The Hansom Wheels, an Official Scion Society of
The Baker Street Irregulars
Pink ’Un
The
Editor and Program Co-Chairperson: Phil Dematteis, 1817 Belmont Drive, Columbia SC 29206-2813; [email protected]
Program Co-Chairperson: Diane Bodie; [email protected]
Secretary (for change of address or phone number): Myrtle Robinson; [email protected]
Treasurer and Reservations Taker: Kathy Newman; [email protected]
Spokesman Emeritus: Cap’n Billy Rawl; (803) 739-8951
Hansom Wheels Website (which includes The Pink ’Un): www.hansomwheels.com
Volume 40, No. 2, April 2016
I Find It Recorded in My Notebook . . .
Sixteen people attended the February 25 meeting of
the Hansom Wheels at the Palmetto Club. After dinner,
your Editor announced that the game was afoot. I then
made everybody stand up to show the proper respect as we
toasted the woman, Irene Adler, and Charlie Cook led the
recitation of the Musgrave Ritual.
We sat back down for the Happy Hour Posers, in
which the idea is to figure out the titles of adventures concealed in clues such as the following: 1. It is a wonderful,
beautiful, terrific portable folding bed! = the glorious cot
= “The Gloria Scott.” 2. I gave the guy who parked my car
a $10.00 tip because I was afraid not to = the valet of fear
= The Valley of Fear. 3. Remember how Elvis used to do
that thing with his mouth? Kind of like a sneer? = “The
Man with the Twisted Lip.”
could have put anybody in the book I wanted to!! I could
have put Donald Trump in it!!! I’m the author!!!! I’M
LIKE GOD!!!!! Bwah-ha-ha-ha!!!!!” At this point I
pushed the secret under-the-table button that summons the
Palmetto Club security thugs, and Metz was hauled off to
a secure facility, where we understand that he is heavily
medicated and resting comfortably in a room with padded
walls.
Jerred Metz reading from his novel
4. Elvis has left the building. He has acknowledged the
audience’s applause for the final time = “His Last Bow,”
the assigned story for the evening.
We moved on to “Any and All Other Unavoidable
Scionic Business.” There wasn’t any. I only mention it
because I need to insert some extra material to make the
columns on this page come out even.
The Featured Presentation of the Evening was Jerred
Metz’s “How Sherlock Holmes and Sir Arthur Conan
Doyle Made Their Way into the Novel The Angel of
Mons: A World War I Legend.” And the answer was: “Because I wrote the damn novel and I put them in there! I
No, none of that actually happened. The novel—
which he did, in fact, write—deals with the legend of “the
Angel of Mons,” in which St. George is reputed to have
shown up in the sky and saved the British troops at a battle
with the Germans in Belgium on August 23, 1914. But he
didn’t save all of them, since during the battle Malcolm
Leckie, the brother of Arthur Conan Doyle’s wife, Jean,
was wounded and taken prisoner; he died six days later in
a German field hospital. In the novel Lady Lily LoderSymonds, an invalid who is living with the Doyles at their
home, Windlesham, receives a message from Malcolm
through the spiritualist practice of automatic writing on
August 29. Among those present at this event is Sherlock
Holmes, who is skeptical of the whole thing.
Michelle DuPre read Vincent Starrett’s Sacred Sonnet, “221B,” and we all hugged and kissed each other and
went back home to our sad and lonely lives.
For April: Questionable Documents (No, Not The Pink ’Un)!
The Hansom Wheels will meet at 7:00 P.M. Thursday, April 28, at the Palmetto Club, 1231 Sumter
Street. The price for dinner will be $22.00 per person.
There will also be a cash bar. So be sure to bring cash.
We will learn about the investigation of questioned
documents from Kevin Kulbacki, a forensic document
examiner for the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED). The Assigned Story will be “The Reigate
Squires,” aka “The Reigate Squire,” aka “The Reigate
Puzzle” (why can’t they make up their damn mind?), in
which a document plays a major role.
Please make reservations with Kathy Newman at
(803) 776-9499 or at [email protected] as soon as
possible, but no later than April 26. If you reserve by
mail and do not receive a confirmation within one day,
please call the number above. See you there!
Happy Hour Posers (Name the Adventures)
1. Disdainfully ironic religious singing groups set up by the founder of Microsoft.
2. Hugh Laurie’s character was originally not going to be called “Gregory” but “Michael Theodore.”
3. It is an aristocratic chair that is a combination seat, step stool, and ironing board.
4. The daughter of “The Galloping Ghost” has the same first name as the brain stolen by Igor in Young Frankenstein.
The Abductive Reasoning of Sherlock Holmes
By Liese Sherwood-Fabre
In “The Adventure of the Red-Headed League,” Sherlock Holmes correctly identifies Mr. Jabez Wilson’s current and
past trade, his having time spent in China, and his membership in Freemasonry.1 This demonstration of his powers of observation resulted from his overall pursuit of detective skills he first describes in A Study in Scarlet.2 Basic to such efforts,
he notes in “The Five Orange Pips,” is the observer’s stockpile of knowledge and facts that can be applied to one’s observations in order to form a conclusion.3
While Holmes refers to this as deduction, the process is actually abductive reasoning. In deductive reasoning, if the
premises are true, the conclusion must be true. According to Luke Muehlhauser, the deductive approach to Mr. Wilson’s
membership in Freemasonry would follow this pattern:
1) Everyone wearing an arc-and-compass breastpin is a Freemason.
2) Mr. Wilson is wearing an arc-and-compass breastpin.
3) Therefore, Mr. Wilson is a Freemason.
The problem with such an approach, however, is that someone might wear the breastpin without being a Freemason. As a
result, the conclusion is not necessarily true because the basis for the argument is flawed.4
In the abductive approach, the conclusion is based on the best explanation known. Muehlhauser illustrates Holmes’s
actual train of thought in the above case as:
1) The surprising fact, an arc-and-compass breastpin on Mr. Wilson, is observed.
2) But if Mr. Wilson is a Freemason, an arc-and-compass breastpin on the man would be a matter of course.
3) Hence, there is reason to suspect that Mr. Wilson is a Freemason.5
The basis for such logic is the hypothesis, or the first part of the second statement (Mr. Wilson is a Freemason). This declaration is the one that best accounts for what is observed in the first statement. Determining what truly provides the best
explanation involves collecting knowledge to be used in forming the hypothesis. Such data gathering is most closely associated with the physical sciences and its adherence to the scientific method to increase the accuracy and reliability of both
the observations and the conclusions drawn from them.6
Thus, Holmes is driven to gather and store as much knowledge as possible to make the best explanation possible: to
seek a test to determine if blood caused a stain; to catalog the ashes of one hundred forty different tobaccos; to classify
tattoo marks; to inventory differences in footprints, ears, and hands; and other tidbits. In an effort to further develop his
chosen field, what he gleaned, he shared with others through monographs and treatises. As he tells Watson in “The Five
Orange Pips,”
To carry the art, however, to its highest pitch, it is necessary that the reasoner should be able to utilise all the facts
which have come to his knowledge. . . . It is not so impossible, however, that a man should possess all knowledge
which is likely to be useful to him in his work, and this I have endeavoured in my case to do. 7
That Sherlock Holmes failed to recognize his thinking as abductive reasoning rather than deductive reflects a common misunderstanding of the two processes. Even current detective training rarely, if ever, correctly identifies this basic
investigative practice. All the same, just as Holmes applied his knowledge using a systematic approach, so too does his
modern equivalent, but with an even greater arsenal (e.g., DNA, face-recognition, and ion spectrometry) at his fingertips,
if not in his brain attic.8
_____________________________
1. Doyle, Arthur Conan; Ryan, Robert (2012-12-13). The Complete Sherlock Holmes (Kindle Locations 10537-10539).
2. Doyle, Arthur Conan; Ryan, Robert (2012-12-13). The Complete Sherlock Holmes (Kindle Locations 587-596).
3. Doyle, Arthur Conan; Ryan, Robert (2012-12-13). The Complete Sherlock Holmes (Kindle Locations 11952-11960).
4. http://commonsenseatheism.com/?p=3703
5. Ibid.
6. David Carson, “The Abduction of Sherlock Holmes,” International Journal of Police Science and Management (June
2009): 196.
7. Doyle, Arthur Conan; Ryan, Robert (2012-12-13). The Complete Sherlock Holmes (Kindle Locations 11952-11960).
8. David Carson, “The Abduction of Sherlock Holmes,” International Journal of Police Science and Management (June
2009): 196.
Submitted by Liese Sherwood-Fabre, Ph.D. More about her publications and sign-up for her personal newsletter can be
found on her Website at www.liesesherwoodfabre.com.