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Baker Street 221b Description


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Hey Guys,

My brother is a huge Sherlock Holmes Fan and for Christmas my parents got him a Samsung VR Device. Now i thought I could try and recreate the original 221b or the rooms in the apartment for him to see in VR. Now my problem is time. I thought about reading the original books in english (my first language is German) and recreate it from the informations described in the books. But I don't have enough time to do that until Christmas. Now I wanted to ask you guys to just post everything you know about the apartment which is described in the books, not in the Games or movies/series.

Would be a great help! Thank's a lot in advance!

Greetings, Thomas / Fanki

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Hi Fanki. I'm not of much use here, but this online article might be of some help. You might want to scroll down a few paragraphs to get to the relevant part, as it speculates on possible locations of 221B first.

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Hello Fanki and welcome!  :)   This is what I know about 221 B Baker Street apartment; it is, at least on the Sherlock Holmes stories that I've read, pretty similar to the BBC series Sherlock. It has the same amount of stairs and they part in the middle, just like the series, for the apartment to have a view to the main road (Baker Street) at the windows, at least in the living room.

It has a fireplace, in which Sherlock's and John's chairs (sofas) are located, but I'm not so sure about whether John Watson's chair is at the right side of the fireplace or at the left side; of course, the same problem with Sherlock's chair. I think you should read that up on some short Sherlock Holmes stories by Sir. Arthur Conan Doyle, the ones he published in a newspaper first and then were put all together in a book named "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" (or at least that's what the name is in Spanish). You will have tons of information from there!!! I can assure you that. 

Sherlock's kitchen is transformed into a whole chemistry lab, just like in the series, and of course, it should have old materials and lab instruments. There is also a chair for the visitors, clients, which is located in front of the fireplace, just like in the series. 

I know the apartment is full of old books everywhere; maybe even more than what the BBC series shows. Remember, they are old books, tons of them and very used. 

There's a room for Sherlock and a room for John too, John doesn't use it that much (especially after he got married), but he still uses it a lot when he participates on Sherlock's adventures. 

 

This is all the information I can give you about the apartment. You should definitely look everything up and read a lot of Sherlocks books and stories, they're the main source and what you want to know after all. The 221 B Baker Street address is located at the center of London, and remember it all happened at the Victorian age.

 

Good luck!!!  :sherlock:   

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Welcome to Sherlock Forum, Fanki!  :welcome:  We hope you stick around and enjoy yourself.

 

It just occurred to me to wonder whether the original #221B had a telephone.  Does anyone recall such a device being mentioned in any of the stories?

 

This site indicates that telephone service was becoming a serious business by the 1880s in London.  Holmes, being up to date on most scientific matters, would surely have been aware of that -- yet near as I recall, he stuck with telegrams and messenger boys, perhaps because they enabled him to contact a person at any address in the area, whereas only a few homes and businesses had the equipment at first.  Surely as time went on, however....

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There was no telephone at 221b. In many ways the postal service was better then as there were multiple deliveries per day. People could write a letter, get a reply, then write again and probably get a reply again. Today it’s only one post.

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Yes, it always amuses me to read old novels where somebody in London writes to somebody in, say, Oxford in the morning, then gets a reply that same afternoon.  I've read that old detective novels are in general a very accurate representation of daily life in their era -- because otherwise many of the clues would be meaningless.  So the "afternoon post" must have been for real.

 

Not so sure about no phone in #221B, though.  I wonder if ACD kinda got stuck in an era?  Or maybe Holmes really did have a phone, but it was never relevant to a case, so therefore it was never mentioned?

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You would have thought that Holmes, a scientist himself, would have had one. He had a record player after all so why not a phone. My brain is a little foggy in that I recall seeing it written that Mr Hudson didn’t want one in the house but it’s very possible/probable that I’m remembering something from a pastiche.

 

One slight issue might have been that it could have robbed the stories of encounters with Lestrade and other police officers at 221b if they could have just called. Mycroft also wouldn’t have bothered dragging his bulk from Whitehall or The Diogenes if he could have just summoned Holmes by phone

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You would have thought that Holmes, a scientist himself, would have had one. He had a record player after all so why not a phone. My brain is a little foggy in that I recall seeing it written that Mr Hudson didn’t want one in the house but it’s very possible/probable that I’m remembering something from a pastiche.

 

One slight issue might have been that it could have robbed the stories of encounters with Lestrade and other police officers at 221b if they could have just called. Mycroft also wouldn’t have bothered dragging his bulk from Whitehall or The Diogenes if he could have just summoned Holmes by phone

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I think Mr. Bell invented the phone in 1876 if I'm not mistaken, but that was in its most primitive form.  I don't suppose that it was widely commonplace in private residences until after the turn of the century.

1876 was the date on his patent, yes.  I assume you're also correct about roughly when phones became commonplace, but Holmes could hardly be called a commonplace individual.  According to that site that I mentioned before, the first phone company in Britain began a mere two years later (1878), with a capacity of 150 lines.  By the following year (1879), they had actual 200 subscribers.  A second London phone company began that same year, and by early the following year (1880) had 172 subscribers.

 

Holmes, being (as you mentioned) a modern man of his day. would presumably have been right in there toward the beginning, except for one thing:

 

...  he was also an introvert in his castle and the telephone, unlike the phonograph, has the rude habit of making a shrill noise at unpredictable intervals which are not owner-instigated.  [....]  I'm fairly confident that if the telephone was only a one-way operation (ie, Sherlock could initiate all the calls whenever he wanted but nobody could call *him*)--221b would have been the first private residence in all of the City of Westminster to have its own phone.  !

 

Our modern Sherlock certainly has that attitude toward interruptions, having put his doorbell in the fridge (in HLV) because "it kept ringing."  Presumably the original Holmes was inventive enough to do something similar with a telephone -- so maybe he did have a phone, but Watson never mentioned it because it was in the closet under a heap of pillows (where my first husband used to keep his).

 

Noise aside, Holmes's frequent use of the telegraph office, the postal services and various and sundry homeless lads as his personal runners could be considered a form of philanthropy--guaranteeing continued employment for dozens, if not hundreds of people, all doing services for Sherlock Holmes.  The telephone is more expedient but it lacks the personal interaction with his minions which SH so enjoyed . . and it would have eliminated a lot of the levels in his employment scheme.  That's my theory.

 

I believe you're not taking into account the "Number, please?" ladies.  ;)

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Mrs Hudson wouldn’t have wanted a phone as Holmes and Watson would have been phoning for Takeaway meals and her food would go to waste

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Mrs Hudson wouldn’t have wanted a phone as Holmes and Watson would have been phoning for Takeaway meals and her food would go to waste

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I believe you're not taking into account the "Number, please?" ladies.  ;)

 

 

 

I believe the 'Number, please?' ladies would probably be the tantamount reason Sherlock Holmes would not own a telephone, actually.  So he could hide it in a drawer under some pillows and not answer it unless it was convenient . . but if wanted to actually use it . . . there was absolutely no security on a call line.  Mabel and Pris and all her friends down at the telephone exchange could have listened in to all his business and there wouldn't have been anything he could do about it.  Not even sure Brother Mycroft could have rectified this situation.  That would have been a vulnerability for SH's enemies to exploit.

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Ooh, good point! So he couldn't really have used a phone for any except trivial matters, and why bother. Wonder if the local telegrapher was any more discrete?

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Mrs Hudson wouldn’t have wanted a phone as Holmes and Watson would have been phoning for Takeaway meals and her food would go to waste

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