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IN CONTEXT

TYPE

Short story

FIRST PUBLICATION

UK: September 1891

US: September/October 1891

COLLECTION

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, 1892

CHARACTERS

Mary Sutherland Young woman seeking her missing fiancé.

James Windibank Mary’s young stepfather, a wine merchant.

Mrs. Windibank Mary’s mother, who is 15 years older than her second husband.

Hosmer Angel Mary’s missing fiancé.

While Holmes and Watson sit by the fire in 221B Baker Street, Holmes remarks, “Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent.” The case that unfolds proves to bear this out. Rising to peer out of the window, Holmes observes a young woman with a “preposterous hat” and a “vacuous face” looking up nervously from the street below. She is soon being shown in by the bellboy, who announces her as Miss Mary Sutherland.

She is anxious to find her fiancé, Hosmer Angel, who disappeared on the morning of their wedding. Her story throws up a number of clues for the alert reader. Miss Sutherland lives with her mother and young stepfather, James Windibank. She has a small annuity of £100 left to her by an uncle, which she gives to her parents, and has her own income, since she works as a typist. Her meetings with Angel have occurred only when Windibank was away, during which Angel spoke in a whisper, wore tinted glasses, and had a bushy mustache and sideburns. He has sent her only typed letters (even typing his “signature”), and given only a post office address.

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The investigation ensues

Holmes promises to investigate, but urges her to forget Angel. She claims this is impossible. He points out that Miss Sutherland is clearly short-sighted, but her real myopia signals a more profound blindness: her lack of suspicion has made her a victim of exploitation.

Angel’s letters are a further opportunity for Holmes to show his acute powers of observation, as he identifies unique features in the way certain characters look, which make them easily identifiable. He then invites Windibank to Baker Street and, as expected, sees from his acceptance letter that it was typed on the same machine.

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Typewriters, which were common by 1891, offered standardized text. Yet the quirks specific to each machine enable Holmes to trace Windibank’s letters.

Holmes corners his man

Windibank is confronted with the truth. He married Miss Sutherland’s mother for her money, and has enjoyed Mary’s annuity too. Fearing he would lose this annual income were Mary to marry, Windibank disguised himself as a suitor, then abandoned her in the hope that she would be paralyzed by loss and indecision for years to come, leaving him in control of her funds.

Unrepentant, Windibank sneers that the law cannot touch him. Holmes, raging that “there was never a man deserved punishment more,” rushes at the “cold-blooded scoundrel” with a horsewhip, only for Windibank to flee. Laughing despite his anger, Holmes predicts that he will “rise from crime to crime” and end up on the gallows.

Undoubtedly, this tale is a clever demonstration of Holmes’s opening assertion—closely observed truth is indeed stranger than highly wrought fiction. But Holmes’s refusal to reveal the truth to Mary, arguing that it would be dangerous to take away her delusions, is a troubling loose end. It effectively places her in the same position she was in at the outset—filled with longing for her so-called suitor—and she has gained nothing by seeking help. She is portrayed as a weak, comical figure, yet emerges from the story as a stoical and faithful victim whose innocence and naiveté are cruelly exploited by the people closest to her. Most disturbingly of all, her own mother has colluded in the deceit—a poignant betrayal.

"The larger crimes are apt to be the simpler, for the bigger the crime, the more obvious, as a rule, is the motive."

Sherlock Holmes

WOMEN AND PROPERTY

For much of the 19th century, a woman who married ceased to be a legal entity in her own right, and as such was unable to formally own property—all her possessions would belong to her husband. All this changed with the three Married Women’s Property Acts of 1870, 1882, and 1893, which gave married women rights to their own earnings and property, and to property, such as an inheritance, acquired during the marriage. These reforms made it harder for greedy and unscrupulous husbands, like Windibank, to use marriage as a way of acquiring property. In “A Case of Identity,” Windibank devised a convoluted and malicious plan to acquire the fortune of both his wife and stepdaughter. He first managed to convince his wife to sell her first husband’s business, apparently at a loss. As a single woman, Mary had the right to bestow her income where she chose, but Windibank was able to prey on her innocence and generosity to appropriate it for himself.

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