Does this building look familiar?
It should -- at least to fans of BBC's Sherlock. This is St. Bart's Hospital in London, where Sherlock Holmes apparently hurled himself off the roof in the sixth episode of the series. Suspense and debate over how he faked his suicide continues unabated months after the initial broadcast.
My wife and friends and I saw St. Bart's in October as part of Robin Rowles excellent "Red-Headed League" walking tour. Although added onto and rebuilt many times, St. Bartholomew's Hospital occupies the same site in the northwest part of the City where it was founded in 1123.
All Holmes devotees will remember the chemical laboratory of St. Bart's as the location where young Stamford introduced Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson on New Year's Day, 1881. In A Study in Scarlet, the former responded at first with "How are you?" And then, without waiting for an answer, he added the words that most of us incorrectly remember as his being first, "You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive."
A bronze plaque at the hospital museum commemorates this meeting, courtesy of the Amateur Mendicant Society of Detroit. It has been there since 1954.
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