late Victorian era which is valuable when comparing to the Sherlock Holmes story. It provides context for the setting which is a marketplace. It makes sense to the story that Covent Garden was mostly middle-class at the time of the publication of this story because it was a shopping area where the goose was sold.

charlesbooth

 

A deeper look at topic modeling

~ Annie Swafford

wordcloud

All categories chosen from 50 topics with 1000 iterations:

time – morning night back clock waiting past early morrow quarter arrived

writing – paper note read letter table book handed letters written wrote

physical features – face eyes looked thin features lips figure tall dark expression

household – woman lady wife husband life love girl child married maid

clothing/accessories descriptions – black hair red hat heavy round broad centre coat dress

death/crime – found man dead lay body blood death knife lying round

interrogation/crime solving – give matter idea reason question impossible occurred absolutely explanation true

physical reactions – face turned back instant hand sprang forward moment side head

transportation – station train road carriage passed side drive reached drove hour

darkness/mystery – light suddenly dark long caught sat lamp spoke silence silent

Using MALLET was an interesting experience. I enjoyed how simple and accessible the interface was. I had no trouble navigating the program and tweaking the iterations and so forth to my liking. I experimented with several numbers before choosing to analyze my topics with 50 topics, 1000 iterations, and a 10 topic word selection. I tested extreme numbers to see how it would influence the data. In one trial I searched 500 topics with 3000 iterations. This resulted in too specific of data that explored topics that were relative to particular stories. I also searched as few as 10 topics with only 500 iterations. This generated too many broad and vague topics that did not capture the essence of the mysteries. In the end I felt that narrowing it down to 50 different topics with 1000 iterations gave me a good sense of the Sherlock Holmes stories in a general yet helpful way. The word cloud above displays these words in a creative and interactive way.

The ten topics that I chose out of the fifty total were due to their overall similarity. I assigned the simplest titles that I could think of to each of them to give a general structure for understanding the Sherlock Holmes stories as a collection. Understanding ten basic concepts that are reflective of the entire collection is easier to grasp and accept by the reader. Each title represents an element of the stories that is imperative to the work as a murder mystery relative to the time it was written. Obviously topics such as death, crime, interrogation, and mystery are all blunt examples of what a mystery story encompasses. Some of the other topics such as physical reactions and features are more subtle examples yet serve just as important a role. The stories rely primarily on context clues and other literary devices that create an interesting and challenging mystery to solve. Things such as physical expressions and reactions are important elements of any mystery story because they can explain a lot about an individual character or the way they respond to certain situations. Another topic such as clothing descriptions seems to be part of the style of writing of the collection of Sherlock Holmes stories. Holmes is an icon for mystery investigators and the way that he is dressed is an important part of his appeal. The author pays a lot of attention to the way that Holmes’ dress is described as well as other characters throughout the entire series.

Topic modeling provides a unique framework for examining thousands or millions of texts at once. Distant reading is an interesting concept that I will hopefully be able to exercise in future research. The ability to apply your own ideas and lens to any given topic or series of works through topic modeling is something truly valuable that many other classic tools or academic research methods do not allow or facilitate.

Topic Modeling with MALLET: Analyzing the Results

~ Annie Swafford

Initially, it was difficult for me to understand the definition and purpose of topic modeling. However, after using MALLET, a topic modeling tool, to find patterns in Sherlock Holmes stories, I began to understand how topic modeling works.

After entering the Sherlock Holmes stories into MALLET, I found 10 good topics. The first 6 topics came from 50 topics,1000 iterations, and 20 topic words printed. The topic names were Letter Writing, Crime, Marriage, Death, Clues, and Physical Description (Male). The other four topics came from 70 topics, 1500 iterations, and 15 topic words printed. These were Holmes in his Chair, Rooms in a House, London Finance, and Investigation Process. I experimented with other variations of iterations, topics, and topic words printed, but only had time to upload these output files onto my computer. By testing out many different variations I found that the more iterations and topic words you have, the easier it is to identify the topic name. After I picked out my 10 topics, I clicked on the topic words within them in order to see the top ranked documents within that topic. MALLET then allowed me to see the number of words in a specific document that were assigned to that topic. I found, for example, that 22 words in a document from The Stock Broker’s Clerk, were assigned to the London Finance topic. The words in this topic were: money business work hundred answered good pounds company asked thousand advertisement city price headed pay. The document excerpt that MALLET showed at the top of the page revealed that this part of the story was about a “gigantic robbery” in which “nearly a hundred thousand pounds worth of American railway bonds” were found in the robber’s bag. This explains why 22 of the words within the document were assigned to London Finance. MALLET also showed that only 12% of the words in that entire document were assigned to this topic. I went through this same process with all of my topics to figure out which Sherlock Holmes stories discussed certain topics, and how many words in each story were assigned to those topics.

Altogether, I think topic modeling with MALLET is a great way of distant reading. MALLET proved to be efficient after it sifted through mass amounts of text from Sherlock Holmes stories and found patterns within them faster than most of us could even finish reading just one of those stories. There were a few aspects of MALLET, however, that I disliked. First, it creates enormous files. These files take up a lot of space, and this makes the process of transferring them onto Google Drive and onto other computers extremely slow. On top of this, some of the topics it creates are extremely difficult to decipher names for because the words didn’t seem have much in common. A lot of the topics also reappeared after I changed the number of iterations, topics, and topic words (ex. London Finance, Death, Holmes in his Chair). I suppose that was inevitable though, because the text being read by MALLET didn’t change.

After completing this project, I understand that topic modeling tools such as MALLET are useful in that they can take texts and then find patterns in the use of words. topic modeling is most effective when we have many documents/texts that we want to understand without actually closely reading each individual text (distant reading!).

Mary Dellas

Followup: 2000 iterations and a burning hot computer

~ Annie Swafford

My computer is not sluggish- it can handle Battlefield 4 on Ultra at 1080p/60fps (which, for you nongamers, means very fast and very good looking). However, it would seem skimming through text documents gives it some pause for concern. 62.976 seconds after starting up the topic modeling tool, though, my little machine spit out a list of 50 topics that could be isolated from the various words therein. So that one doesn’t need to refer back to my last post, here’s a refresher:

1. holmes word head words men message revolver shook life shot — Holmes, firearms, and investigations
2. light stood long suddenly lamp dark sound low shoulder figure — Stealth and sneakiness
3. clear doubt mind person possibly obvious idea excellent perfectly point — Deduction and flattery
4. make father made heard son returned left mr view point — Conspiracy and inheritance
5. eyes face man looked dark thin tall features companion pale — Description of characters
6. house small large stone great high place square windows houses — Houses and mansions
7. reason remember fear danger clear told chance strong horror family — Rationale
8. told heart knew god story hands life speak truth leave — Rationalization
9. matter understand position imagine call absolutely important trust force hope — Help me, Holmes, you’re my only hope
10. holmes mr professor fresh work aware surprise action great change —Sudden change in behavior

So, why did I choose these topics? They all had a primary commonality, being that they were about a general topic narrowed down to instances from their specific stories. Examples were plucked from specific passages, but these are overarching sentiments seen again and again in the archives. These sentiments are basic tropes in the mystery canon: implements of murder (1), men creeping in the shadows (2), a victim’s family rationalizing their sorrows (8), and, particularly for Holmes, a plea for help (9).

The simplicity of the fairly elaborate points here makes these 10 topics effective for getting a “feel” for Sherlock Holmes and the universe he inhabits. Together, they detail the basic elements of an average story. Thus, I believe them to be the most effective topics to be chosen out of this fairly bulky list.

As for the generation of the list, I experimented with a variety of settings before settling on the 50 topics/2000 iterations/10 topic word option. I tried as many as 500 topics and 5000 iterations, and as few as 10 topics and 500 iterations. The former produced too many specific topics, focusing on specific plot elements from specific stories. The latter produced too many broad topics, focusing on broadly used vocabulary words from many of the stories. I determined that an appropriate middle ground was found in the 50/2000/10 option, and I believe the topics chosen reflect that.

Mallet Modeling Tool, Sherlock Edition

~ Annie Swafford

1,000 Iterations 20 Words Printed 50 topics

Broken Home: young father left life time years poor son death man met sister boy mother ago fate died returned daughter family
Investigation: police crime evidence inspector murder death tragedy law person criminal official arrest present missing trace violence charge appeared committed effect
Household: lady wife woman husband maid mrs child character servants ferguson married rucastle lived madam mistress trouble children jack devoted nurse
Written Document: paper note table read papers box book pocket put handed writing written drew sheet glanced picked document slip envelope piece

1,500 Iterations 25 Words Printed 40 Topics

Characteristics: face eyes man thin lips features dark looked tall pale expression raised mouth figure gray beard drawn manner sprang handsome held eager fixed blue thinking
Emotions: cried hands face instant moment back god voice words quick sake minutes amazement cry spoke answer soul stared sank glimpse excitement burst heaven swear heavens
Physical Appearance: black red white hair hat head large broad coat heavy small middle set short dress cut brown round thick centre grey faced dressed clean glancing

2,000 Iterations 40 Words Printed 60 Topics

Schedule: night morning day clock morrow early leave breakfast work hours arrived sleep twelve dressed eleven bright spent slept fresh waited hour appointment porter reading moving caused lunch signs shortly meal awake tuesday matters victoria hearing reply earlier blood woking driven
Suicide: found man body dead lay blood head struck hand shot revolver blow knife stick heavy weapon unfortunate left death sign lying wound bullet handle formidable pistol finally escaped wounded tied fired carried world struggle dragged grotesque injury spot shirt gun
Traveling: hour half train station past carriage waiting cab quarter wait passed drive reached minutes drove started journey late ten line pulled hurried passing bridge town cross glancing hansom class reach brougham clearing nearer fast charing streets learn coachman cabman rattled

Analysis of Topic Modeling

~ Annie Swafford

I played around with a few different numbers of topic/topic words and iterations in class. I ended up choosing topics from lists generated with 50 topics and 1000 iterations, 25 topics 2500 iterations, and finally 50 topics and 2000 iterations.  I played around making lists with iterations as low as 200, but I couldn’t make much sense out of them. I noticed that the higher number of iterations, the longer it took for the program to generate the lists. This made sense because it was going through the text a significant amount more than with less iterations. The first topics which I chose from our starting point of 50 topics and 1000 iterations were money, murder, Sherlock’s study, and women. From 25 topics and 2500 iterations I chose the topics crime, letter/message, and Sherlock. The final group of topics from 50 topics and 2000 iterations were journey/travels, appearance, and case. The more iterations and more words per topic definitely help in deciphering what the topics are. Through all the different lists I compiled using different settings it was clear that a lot of themes were always present such as crime and murder/violence and words surrounding solving cases. Using MALLET to topic model Sherlock Holme’s stories definitely helped to show the many themes present throughout the stories, but I found it rather difficult even having read some of the stories and being familiar with what Sherlock Holmes is about. Some word lists made no sense to me at all. Overall, using topic modeling you can get the gist of the main underlying themes featured in Sherlock Holmes, but to make sense of some of the names and words that come up in the lists you still need to read the stories to gain more detail and understanding. As we talked about in class, I think topic modeling serves to help close reading, but alone the data is too general to make use of.

Topic Modeling and Sherlock Holmes

~ Annie Swafford

Number of topics: 50 Iterations: 1000 Number of topic words: 20

Law Enforcement: horse dog colonel question master great heavy shown led john boy companion double straker lead stable stables stranger found silver

Time: years time lord ago twenty year thirty st months weeks made age subject simon great future sea peter ship business

Written Clues: paper read note word letter short written show wrote writing single sheet write post address handed slip message importance thumb

Emotions: mr holmes visitor assure smile desire beg glad relations carruthers gibson night assured consult town prefer laughed sit agitated reserve

Finances: good business money hundred deal asked pay play ten pounds thousand gold year paid give price firm hard sum worth

Action: instant suddenly turned light sprang coming caught heard forward threw fell sudden window back cry sight moment sound struck silence

London: london train station evening office papers reached west monday started line plans agent cross appointment report bridge carriage telegram journey

Travel: street half hour minutes back baker waiting cab quarter past passed ten hurried standing glad quiet start wait drive drove

Family: woman wife life husband girl lady heart love knew child married loved daughter ferguson nature soul terrible character women power

Investigating: left side examined showed corner finally square pointed carefully marks covered large books traces small wood inside evidently mark farther

 

Topic Modeling for Sherlock Holmes

~ Annie Swafford

First, I tried my assignment with the computer just sorting them into 10 word categories. These were some of the results.

1. TIME- time, find, turn, hours, knowledge, matters, remarked, present, afternoon, problem

2. MORNING- morning, surprise, breakfast, early, sat, seated, fire, energy, finished, bright

3. NOTES- paper, note, book, read, wrote, sheet, written, writing, write, handed

4. INVESTIGATION- case, points, facts, interest, investigation, remarked, explanation, follow, solution, theory

5. TRANSPORTATION- train, station, carriage, morning, started, found, cross, time, journey, catch

6. CLUES- examined, showed, examination, carefully, cut, marks, bed, top, full, traces

7. CRIME- crime, police, case, evidence, murder, arrest, charge, tragedy, violence, murderer

Next, I updated it to 20 words per category, and I upped the amount of categories to 100! These were some of the best categories I found.

1. EVIDENCE- facts obvious clear person theory impossible explanation question idea perfectly mind means confess formed affair absurd probable possibly evident correct

2. RUNNING- door room open passage ran steps rushed led empty stair stairs pushed corridor foot tore seized feeling vague furniture running

3. CRIME- crime death murder occurred showed evidence scene tragedy violence terrible reason committed murdered moran murderer suspicion attempt criminal motive inquest

4. INVESTIGATION- case interest remarked interesting problem investigation remarkable events solution difficult clue find methods prove points give reasoning follow simple connection

5. MANLINESS- sat pipe fire laid smoke tobacco blue corner lit armchair cigar hung silent gas brandy smoked smoking comfortable shining bachelor

6. LOCATIONS- window room open bedroom moment looked sitting fire threw floor lawn garden alarm moving curtain drawn fired energy forget powder

7. WRITING- paper read note book handed table sheet papers slip written importance post piece pen page pencil tossed picked desk printed

8. TIME- years ago time twenty thirty months age year week lives ship forty voyage exposed dozen bought tongue boat popular families

9. TIMES OF DAY- night morning early clock breakfast morrow surprise sleep signs rest disappeared day slept watch midnight fault trail hopes news clearing

10. TRANSPORTATION- train station carriage cab drive waiting journey drove town cross started line follow fresh bridge reach passing hansom class reached

 

~Austin Carpentieri