A NOTE FROM ASHLEY MAYO

It has long been my belief that the Journal of the Sherlock Holmes Society of London is one of the great sources for Sherlockian scholarship; however, there are two major obstacles to overcome before we, as enthusiasts, can make use of this fountain of knowledge. Firstly, one needs a complete set of the Journals and, secondly, to know where to find the information – contributors have this unfortunate habit of not referring to the story in the title of their articles. The other issue when I was thinking of a solution to these challenges was that I was in full time employment and also acting as Honorary Treasurer of the Society at the same time, so time was limited. Retirement and Covid provided an answer to this!

After almost two years of reading and copying I finally had all of the articles and letters, totally almost 1200, in the folders and appendices to the stories. The next step was to re-read all of the articles and letters and make notes that could be used as footnotes in the stories. Throughout, I have followed a personal preference in that all footnotes appear at the bottom of the page to which they relate. I also prepared a number of “general” footnotes which related to other folders within the Scrapbook. The next six months were used to put all these in place to provide the final versions.

The Scrapbook concludes with the Winter 2021 edition of the Journal.

I have called this collection a “Scrapbook” and that is what it is. It is a set of personal choices and any omissions are down to me. Given the wide range of topics and the number of articles and letters involved I hope I have not made any glaring errors. However, I hope that it will provide the general reader and the scholar with all of the relevant information that will allow them to gain a wider understanding of each story.

Also included is a file “Canon Pictures” which holds all of the pictures I have used from the Journal in the “Scrapbook”.

Please enjoy the Scrapbook 

Access the scrapbook