Sherlock Holmes Museum, London, England

'Having gathered these facts, Watson, I smoked several pipes over them, trying to separate those which were crucial from others which were merely incidental.'
- Sherlock Holmes, in 'The Crooked Man'

Hours: Open every day of the year (except Christmas Day) from 9.30am - 6pm
Admission:  Adult £6 Child £4 (under 16yrs)

While visiting London during a work trip I was fortunate enough to find myself with some spare time, and since my offices there were located in Baker St I thought it was a good time to take a stroll to the offices of Sherlock Holmes, Consulting Detective.

As you will know if you read my post about Edinburgh, I have been a fan of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle for quite some time, and more specifically a fan of Sherlock Holmes.
Holmes has long since been held as the standard for a detective who employed science, logic and reasoning to almost any crime.  He is one of the oldest examples of a true forensic detective, and of course he was entirely fictional.

Arthur Conan Doyle drew on several people who he worked closely with during his time at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, the notable Dr Bell who I mentioned in my previous entry, as well as Sir Henry Littlejohn who was a police surgeon in Edinburgh before becoming a lecturer on Forensic Medicine and Public Health.  These men were really at the cutting edge of their fields and were fantastic inspirations since they demonstrated what could be learned with just a small amount of observation, understanding and science.

What appealed most about Sherlock Holmes was that for all of his astonishing intellect and ability, he was also a drug addict (cocaine, and occasional morphine, administered intravenously), his apartment was quite disorderly with papers and mysterious items strewn about which nobody was ever allowed to touch.
All of this was a great concern to Dr Watson, his friend, colleague and the narrator of most Holmes stories.

So here I was in London, and able to go for a walk through a house designed to be similar to that which was described in the stories.  In reality 221B Baker St did not even exist when Arthur Conan Doyle wrote the original stories... and if you follow the reference links at the bottom to the Wikipedia article about it, there have been some fairly large debates about the address itself.

        

However, the museum was really quite fantastic... it is filled with various props from the stories, wax figurines of some of the more interesting cases, and the various rooms of the apartment kept in much the same way you would expect them to be.

All in all it felt rather respectful, and I thought it was well worth the price of admission.  Next door there is a small gift shop which sells various books and other merchandise (yes you can get a deerstalker hat, a magnifying glass and a pipe)

References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Conan_Doyle - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the author of Sherlock Holmes
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherlock_Holmes - Sherlock Holmes, in vastly more detail than you need
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/221B_Baker_Street - The address, and why people fight over it
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherlock_Holmes_Museum - The Sherlock Holmes Museum

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