Mary Sutherland, a working-class girl who possesses a generous income as a result of a bequest from a relative, comes to Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson for help after her fiancé, Hosmer Angel, disappears on their wedding day. Angel, Holmes learns, was a quiet and secretive man who always wore a pair of tinted glasses and would not give Sutherland his address, insisting that she leave letters at the local post office instead. He would only meet her when her disapproving stepfather, James Windibank, was out of the country on business.
Holmes easily deduces that Windibank and Angel are the same person. Windibank knew that he could only benefit from his stepdaughter's income while she remained unmarried, and so he hatched a plan to keep her single indefinitely. As "Hosmer Angel", he successfully sought her hand; he then engineered Angel's disappearance before the marriage could take place. As he had hoped, Sutherland remained loyal to Angel, saying she could never love another.
Holmes chooses not to divulge his findings to Sutherland, knowing she will not believe him anyway. He advises her to forget about Angel, though his words have little effect on her. As for Windibank, Holmes predicts that his wicked ways will eventually lead him to the gallows.
Publication history
"A Case of Identity" was first published in the UK in The Strand Magazine in September 1891, and in the United States in the US edition of the Strand in October 1891.[1] The story was published with seven illustrations by Sidney Paget in The Strand Magazine.[2] It was included in the short story collection The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes,[2] which was published in October 1892.[3]
Adaptations
Film and television
This story was the basis for the third Holmes adventure (released in 1921) in the silent Stoll film series starring Eille Norwood.[4]
In 2014, it is seen in "The Empty Hearse", from the BBC television series Sherlock, as one of the cases Sherlock works on with Molly Hooper assisting him. Mary Sutherland was portrayed by Elizabeth Coyle. Molly Hooper was portrayed by Louise Brealey.
In the fourth episode of the 2014 Japanese puppetry television series Sherlock Holmes, Mary Sutherland is a pupil of Beeton School. She is in love with the senior Hosmer Angel who suddenly disappears in a cave at the back of the school. Holmes, a pupil who lives in room 221B of Baker Dormitory, suspects that Angel and Windibank, one of the childhood friends of Sutherland, are the same person and he and Watson find out that there is no pupil called Hosmer Angel in the school. Holmes appreciates Watson for consoling the broken-hearted Sutherland. Watson tells Holmes, who criticises novels as in the original story, that he is wrong to do so because various things can be learned from novels including how to understand the female mind.[6]
Radio and audio dramas
Edith Meiser adapted the story as an episode of the radio series The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, which aired on 5 May 1932, starring Richard Gordon as Sherlock Holmes and Leigh Lovell as Dr. Watson.[7] Another episode adapted from the story aired on 21 April 1935 (with Louis Hector as Holmes and Lovell as Watson).[8]
Edith Meiser also adapted the story for the radio series The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes with Basil Rathbone as Holmes and Nigel Bruce as Watson. The episode aired on 30 November 1941.[9] Another adaptation of the story aired in the same series on 30 May 1948 (with John Stanley as Holmes and Alfred Shirley as Watson).[10]
In 2024, the podcast Sherlock&Co adapted the story in a two-episodes adventure called "A Case of Identity", starring Paul Waggot as Watson and Harry Attwell as Sherlock.
Other media
Colin Dexter, known for writing the Inspector Morse novels, wrote a short story based on this called "A Case of Mis-Identity", in which Holmes's brother Mycroft is involved in the case's deduction; in this story, Holmes's theory about the 'Hosmer Angel' character is the same, while Mycroft deduces that 'Hosmer Angel' is a fiction created by the mother and daughter to eliminate the step-father, only for Watson to reveal that 'Hosmer Angel' is actually a real person who was attacked and robbed on the way to his wedding, hospitalized, and eventually treated by Watson, who used his own detective skills to verify the man's identity.[15]
The story was adapted as the beginning of the third case in the 2016 Frogwares video game Sherlock Holmes: The Devil's Daughter. Watson is not present when Mary Sutherland arrives and Sherlock is accompanied by Orson Wilde, an American actor training to play him. The player can come up with different conclusions to the case and also make a choice concerning telling her the results of his deduction.
Keith R. A. Decandido's short story, "Identity: An Adventure of Shirley Holmes and Jack Watson" updates the story to modern-day Manhattan. Here, the explanation is changed from nearsightedness to prosopagnosia, or face blindness.
^Shinjiro Okazaki and Kenichi Fujita (ed.), "シャーロックホームズ冒険ファンブック Shārokku Hōmuzu Boken Fan Bukku", Tokyo: Shogakukan, 2014, pp.40–42, 78–79. (Guidebook to the show)
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