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Being Sherlock Holmes

Jan Stauber as Sherlock Holmes

Preparation for a visit

  • Students should be familiar with the character. Teachers can have students:
    • Read a Sherlock Holmes story for class
    • See a Sherlock Holmes play or video
  • Teachers can discuss the Victorian era, events in history around famous characters, or detectives

Visiting Schools in Costume

  • Inverness cape and deerstalker cap
  • Pipe and magnifying glass

Publicity and Photo Opportunities

  • Give interviews for student paper
  • Pose with students for photos
  • Appear with campaigns to encourage students to read
  • Meet with school or library officials for newsletter
  • Celebrate Holmes' birthday (Jan 6) or another event by appearing with a detective from the local police force

Ideas for Classroom Show and Tell

  • Items from your collection, especially toys (Don’t bring weapons!)
  • Original Strand magazines (100 years old by now)
  • Sherlock Holmes stories in other languages
  • Explain each item in your costume (e.g. the actor William Gillette chose a calabash pipe so it wouldn’t hide his face)

Things to Talk About

  • Dr. Arthur Conan Doyle and how he learned from Dr. Joseph Bell
  • How many Sherlock Holmes stories Conan Doyle wrote and the number of languages into which the Canon has been translated
  • Dr. John Watson and the relationship between Watson and Holmes.
  • The lack of modern tests or scientific instruments 100 years ago
  • Describe Sherlock Holmes’ "death" and his hiatus
  • Mention some of the plots of the stories — girls might enjoy Irene Adler
  • Go around the room and make Sherlockian deductions about some students

Some Beacon Impersonators

  • Jan Stauber (pictured above) of Verona, NJ was the first winner of the Beacon Award. She visited Middle School classes of 7th and 8th graders as Sherlock Holmes and appeared on posters for the school's "Read" campaign. Jan died in 2005, but her spirit lives on in the Jan Stauber Grant.
  • Joe Coppola is a Baker Street Irregular who teaches in the New York area. He has worked closely with the ACT teachers in the Fayetteville-Manlius School District to provide them with expertise about the Sherlock Holmes stories. He also uses Sherlockian quotes when teaching deductive reasoning as part of his course in "Troubleshooting Electronics."　
    • Coppola: Being Sherlock (well, almost) Download Article
    (PDF / 386 KB / 2 pages)
  • Dr. Bob Robinson of the Hansom Wheels of South Carolina appears as Sherlock Holmes to hand out copies of The Hound of the Baskervilles to 8th graders. Dr Robinson appears with a detective from the Augusta department of public safety and sets up a mock crime scene for the students. "I'm 150 years old, but I don't show it," says Dr. Robinson.

The professionals among us

  • Chuck Kovacic is a Sherlockian artist, performer, and collector in Los Angeles. He is active in the Curious Collectors of Baker Street (CCOBS) scion society and headed their campaign to provide Sherlock Holmes books to the Los Angeles Unified School District. Chuck also created 221B Baker Street/Los Angeles, a full-scale recreation of Holmes' sitting room.
    • Kovacic: Becoming Mr. Holmes Download Article
    (PDF / 437 KB / 3 pages)
  • John Sherwood, a writer, magician, and Sherlockian, has been a professional Holmes impersonator since 1987. As The Great Detective, John has given hundreds of presentations about logic, memory, history and crime at interactive mysteries, library fundraisers, museums, literacy groups, book clubs and Sherlockian societies across the United States and the United Kingdom. He is an active member of Watson's Tin Box and several other Sherlockian scion societies in the northeastern US.
    • Sherwood: Finding Your Inner Sherlock Download Article
    (PDF / 357 KB / 4 pages)