Lives Beyond Baker Street by Christopher Redmond

Author:Christopher Redmond
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Sherlock Holmes, mystery, literary biographies, british crime, crime
ISBN: 9781780929071
Publisher: Andrews UK Limited 2016
Published: 2016-06-02T00:00:00+00:00

Sir John Hare, born John Fairs (1844–1921), is mentioned in “A Scandal in Bohemia”, as Watson observes that Holmes’s disguise and demeanour as an elderly nonconformist clergyman “were such as Mr. John Hare alone could have equalled”. A Yorkshireman, he came to London at 21 to act at the Prince of Wales’s Theatre and then the St. James’s; later he became a theatre manager and producer. Hare was “the greatest character actor of his day”, says the Encyclopaedia Britannica, specializing in roles as old men and other character and comic parts. At the end of his career, in 1916, he made two films.

Richard D’Oyly Carte (1844–1901) operated theatres, hotels and other enterprises in London from the 1870s onward. He was the impresario behind the partnership of Sir W. S. Gilbert and Sir Arthur Sullivan in the “Savoy operas”, performed at his Savoy Theatre (built 1881) by the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company. He composed light opera himself as a young man, and was leasing a theatre and producing operas by the time he was 30. His enterprises included touring operatic companies, a Royal English Opera House, the Savoy Hotel, Claridge’s, and Simpson’s-in-the-Strand restaurant, which Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson are twice reported to have patronized.

Umberto I (1844–1900) was the second King of Italy, succeeding his father, Victor Emmanuel II, who had advanced from being King of Sardinia to leading a more or less united Italy in 1861. The kingdom included not just the island of Sardinia but the region of Piedmont in what is now northwest Italy, and Umberto was born in Piedmont’s capital, Turin. He fought for Sardinia in the wars against Austria that led to national unification, saw his father become King of Italy, and succeeded to that title when Victor Emmanuel died in 1878. He took Italy into the Triple Alliance with Austria-Hungary and Germany, an arrangement mentioned in the story “The Naval Treaty”, and into colonial power in Somalia and Eritrea, though his imperial ambitions were dashed when Italian troops were defeated by Ethiopia in 1896. Generally popular with the Italian people, he survived two assassination attempts but succumbed to a third, when an anarchist, Gaetano Bresci, shot him in Monza, a town near Milan.

Urban Napoleon Stanger (1844?-1881?) was a baker from Kreutznach in western Germany, who came to Britain in 1870 and bought a house in Lever Street in east London, where he ran a successful bakery, catering especially to other German emigrés. He gave a part-time job to Felix Stumm, whose own bakery had been less successful. They were friends, but Stumm formed a closer relationship with the boss’s wife, Elisabeth Stanger. One evening in November 1881, the two men and a couple of friends spent an evening at the pub; Stanger came home, went into his house, and was never seen again. Stumm took over the business. Friends and creditors grew suspicious, and Stumm was eventually charged with forgery and served ten years in prison. Stanger, or his body, was never found. It has

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