#engr

"He settled our new acquaintance on the sofa." The Adventure of the Engineer's Thumb. Published in The Strand Magazine. Sidney Paget, 1892

This is our penultimate story from Adventures, with just "The Beryl Coronet" to go.

Holmes doesn't really do much here. He makes one deduction and by the time he gets to the scene, the criminals have fled and don't even get in a shipwreck.

It wouldn't be something Watson would deal with, but injuries and deaths among railway workers were very common at this time; plenty of potential for it in a busy station like Paddington. Public pressure eventually forced action on safety, but not until 1913.

"3d" was a common abbreviation for 3rd.

"Agony column" at the time referred to a section of a paper containing personal advertisements, such as requests for help in finding a missing person. It only later became something where people sort relationship advice.

While there is an Eyford in Gloucestershire, there is none in the former county of Berkshire, which ceased to exist as an adminstrative body in 1998, being replaced by six unitary authorities. Twyford has been suggested as the real location but does not match the later description.

Reading is a large town about 40 miles from London; it can today be reached by train from Paddington in under half an hour, or by a slower ride on the Elizabeth Line. It contains a Victorian replica of the Bayeux Tapestry in the local museum.

Among the uses of fuller's earth was in the film industry to simulate dust and grime, especially in explosions as it's considered safer to cover the actors with. However, concerns about toxicity have led to artificial alternatives like FX Dirt entering the market.

Reading had two stations in remarkably close proximity to each other. The Great Western Railway one linked to Paddington and a terminus built by the South Eastern Railway to the southeast, intended for through services to the Channel ports and services to London Waterloo, which were electrified under Southern Railway ownership on 1 January 1939. Reading Southern as it became known in 1949 was closed to passengers in 1965 with all services diverted into the now-Reading General, which just became Reading in 1974. The old Southern station was demolished, becomng the car park and part of Reading's 1989-built concourse sits on the old western end of it.

India-rubber is another name for latex i.e. the stuff that comes from trees. Synthetic rubber was not created until 1909 and mass production did not begin until the Second World War, when the Japanese seizing the key rubber-producing areas made it a strategic necessity.

Coin counterfeiting continues to this day - the change in Britain to a bi-metallic one pound in 2017 was because over 3% of them in circulation were fake.

@froglatte

The Adventure of the Engineer’s Thumb