The Notorious Canary-Trainers
A Scion of the Baker Street Irregulars
for friends and fans of Sherlock Holmes
-- celebrating our 40th year!

Here are the results of some more relevant research related to our name.

The Oxford edition of the Sherlock Holmes accounts suggests the reference to a "notorious canary-trainer" in Black Peter "may have been inspired by an article in the Strand on "A Phonograph School for Parrots" (Aug. 1903) about a parrot-trainer in Philadelphia who used phonographs to train birds to talk."

"Owen Dudley Edwards (The Quest for Sherlock Holmes, 1983) suggests that the name could have derived from Patrick Wilson (the pock-marked schoolmaster of the Newington Academy in Edinburgh, where ACD (Arthur Conan Doyle) was a pupil in 1867-8) taken in conjunction with the Christian name of Black Peter's killer."

The explanation some members prefer is that it's someone who teaches operatic singers how to sing.

If you find yourself in East Sussex, you may want to stop by the Brambletye Hotel in Forest Row, just southeast of London, and have a drink in its Black Peter's Bar.

The hotel is mentioned in "The Adventure of Black Peter," when Inspector Stanley Hopkins remarks: "...Well, Mr. Holmes, I am very much obliged to you and to your friend for coming down to help me. As it turns out your presence was unnecessary, and I would have brought the case to this successful issue without you; but none the less I am very grateful. Rooms have been reserved for you at the Brambletye Hotel, so we can all walk down to the village together."

For more on the Brambletye, click here.

(You'll also find two Sherlocks coffee shops nearby, in East Grimstead (on the road between London and Forest Row) and about 13 miles away in Crowborough, based on word we received in September 2007.)

MEETING OTHER SHERLOCKIANS. Members of the Notorious Canary-Trainers often attend national conferences where Sherlockians from around the world gather to explore more of the world of Sherlock Holmes.

Shown in the photo attending a 1995 gathering in Minneapolis were (left to right) Thom Boykoff, Tom Drucker, and Susan Flaherty, all of the Notorious Canary-Trainers. The event honored John Bennett Shaw, a member of the Baker Street Irregulars who died in late 1994 after having built, then donated to the University of Minnesota Library, the largest private collection of Sherlockiana in the world.