🧢 The Baker Street Irregulars
A dozen street urchins under Wiggins, paid a shilling a day plus expenses. They can go everywhere, see everything, and overhear everyone — Holmes's all-terrain intelligence service, and the canon's proof he trusts talent over class.
“There's more work to be got out of one of those little beggars than out of a dozen of the force.”
Holmes's all-terrain intelligence service
The Baker Street Irregulars are a dozen ragged street Arabs under a lieutenant named Wiggins, hired by Holmes to be his eyes across a city that never notices them. A gentleman detective is conspicuous; a barefoot urchin is invisible, and can follow a cab, watch a wharf, or canvass a riverside for a launch where the whole official force would fail.
Talent over class
Holmes drills them like a small army — they report to him alone, and he pays a shilling a day with a guinea prize for the one who finds the quarry. In an age rigid about rank, the canon's greatest mind trusts his legwork to slum children and finds them more use than Scotland Yard. The name has since been borrowed by the world's oldest Sherlockian society.
Who it touches
Where it appears
A Study in Scarlet
1887
Watson meets Holmes, and a corpse in an empty Brixton house — RACHE scrawled in blood — opens the first case: a revenge trail reaching back to Utah.
The Sign of the Four
1890
Mary Morstan's yearly pearls lead to a stolen Agra treasure, a one-legged man, and Toby the bloodhound racing across London by scent.