Women in the Sherlock Holmes canon

‘The Adventure of the Copper Beeches' Re-Imagined

A young lady named Violet Hunter visits Baker Street seeking the advice of Sherlock Holmes on whether to accept a job as governess which commands a generous salary, but with some peculiar conditions. Two weeks after ultimately accepting the position, Miss Hunter calls Holmes to The Copper Beeches, an estate in Hampshire, to look into the singular, and at times terrifying, behaviour of her employers.

“Capital.”

Sherlock Holmes's female clients

Although most of the primary characters in the original Sherlock Holmes stories are men, there are a number of female clients and secondary individuals throughout the canon, such as the famed housekeeper of 221B Baker Street, Mrs Hudson, and Dr Watson’s wife, the former Miss Mary Morstan. In fact, in the twelve adventures that comprise the Sherlock Holmes Re-Imagined book series a woman is central to the plot in no less than half of them, including Miss Irene Adler in ‘A Scandal in Bohemia’ and Miss Helen Stoner in ‘The Adventure of the Speckled Band’. The action in ‘The Adventure of the Copper Beeches’ also revolves around a young woman, Miss Violet Hunter (one of four women named Violet featuring in cases investigated by Holmes and Watson), who greatly impresses the Great Detective with her intelligence and composure. 

“You villain! said he. ‘Where’s your daughter.”

A central plot point in ‘The Adventure of the Copper Beeches’ involves an electric blue dress which Violet Hunter is requested by her employer to wear while sitting in front of a window. Therefore, when rendering the illustrations for this story into LEGO®, a dress fitting this description was required for a couple of the models. On this occasion it was possible to find a colour to closely match the description in the story text; however, this is not always the case as LEGO® has not produced very many minifigures with dress or skirt pattered slope pieces with matching torsos. Moreover, as with male torso designs (see earlier post: ‘The varied clients of Sherlock Holmes’), none of the current dress designs are particularly Late Victorian in style. The two dresses appearing in the current story are from a medieval castle playset (red queen’s dress in the first photo) and a playset from The LEGO Movie, namely a barmaid from the American Old West (blue dress in the second photo).

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All 12 books in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes Re-Imagined book series, as well as a complete collector’s edition incorporating all of the stories, are available for purchase on Amazon UK, the Book Depository (with free worldwide delivery), and the MX Publishing website.

LEGO® is a trademark of the LEGO Group of Companies. The LEGO Group has not been involved in nor has it in any other way licensed or authorized the publication of this book series.