#stoc

Holmes, dropping in unannounced: hey do u want to go to another city to investigate some random shit. Nah i don't really need help just thought you'd want to hang out. We're leaving right now btw

(with my condolences to sidney paget)

"Pycroft shook his clenched hands in the air." The Adventure of the Stockbroker's clerk. Published in The Strand Magazine. Sidney Paget, 1893

In Spanish I couldn't notice Pycroft's Cockney accent because ACD wrote his accent through the use of some expressions instead of any pronunciation marks. For example "I used to have a billet at Coxon & Woodhouse's" was translated as "Estaba empleado en Coxon & Woodhouse" that can be read as "I was employed at Coxon & Woodhouse's", and sadly those little details are missing in the translation.

Just for fun: if I translate this using informal speach I would translate as "Curraba en Coxon & Woodhouse" (Spaniard Spanish), "Tenía una pega en Coxon & Woodhouse" (Chilean Spanish) or "Tenía un laburo en Coxon & Woodhouse" (Argentinian Spanish).

I recently bought the Leslie Klinger annotated versions, but am trying to avoid looking at them as they have spoilers for the whole canon and also to avoid deliberate copying.

So, here we go:

This is the fourth short story from Memoirs and the 16th overall.

St Vitus's dance is a form of chorea, either Sydenham's chorea or Huntington disease. Klinger thinks it's the latter as is the former is more common in children. In any event, random jerky movements is not good for a doctor.

The British Medical Journal has been going since 1840 and is now called The BMJ. It has an online archive if you're interested.

London Euston to Birmingham New Street took around two hours and ten minutes in 1888. Today you can do the trip in an electric, tilting train in around 80 minutes. I will make no comment about HS2. Both stations are very different from their Victorian appearance due to controversial 1960s rebuild jobs.

Lombard Street was historically home to bank head offices; most of these have moved out, sometimes to their own tower blocks.

E. C. refers to the Eastern Central postcode area, which covers nearly all the City of London, plus some bits of surrounding boroughs.

Venezuela has a historical habit of defaulting on its loans. Leslie Katz in a 2020 article (https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2473500 - spoilers for future stories) thinks this story is 1893 because of the RL default in 1892.

We get a bit of casual antisemitism here - a guy is described as having a slightly Jewish nose.

The City of London had and still has its own separate police service, along with its own unique local government, Lord Mayor etc. Its low permanent population led to Booth leaving it off his poverty maps.