Introduction to "The Baker Street Irregulars"

Sometimes I found myself writing a play for our junior pupils. One year I wrote a Sherlock Holmes play. Here it is.

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With school plays you have to write them for the available cast. (For that matter when choosing senior school plays and musicals you consider the resources available. My Henry V is now a professional rugby player.) In this case I knew that I had some child singers of a notably high standard. The thinking: Music hall songs --- Sherlock Holmes was easy; and the number of children in the cast made the Baker Street Irregulars obvious characters.

I always (with one exception) tried to give my plays a deeper theme than mere jolly fun. In this case I was anxious to confront the problem of poverty. The Irregulars are very poor indeed. The anarchist Kropotkin makes a brief appearance. Some of the music hall songs were chosen deliberately because they addressed the lives of the poor. The song that Daisy sings, “And her golden hair was hanging down her back” is I suppose rather explicit for a Primary 7 pupil – but education was my business. The centre of the play, as far as this theme is concerned, is the outburst of Homes against those who get rich by exploiting the poor. I had recently been studying Conrad’s “The Secret Agent” with a senior class.

Despite this deep theme the play is fun – even more so when you know some of the songs well enough to hum along with them, as I am sure you do. The plot worked out neatly, with an exciting climax and a little love story. It amused me to have some accurate history. The references to Briggs’ bowling feats are taken from Wisden. I also did my best to have the Holmes/Watson dialogues as authentic as I could make them, without parody. I strongly disapprove of "writing down" for children. You may or may not think I have succeeded.