Thursday, November 20, 2014

Suffragettes Marching Near Baker Street!

Sherlock Holmes’s made a good attempt at going into retirement in Sussex Downs around 1905. He traded his lodgings at 221B Baker Street for a traditional thatched-roof stone cottage, and took up bee keeping. Indeed, he wrote a book on apiculture entitled: A Practical Handbook of Bee Culture with Some Observations Upon Segregation of the Queen. Most appropriate, as Holmes was an expert at keeping himself personally “segregated” from women – as it were. However, in his trips to the city, he could not help but confront some formidable ladies in the streets, as the suffrage movement was in full swing by 1905.

While the women’s suffrage movement in the United Kingdom began about 1872, with the formation of the National Society for Women’s Suffrage, it didn’t make the daily headlines until the early 1900’s when the movement became more militant and violent.

WWI caused a temporary halt to suffrage activity and, in 1918, the Representation of the Peoples Act granted women limited voting rights. However, it wasn’t until 1928 when all women in Britain gained full voting rights.
One of the key figures in the suffrage movement was Emmeline Pankhurst, who is one of several infamous historical characters that can be found in the newest collection of Sherlock Holmes adventures – Sherlock Holmes-The Golden Years by Kim Krisco.

In the Curse of the Black Feather, Holmes and Watson meet Emmeline Pankhurst at a party where Watson has the dubious honour of escorting her to dinner.  Holmes, however, had a much more fascinating dinner partner that evening – Irene Adler, “the woman” who mysteriously reappears his life and haunts him in all five of the stories in this remarkable 345-page collection.

In Sherlock Holmes-The Golden Years the reader gets all the mystery and magic of Holmes at his best, interesting real-life historical characters, and a rich and highly accurate historical background, all of which adds great depth to the stories.

You can order Sherlock Holmes-The Golden Years, as a book or E-book,  at:


 


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