Baker Street Irregulars

The Baker Street Irregulars are fictional characters who appear in various Sherlock Holmes stories, as street boys who are employed by Holmes as intelligence agents. The name has subsequently been adopted by other organizations, most notably a prestigious and exclusive literary society founded in the United States by Christopher Morley in 1934.

This article is about the fictional characters. For the literary society, see The Baker Street Irregulars.
Baker Street Irregulars
Sherlock Holmes character
Created byArthur Conan Doyle
In-universe information
NationalityBritish

Background

The original Baker Street Irregulars are fictional characters featured in the Sherlock Holmes stories of Arthur Conan Doyle. The group of street urchins is led by an older boy called Wiggins, whom Holmes paid a shilling per day, with a guinea prize (worth one pound and one shilling) for a vital clue, to collect data for his investigations.

The group appears in the first Sherlock Holmes story, A Study In Scarlet (1887).[1] They also appear in the next novel, The Sign of the Four (1890), in which one of the chapters is titled "The Baker Street Irregulars".[2]

The Baker Street Irregulars ("my Baker Street boys") later appear in "The Adventure of the Crooked Man" (1893).[3]

Cultural references
  • Netflix announced in 2018 that they were producing The Irregulars in which Sherlock Holmes is portrayed as a drug addict who takes the credit for cases solved by a group of children.[4]
  • The Special Operations Executive (SOE), tasked by Winston Churchill to "set Europe ablaze" during World War II, had its headquarters at 64 Baker Street and was often called "the Baker Street Irregulars"[5] after Sherlock Holmes's fictional group.
  • Hazel Meade's troop of children serve as couriers and lookouts in the "Baker Street Irregulars" during the lunar revolution of Robert A. Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (1966).[6]
  • Terrance Dicks wrote The Baker Street Irregulars series of ten children's novels, starting in 1978.[7]
  • Two BBC television series have been made starring the Irregulars: The Baker Street Boys (1983)[8] and Sherlock Holmes and the Baker Street Irregulars (2007).[9]
  • The sci-fi series Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century features a trio of children who aid Holmes as the new Baker Street Irregulars, and are even led by a boy named Wiggins.[10]
  • The group is mentioned briefly in the Doctor Who episode "Hide" as the Eleventh Doctor discusses the involvement of Professor Palmer in the Special Operations Executive.[11]
  • The Baker Street Irregulars are mentioned in Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child's Agent Pendergast novel, White Fire. During the plot of the novel, Agent Pendergast teams up with a fictional member of the group to find a "lost" Sherlock Holmes story entitled "The Adventure of Aspern Hall".[12]
  • The modern-day series Sherlock re-imagines the Irregulars as a "Homeless Network" devised of the destitute of London, rather than specifically homeless children.
  • In the modern-day adaptation Elementary (set in New York), the "Irregulars" are an assortment of experienced adults in certain fields that Holmes calls on for insight when his own knowledge of a subject proves inadequate to the current case.[13]
  • The Baker Street Irregulars also appear in Anthony Horowitz's 2011 novel The House of Silk.[14]

References
  1. Doyle, Arthur Conan (1887). A Study in Scarlet, Chapter 6: Tobias Gregson Shows Us What He Can Do  – via Wikisource.
  2. Doyle, Arthur Conan (1890). The Sign of the Four, Chapter 8: The Baker Street Irregulars  – via Wikisource.
  3. Doyle, Arthur Conan (1893). The Crooked Man  – via Wikisource.
  4. "Netflix is planning a new Sherlock Holmes series called The Irregulars". Radio Times. Retrieved 12 November 2019.
  5. Sweet-Escott, Bickham, Baker Street Irregular, London, Methuen, 1965.
  6. Cowan, M.E. "The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress". A Heinlein Concordance. Retrieved 3 December 2019.
  7. Ritman, Alex (2 September 2019). "Terrance Dicks, 'Doctor Who' Writer, Dies at 84". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved 3 December 2019.
  8. Barnes, Alan (2011). Sherlock Holmes on Screen. Titan Books. p. 34. ISBN 9780857687760.
  9. Barnes, Alan (2011). Sherlock Holmes on Screen. Titan Books. pp. 200–201. ISBN 9780857687760.
  10. Barnes, Alan (2011). Sherlock Holmes on Screen. Titan Books. p. 226. ISBN 9780857687760.
  11. Matthewman, Scott. "Ten Things About Who: Hide". Retrieved 7 May 2013.
  12. Preston, Douglas; Child, Lincoln. "Read the opening chapters of WHITE FIRE". Preston & Child. Retrieved 3 December 2019.
  13. McNutt, Myles (13 November 2014). "Elementary: "Just A Regular Irregular"". The A.V. Club. Retrieved 3 December 2019.
  14. Zipp, Yvonne (15 December 2011). "5 Best Mysteries of the Holiday Season". The Christian Science Monitor. Retrieved 11 December 2019.
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