Mapping “A Scandal in Bohemia”: Carly Silk and Kevin Cronin

Cannon Street does not play a large role in the “The Man with The Twisted Lip” except for serving as the center of Neville St. Clair’s  ventures. The train station is how he gets to and from opium. Before he was a wealthy, employed, respected Englishman, he would travel into town and return via Cannon Street at 5.14 each day due to his interest in companies in that area. This establishes St. Clair as an honest hardworking London citizen who spent long hours in town looking for work until he attained his objectives. In contrast to Mr. St. Clair’s 37 year old self, who spends time near Fresno Street and Upper Swandam Lane at opium dens, he was driven as a young man. Ironically, St. Clair establishes himself in the neighborhood near Cannon Street and this is also the neighborhood of his downfall.

According to the Charles Booth Online Archive the area surrounding Cannon Street was chronically poor and struggling.Old Bailey Online records that the majority of crimes were theft, peace disturbance, and deception. Deception is particularly relevant to “The Man with the Twisted Lip” because in the same way that St. Clair adjusted to the business district as a young man is the same way in which he disguised himself in the crowds of East London and opium dens except this instance was deceitful and harmful.

Are you unsure about how to analyze the significance of locations in a story?  Try answering these questions:

1. Are there many or few place names in the story?
2. Are most of the locations real or fictional? Is there a pattern?
3. Is the description of the area realistic or has it been fictionalized? Why?
4. Does each location have a similar number of pages dedicated to it?
5. What is discussed at each location? Is there a pattern to what is discussed where?
6. Are there connections between a location and the theme of the story at that location?

London Bridge was designed by John Rennie and completed in 1831. The construction of the bridge cost about 2 million pounds, spanning 928 feet long and 54 feet wide. The bridge accumulated a lot of foot traffic and public transportation such as omnibuses. According to The Victorian Web, it was estimated that 22,000 vehicles and 110,000 pedestrians crosses London Bridge daily. According to Old Bailey Online, there are countless documentations of crime on and around London Bridge, the most common crime being theft. With all of these people moving around in one 54-foot wide place it makes sense that one of the biggest crimes that occurred on the bridge was theft. This is theft of all kinds, the most common being pickpocketing, but it expanded to larceny, highway robbery, animal theft, and so on. The bridge was flanked by wharves, which are just places for boats to dock and unload their shipments, on either side. In Conan Doyle’s story, “Twisted Lip”, these wharves are the places that hide the opium den, “vile alley lurking the high wharves which line the north side of the river to the east of London Bridge” (128). The bridge gives the reader the geographic location of the opium den, on the east side of the bridge (east being where the poorer people live). “Between a slop-shop and a gin-shop, approached by a steep flight of steps leading down to a black gap like the mouth of a cave, I found the den of which I was in search” (128), a slop-shop is a shop where cheap, ready made clothes are sold and a gin shop is a liquor store. The reader already knows that this is a poor area. The image of “the mouth of a cave” gives the story a dark, grimy tone, and because it wasn’t hard for John to find, it makes me think that this is common knowledge, that if one is looking for an opium den, all you have to do is go to London Bridge.

Bow Street seems to have been home to a mixed population of middle and lower class families, the middle class evidenced by the purple and red, with the lower class being the duller cool colors.

Bow Street serves as a through-route from Waterloo Bridge to St. Giles’s and Bloomsbury, and is known for the nature of public buildings around it. Bow Street’s association with the law dates back to 1740 when a justice for Middlesex, Thomas De Veil, transferred his office into No.4 Bow Street, which became the court-house of Bow Street magistrates. Across the street from the court-house, the first police station was opened on the street was back in 1832 until it was removed in 1880. The establishment of the police station did not affect the magistrates’ office, and stayed in its location until 1880, whereupon the police were removed to the present station and Nos.33-34 (the police court) was converted into a market warehouse, and then eventually demolished.

Bow Street is mentioned and becomes a crucial setting point in Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Man With the Twisted Lip”, a short Sherlock Holmes piece where Holmes and Watson investigate the disappearance of Neville St. Clair. After getting an idea of what might’ve happened to Neville, Holmes and Watson travel to the Bow Street Police Court where Neville, disguised as Hugh Boone, a beggar, is being kept in a cell. Holmes takes out a sponge and washes down Boone until the man is revealed to be Neville, who faked his own death out of shame that his wife had caught him while he was leading his double life – one as a respectable man and the other as a beggar. It is the setting of the climax.