The Holmes Villains Ranked
When considering the magnitude of Holmes villains, I feel that it would be inappropriate to make judgments based solely on the miscreants’ behavior and psychology. The reason for this is that, since the Holmes stories were published, some villains have been referenced and adapted far more often than others, with the result that their status in society has grown disproportionately to their crimes. That said, it also feels inappropriate to judge the villains based upon my perception of their popular renown. What, then, is the correct blend of popularity and debasement to scale my rankings upon? I believe that the solution must more heavily weigh a character’s deeds and mind, while still taking into account the characters’ fame. Let us compare, for example, Vincent Spaulding and Killer Evans, two villains who are being selected because the circumstances of their crimes are quite similar.
Both Spaulding and Killer Evans seek to gain something by deceiving the owner of an establishment with an elaborate scheme. In Spaulding’s case, he invents The Red-Headed League as a ruse to get to the bank; in Killer Evans’ case, he creates the inheritance scheme of the three Garridebs to retrieve Prescott’s counterfeiting equipment. Both are caught red-handed. One’s story, The Red-Headed League, is widely considered better than the other’s, and certainly the collections that the characters come from (The Adventures for Spaulding and The Case-Book for Killer Evans) are widely thought to be disparate in quality. The Adventures is lauded; The Case-Book is uneven. So thanks to the earlier publication of The Red-Headed League, to the superior quality of The Red-headed League, and to higher quality of The Adventures as compared to The Case-Book, Spaulding has become the more famous of the two villains. Yet it is Killer Evans who shoots Watson, while Spaulding does no harm to his captors. Which of these deserves to be the villain with the higher order of magnitude? Certainly there are arguments for Spaulding, namely his fame and adaptability, but—though Killer Evans is popularly overlooked—in this ranking, he might place more highly as a worse villain than Spaulding, because Evans shot Watson. That said, although Spaulding has never hurt anyone so far as the readers know, he is so renowned, and his story is so widely read, that he cannot fall so far down the rankings list as Mr. John Browner, whom we never meet, who acts in jealous rage (rather than with the calculating concern of Vincent Spaulding), and who derives from a more or less mediocre story. So Spaulding will rank higher than Browner, despite the fact that Mr. John Browner’s actions are hideous, nearly beyond the pale. All this is to exemplify how, in ranking the villains, I shall weigh the monstrosity of a villain’s action, but I shall not ignore the quality of the story that the character inhabits nor the renown that the character has won since the time of the story’s publication.
Now, in weighing the actions, I will give greater consideration to characters who are Machiavellian and artful, rather than those who are vulgar and artless. I feel also more predisposed to rank more highly those villains whose work we actually see being done. If the character’s misdeeds are done solely off the page, the characters’ ‘villainousness’ cannot increase as greatly in my mind as compared to the villainy of those characters whose work we see played out before us. And, I intend to consider the villains’ victims. The more vulnerable the victim, the worse the villain, e.g.: children will be considered more vulnerable than a bank, and so villains who put children at risk shall be considered worse.
Finally, this ranking is not meant to have the rigor of science. My own ranking of villains may differ greatly from any other reader’s (although I have never seen another ranking of Holmes villains, and I believe that mine is the first). My rankings have my own preferences and biases built into them, which I believe is perfectly acceptable because we are talking of literature, a form of art, and there is no empirical way to rank Holmes villains. That said, I will try to remain true to what I feel is the spirit of the task, and I shall do my best to avoid (for instance) obvious blunders like ranking Isadora Klein ahead of Professor Moriarty.
That said, off we go.
Tier Seven: The Lambs
Not all Holmes stories have a villain, nor do they all need one. In these stories, the darkness of crime fades away as investigative illumination shines upon them, and we see that, where we might expect a criminal, none exists.
73. Animals in The Speckled Band, The Veiled Lodger, The Lion’s Mane, & Silver Blaze
In the Holmes canon, those animals that kill people shall not be held accountable by this reader for their actions, because they are animals. Animals have no human code of ethics. I consider these animals, in each case, to be guiltless victims of extenuating circumstance rather than malevolent perpetrators.
72. Dr. Leslie Armstrong, The Adventure of the Missing Three-Quarter
Shadows lie over Dr. Leslie Armstrong till truth’s lambency shows us he’s an ally of the missing three-quarter. Some argument may here be made that the “noble miser” Lord Mount-James is a villain, but, to this reader, Mount-James seems just to be a pitiful rich man.
71. Colonel Emsworth, The Blanched Soldier
Suspicion is cast on Colonel Emsworth in regards to the disappearance of his son, Godfrey, but Holmes shows us that the colonel is merely harboring his son. Once Godfrey is found in his safe haven, readers learn that nothing serious is amiss.
70. Henry Wood, The Crooked Man
As Henry Wood says, providence killed the duplicitous colonel who stole fair Nancy’s hand. One look at Wood, and Colonel Barclay’s guilty conscience brought him up, cold and stiff, in his tracks, and (one may imagine) that it was with a heinous and strangled cry upon his lips, and with his hand grasping at his own heart or head, that he went down like a stout wooden plank, never again to rise. Such a fate may be the harvest when one sows one’s conscience with such contemptible acts.
69. Professor Presbury, The Creeping Man
Professor Presbury falls into much the same preserve as the aforementioned animals, for he is not entirely human when he acts as he does. After partaking of a strange serum, the professor is partially transformed into a langur-like creature, and he goes crawling about on the lawn, out of his senses. The professor is a victim of his own experimentation.
68. Miss Hatty Doran, The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor
As Holmes says with regard to Miss Hatty Doran, “I fail to see that anyone is to blame.” Here we have a lack of communication which leads to mystery. And Lord St. Simon, who thought he was to be married, finds his fiancée unexpectedly married to someone else. While one cannot blame St. Simon for feeling chafed, there is no true villain to this story, and we ought not think too unkindly of the jilted nobleman for not sharing a meal with Hatty and her new husband.
67. Neville St. Clair, aka Hugh Boone, The Man with the Twisted Lip
Hugh Boone, in a sense, has indeed done away with Neville St. Clair, but a bath is all that is needed to resurrect the genteel Englishman. Donning a disguise, Neville St. Clair vanishes daily and emerges as Hugh Boone, but, as the inspector says, he can’t be charged with a crime for the act. Here we have, as Holmes says, the commission of “a very grave error” and indeed Holmes is right—Neville should have trusted his wife with his secret.
66. Effie, The Adventure of the Yellow Face
Effie (who calls her husband “Jack” though his name is Grant) is the closest approximation to a villain that we have in this story. Certainly Effie behaves badly. She leaves her daughter in the United States in care of another woman while she travels to England; she masks her daughter; she lies to her husband. She keeps a locket of her ex-husband around her neck while she’s married to Grant/Jack Munro. However, Effie is not a criminal in the eyes of the law, and no Western court would so much as bring her to trial.
Tier Six: Culpable Yet Sympathetic
In this tier we have a number of people who have indeed committed a crime, but, for one reason or another, they deserve the readers’ support—or at least some mercy.
65. Gilchrist, The Three Students
Gilchrist is guilty of cheating on an exam, but he is voluntarily repentant. In fact he has already elected, in view of his lapse, to immediately exile himself to Rhodesia. And while I am not a fan of cheaters, Gilchrist’s sentence upon himself seems to me to be unnecessarily harsh: a case of more punishment than crime.
64. Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson, Perpetual Recidivists
Throughout the canon, when acting in clients’ interests, Sherlock and Watson see fit to bend the law when needing to meet their own ethical code. I find such action perfectly acceptable, for I find that the law cannot and should not be considered a moral code. Besides that, laws are made by people, who are fallible, and thus there is truth to the idea that there are “good laws” and “bad laws.” It is also necessary, in the interest of succoring others, to break the law from time to time, when the spirit of doing so is just and proper. And, since Holmes’ profession puts him in equivocal positions more often than most people’s do, he breaks the law more frequently than others. For instance, he and Watson break into Milverton’s house; they set Captain Croker free; they, quite technically, are on very tenuous legal ground when they act at the Copper Beeches. On each occasion that Holmes and Watson break the law, I find myself sympathetic to their cause, and, in fact, find myself judging them more harshly at times when they don’t act energetically enough, such as when Holmes sends John Openshaw away after hearing his story of the five orange pips, and when Holmes fails to better protect Miss Sutherland from her wicked stepfather, Mr. Windibank, aka Hosmer Angel.
63. Anna, The Golden Pince-Nez
When they were still youthful Russian revolutionaries, Anna and others in the Order were betrayed by Anna’s husband. One victim of that betrayal, a pacificist named Alexis, was sentenced to hard labor in a Siberian mine, and Anna’s husband, Sergius, will not lift a finger to save him. Anna decides to help Alexis. In the course of undertaking her errand of mercy, Anna breaks into the professor’s house, is caught, reacts in fear, and accidentally delivers a blow which kills an otherwise uninvolved secretary. That such wretchedness is a part of humanity lends a poignant pathos to both our collective tragedy and our dark comedy.
62. Lady Hilda Trelawny Hope, The Second Stain
A victim of blackmail, Lady Hilda compounds the painfulness of her position by stealing a letter that the spy Eduardo Lucas has asked her to take. In so doing, she sets off a minor national crisis. Lady Hilda knows better than to steal her husband’s documents, but she was leveraged into doing so, and rather than confiding in her husband, she made the wrong choice.
61. Irene Adler, A Scandal in Bohemia
Indeed, Irene does threaten von Ormstein, Grand Duke and hereditary King of Bohemia, and, in so doing, her threat is tantamount to blackmail. However, once Irene finds another man, she withdraws her threats, and she retains the photograph only as a means of safeguarding herself against the king, whom she accuses of “cruelly” wronging her. Matters as they stand, I find it difficult to censure this clever woman too greatly.
60. Sir Robert Norberton, Shoscombe Old Place
When Sir Robert Norberton’s sister dies, he realizes that, thanks to the family’s financial dynamics, his creditors may seize the opportunity to swoop in and ruin him. In an argument against usury, Norberton takes the low road, hides his sister’s death, and pretends she’s still alive. As Holmes says, Sir Robert’s conduct is inexcusable. But while inexcusable, it is understandable, and we cannot but shake our heads in displeasure at Sir Robert’s actions while hoping that, after the lucky break he’s given, he improves his life choices.
59. Milverton’s Murderer, Charles Augustus Milverton
After Milverton ruins a mysterious noblewoman’s life, she returns to exact her revenge upon him. “Take that, you hound!” she exclaims. “And that! And that!” With those words, she blasts the marble heart of this fiend to bits and ensures the irreversible exchange of his soft astrakhan for that of a wooden overcoat.
58. Dr. Leon Sterndale, The Devil’s Foot
Dr. Sterndale revenges himself upon Mortimer Tregennis, a man who killed his own sister to inherit family valuables. Dr. Sterndale, in the vein of other Holmesian “villains” before him, acts extrajudicially in a laudable way. Holmes acknowledges that he knows that Dr. Sterndale is Tregennis’ murderer, and he asks what Sterndale’s plans are. Sterndale answers that he hopes to bury himself in his work in central Africa, and Holmes gives him leave to go.
57. Captain Croker, Abbey Grange
It was a fair fight, says Captain Croker, and Sir Eustace hit first. Then Croker smashed Sir Eustace’s head in. Sir Eustace was a blackguard who got what he deserved and, in my opinion, ought to be held no more liable for Sir Eustace’s death than Holmes should be for Dr. Grimesby Roylott’s.
56. Leonardo, The Veiled Lodger
Leonardo cudgels Ronder, the circus master, with a spiked club, and he kills him. Like Captain Croker in Abbey Grange, Leonardo is guilty of helping to kill a domestic abuser whose wife he has designs upon. Unlike Captain Croker, Leonardo was actually having an affair with the victim’s wife. Just like when Croker put Sir Eustace down, Leonardo made the world a better place when he beat Ronder’s brains out. Ronder was a torturer and an animal abuser, and it is my considered opinion that there are quite enough problems in this crazy world even without such people, so we can save our mourning for the faithfully departed who were good.
55. Gennaro Lucca, The Red Circle
Gennaro has killed Black Gorgiano, and the American police believe that, for Gennaro’s services, Gennaro ought to receive “a pretty general vote of thanks.” Indeed, he has saved the American taxpayer the cost of extraditing and trying Gorgiano, and he’s upheld his own family’s honor.
54. Brunton, The Musgrave Ritual
Indeed, Brunton has wronged Rachel, the “excitable” Welsh girl, and he’s not been forthcoming with his master, Reginald Musgrave. But Brunton is a victim here of more punishment than crime. The passionate woman whose heart this “Don Juan” has broken shuts him up, either accidentally or otherwise we do not know, beneath the heavy stone flooring of the cellar. There, he dies what may only be described as an agonizing death. Brunton must have experienced awful emotions. First, of fury that his partner has betrayed him and stolen the crown that he had discovered. Second, of paralyzing fear of the horror of his situation, and of the slow death that awaited him. This reader cannot help but feel a little sympathy for the lost Lothario, for his circumstances seemed to give him an ending far worse than what he deserved.
Tier Five: The Invisibles
In this tier we have criminals whose crimes are less justifiable than the actions undertaken by the people in the tier above. But because the characters in this tier never directly appear in their story, their ranking as a villain is correspondingly low.
53. Hugo Oberstein, The Bruce-Partington Plans
Oberstein is a foreign agent who kills Cadogen West to obtain the Bruce-Partington plans. In the great game—where a cold war is ever-present; where spies are trained to lie, steal, and (if necessary) kill to complete their objectives; where international intrigue and aristocratic diplomacy are a thin veneer to hide the task of vying for world domination—Oberstein is hardly to be faulted, for he’s playing the game by its rules. That the Navy’s junior clerk, Cadogen West, loses his life to the affair is no more than a gentle setback for the British, for West was a player in our world’s highest-stakes game, one whose ultimate goals are (and always have been) national prosperity and global hegemony.
52. Eduardo Lucas, The Second Stain
Like Oberstein, Lucas is a spy who’s playing the game for his own country. He is killed for his efforts, and so, if his work is properly recognized, he will quietly receive commendation from his country’s intelligence agency. Though a man who lived a double life, Lucas did not get to die but once, so readers are indebted to him for that death, one which spawned a wonderful mystery.
51. Mademoiselle Henri Fournaye, The Second Stain
Mme. Fournaye is, according to the newspapers, insane, and it is she who murders Eduardo Lucas, the spy who has blackmailed Lady Hilda Trelawny Hope. Suspecting Lucas of swanning about with other women, Fournaye is driven into a rage, and she embellishes the promiscuous man’s heart with the ornament of a sharp knife. Thus decorated, Lucas falls. His blood stains the carpet and soaks the floor, thereby setting the stage for the crafty mystery to come.
50. John Straker, Silver Blaze
Born loser John Straker is dead by the time that the story opens, but that doesn’t exonerate him from his crimes. A muck-grubber financially and romantically, both as a profligate spender and as an adulterer, Straker doubles down on bad decision-making by attempting to hamstring a racehorse. Silver Blaze boots the trainer in the head, and, if Straker hadn’t died, one would have hoped the horse’s kick would have knocked some sense into his addled skull. However, the horse cured the man of his worldly woes, and Straker was left at the center of a problem that he created and, as usual for him, was busted by.
49. Colonel Barclay, Crooked Man
Like Straker, Barclay’s already dead at the start of the story. However, unlike Straker, Barclay’s crimes are not limited to hurting an animal. He’s sent off his rival, Henry Wood, to die, and, in so doing, he’s betrayed his country. Karma doesn’t get him till the very end, and by then, it can be argued that Colonel Barclay has gotten away with his crime. Perhaps his soul rotted, but while Wood was being tortured by the enemy, Barclay was bouncing off the boxsprings with Miss Nancy Devoy. Afterwards, Wood lived in poverty, and he was forced to beg for his subsistence while Barclay lived the life of an upper-middle class Englishman—tea and cake and huffing and puffing and Aldershot, wot. One can make an argument that Barclay never did get his just desserts, and that he got away with the crime for all his life. That he was struck down suddenly by “thundering apoplexy” (as Robert Louis Stevenson once called it) and/or by his conscience was a fate better by far than the colonel deserved.
48. Sir Eustace Brackenstall, Abbey Grange
Like Straker and Barclay and the Norwegian Blue, we meet Sir Brackenstall after he has ceased to be. “Bereft of life, he rests in peace.” “He’s shuffled off his mortal coil.” In his life, though, Sir Brackenstall was one very bad man. He set a dog on fire, threw a decanter at the maid, and abused his wife. Like Ronder, the circus master in The Veiled Lodger, we may be glad that Sir Brackenstall has gone the way of the dodo, for he is one of those men whom the world is better off without.
47. Ronder, The Veiled Lodger
We may safely lump Ronder of The Veiled Lodger in with the same family of vermin that Sir Eustace Brackenstall and Colonel Barclay belong to. A man who is dead when the story begins, Ronder the circus master was a domestic abuser, an animal abuser, and an alcoholic bully. He is better off forgotten, and no more words need be spared on this horrible creature.
46. Biddle, Hayward, Moffat, and the Page, The Resident Patient
Having served their time, Biddle, Hayward, and Moffat of the Worthington Bank Gang deliver some vigilante justice to the rat Blessington and leave him hanging by his neck. Like John Calhoun, these three avengers are never seen and are ultimately lost at sea. They can rest in peace, knowing their payback was made. The page (who was Biddle, Hayward, and Moffat’s confederate) is never prosecuted and thus escapes by a whisker.
45. Sir George Burnwell, Beryl Coronet
A rake and a cad (as the Victorians might have called him), as well as a thief, Sir George Burnwell steals the Mary’s heart and convinces her to help him abstract the coronet. That he acts indecently is indisputable. But Sir Burnwell does not stoop so low as to be a traitor to his family, as Mary does.
44. Beddoes and Hudson, The Gloria Scott
The police suspect Hudson of murdering Beddoes and fleeing; Holmes suspects Beddoes of murdering Hudson and fleeing. As relates to our ranking of villains, the truth is neither here nor there. For neither Beddoes nor Hudson are significant characters upon the page, though Hudson is the stronger personality of the two. Just as some Holmes tales have no transgressor, others have more than one. In The Gloria Scott’s case, its main villain is Jack Prendergast.
43. Jack Prendergast, The Gloria Scott
So often when folk are imperious enough to say such things as, “My name is Jack Prendergast, and by God! You’ll learn to bless my name before you’ve done with me,” the exact opposite is true. Here, we have every reason to believe that James Armitage, aka J.P. Trevor, was likely cursing Prendergast’s name by the time the bloodthirsty man’s work was through. It was Prendergast who led the ship’s insurrection, Prendergast who threw sailors (alive or dead) overboard, and it was Prendergast who cut the throat of the ship’s surgeon. If ever a man was born swashbuckling, virile, and delinquent, it was Prendergast, and if ever a man deserved to die in lionhearted rebellion aboard an exploding convict ship, well, that man would as well be Jack Prendergast.
42. Harold Latimer and Wilson Kemp, The Greek Interpreter
These two men imprison, torture, and kill the unfortunate Paul Kratides, brother of Sophy Kratides, who has fallen into the power of Harold Latimer. Our good detective and chronicler are too late to save Mr. Kratides from the charcoal fumes, but they do manage to help Mr. Melas, of the story’s title, survive. Latimer and Kemp are later found dead in the modern-day Hungarian capital, and this reader hopes that Sophy is now living, in as much tranquility as she can muster, upon a beautiful Grecian isle.
41. Giuseppe “Black” Gorgiano, Red Circle
Like Gennaro Lucca, we hear only of Gorgiano through backstory, as told by Emilia Lucca, Gennaro’s wife. A mafia killer who is “red to the elbow” in murder, Gorgiano finally messes with the wrong paisano’s wife, and, for his amorous advances, he gets knifed to death. The Italian mafia code is famous for its prizing of omertà but, less well known (though no less sacrosanct) is the code’s proscription against coveting another man’s wife. Gorgiano did so, and Emilia’s husband did him right by the laws of every society, including the mafia’s.
40. Henderson/Don Juan Murillo/The Tiger of San Pedro and Lucas/Lopez, Wisteria Lodge
The Tiger of San Pedro and his secretary are on the run, and noble Garcia loses his life in attempting to take the Tiger’s. Torturers, abusers, and men who hurt women, Murillo and Lucas are certainly criminals. They flit off to Madrid where, six months later, their avengers catch and kill them in a luxury hotel. We readers see little more than a newspaper clipping of the Tiger and his secretary, though I would have loved to have seen more.
39. James Calhoun, The Five Orange Pips
Calhoun, the leader of the KKK faction that murders John Openshaw, is never seen, and his ship, the Lone Star out of Savannah, is lost at sea. Calhoun is presumed dead, and, bearing in mind his crimes and the clan that he led, we may hope that the sea was a cold one.
Tier Four: The Flotsam and Jetsam
In this tier are villains whom Doyle’s readers meet in the story. But these villains are each in some way deficient. Either their characterization is weak, as in the case of Isadora Klein, or, perhaps, they are too vulgar, as in the case of Williamson and Woodley. These villains lack the texture and subtlety which could lift their role as antagonists to a level on par with that of a superlative protagonist like Holmes.
38. Isadora Klein, The Three Gables
Watson inflates Klein’s menace, saying that she’s “the criminal whom Holmes would find it hardest to face.” But thanks to Watson’s wonky appraisal and to Klein’s rather artificial characterization, Klein cannot rise to expectations. While the tiers above this are stocked with either sympathetic people who have committed heinous acts, or with cold-blooded criminals whom we never see, we now find ourselves in a territory with criminals who are motivated by self-interest and who also appear in the stories. Of these, Isadora Klein seems in possession of the weakest backbone and of the most superficial demeanor. So to me Klein is—precisely contrary to what Watson would have us believe—the criminal whom Holmes finds it easiest to face.
37. Jack Ferguson, The Sussex Vampire
I could not abide myself if I treated Jack, a fifteen year old boy, more stringently on this list. Despite attempting to poison a baby on multiple occasions, modern science has taught us that Jack’s brain is not yet developed, so he cannot be held accountable in the way that an adult can. That said, the boy’s actions make him very much open to close scrutiny till his adult years, and I would not be surprised if this child turned out to be one very bad egg. Jack seems to be of that type of spore that grows into a fungus like Francis Dolorhyde or Francis Cauldhame, and the Sussex community might rightfully be more shocked if Jack turned into a healthy, cheerful, helpful specimen of humanity rather than developing into the opposite.
36. Count Negretto Sylvius, The Mazarin Stone
Like Isadora Klein in The Three Gables, Count Sylvius is hamstrung by the story’s poor rendering of their characters. It is, for this reader, hard to trudge through Count Sylvius’ hackneyed and clichéd lines and harder still to do so once poor Sam Merton is introduced to the scene. Readers are never in doubt that Holmes will obtain the Mazarin Stone, nor are we ever in doubt that Count Sylvius will be caught. Still, I am always relieved when Holmes arrives to snatch the stone from the count, for it signals that the end of this tedious story is near.
35. Mr. Culverton Smith, The Dying Detective
Having used (and made a “special study of”) the poison once before, readers may suppose that Culverton Smith knows the effects that it will bring about as well as anyone else, and that he is able to distinguish between Holmes’ act and the true symptoms caused by this “out-of-the-way Asiatic disease.” Instead, Smith is fooled by a superficial bit of Vaseline and beeswax, and the fact that he is deceived represents a failing mark against the so-called specialist. Further against Smith is the fact that he lingers over Holmes, crowing and confessing. A real pro, a cold-blooded assassin, would spare hardly a glance at his victim—except to ensure that he was dying or dead. He would quietly gather any evidence at the scene which could incriminate him, then swiftly and silently depart. But a specialist who fails to see past Holmes’ ruse and who confesses indiscreetly to his own crimes deserves to be arrested at once by Inspector Morton, as Smith is, and he also deserves exclusion from the highest pantheon of villains.
34. Sergius, The Golden Pince-Nez
The traitor who informs on his peers and so gets Alexis sent to the Siberian salt-mines, Sergius is, like Colonel Barclay, a man who never truly gets what he deserves. Readers may not need to see sordid Russian tales of treachery in a Holmes story, and Doyle is right to omit them, but here one can certainly sympathize with Anna, who shows great courage in attempting to right past wrongs. That Sergius allows a man to toil in forced labor while he sits in his bed every day smoking cigarettes and dictating to a secretary is an abominable, if realistic, representation of the caprices of the unjust and unfair world that we inhabit.
33. Jim Browner, The Cardboard Box
Through Lestrade, we get a physical description of Mr. Browner, and through Mr. Browner’s statement, we get an idea of his voice. Such participation in the story is sufficient to qualify him to rank in this tier. Flooded with emotion, the jealous man acts, in his own words, “like a wild beast” and he murders his lover, and her lover too. Browner is a drinker, and he does not act responsibly, for even after he is arrested, he chooses to blame his murder victim instead of himself. “It was Sarah’s fault!” Browner cries after renting a rowboat and rowing out upon the water to pursue her and her lover, then beating aside the man’s attempt at self-defense, and clubbing the unarmed woman to death. On Holmes’ advice, Lestrade takes Browner into custody, where the envious, undisciplined, and emotional man shall face his reckoning.
32. Williamson and Woodley, The Solitary Cyclist
The unfrocked parson and the scheming South African who intend to marry a young woman have all the subtlety of raging elephants. The South African, Woodley, earns “the right” to marry Ralph Smith’s heir during a voyage, and he proceeds to undertake the wooing task with the hand of a boozer and the heart of a rattlesnake. It’s no wonder that she doesn’t fall head over heels for him; it seems that every rational person salivates at the idea of thrashing this pestilent bully. The former parson is no more artful. Line after line of his dialogue must be censored as “curses,” and Watson, who served in the Army, says that, “The old man, still clad in his surplice, burst into such a string of foul oaths as I have never heard.” One must suppose that such bestial behavior from Woodley and such low language from Williamson can bring no honor upon most men, and that is the case here.
31. Sutton, aka Blessington, The Resident Patient
One of these maddening people who makes himself out to be the victim without telling the whole story, Sutton is a bank robber who has ratted out his confederate, Cartwright. Cartwright was hanged on Sutton’s evidence, and the other gang members went to jail. Sutton then assumed the identity of Blessington, and he settled down to live a quiet life. Perhaps most reminiscent of the major crime figure Whitey Bulger, a man who (like Blessington, played both the criminal and police ends against the middle) vanished from the public eye for many years, Blessington ultimately gets the comeuppance that he deserves. He fails to follow Holmes’ advice to be forthright, and, we readers may be glad, is hanged after an extrajudicial trial conducted by his fellow thieves. These desperados smoked cigars at their kangaroo court and probably needed no brandy, for, likely, revenge was sweet enough.
Tier Three: The Flickering Lights
We cannot trust these flickering lights to constantly guide us. Though the villains in this tier show flashes of brilliance, most often they do not shine consistently enough to earn our confidence as being truly strong antagonists.
30. Von Bork and his secretary, His Last Bow
Like Baron Gruner, Von Bork and his secretary ring a bit false. However, unlike Baron Gruner, there seems to me to be very little effort at disguising Von Bork as a symbol. If Baron Gruner was to stand as a symbol of arch-evil, then Von Bork was to stand as an extension of the Kaiser and all that he represents. Doyle does not tip-toe around the patriot themes of this story, nor ought he. Doyle’s sending a message, and that message is one of nationalist pride. The very things that Von Bork scorns are the foundations that the British will rely upon to help them stabilize themselves during the buffeting war. That Doyle lets Von Bork be flat is his way of making Von Bork be symbolic, and, in war, needs must.
29. Mr. Windibank, aka Hosmer Angel, and Mrs. Windibank, A Case of Identity
While Mr. Windibank’s actions toward his stepdaughter are indeed appalling, I find it difficult to consider him more villainous since his ruse seems so transparent. It is incredible that Miss Mary Sutherland could not see through Mr. Windibank’s ruse. Mary and Mr. Windibank met; they conversed; they became engaged. Catfishing is a tactic carried on to this day for one motive or another, but, with the advent of the internet and artificial intelligence, one person may catfish another far more easily and completely than before. In Victorian times, when people are actually meeting one another in person, this reader finds it hard to believe that Mary could have fallen in love with her own stepfather without recognizing him.
28. Catherine Cusack and John Ryder, The Blue Carbuncle
“What a shrimp it is, to be sure!” cries Holmes upon his first evaluation of Ryder’s intestinal fortitude. Holmes is not wrong. When accused of the crime, Ryder throws himself onto the floor and grabs at Holmes’ knees—and if there’s a less manly gesture when faced with the unveiling of one’s crimes, then I am hard-pressed to name it. Ryder says that he will flee, that he will leave the country, and, if that is true, then this American reader hopes that Ryder will at least elect to stay on the European side of the pond, because we’d be ashamed to have a criminal of Ryder’s stripe. Holmes castigates Ryder sternly, as he has every right to do, then lets the craven man leave. With any luck at all, Ryder starts a new life in a place like France, and he never strays again.
27. Rachel, The Musgrave Ritual
Whether the stone that fell upon Brunton the butler fell intentionally or accidentally seems to me to be of little consequence. What matters is that Rachel did nothing to help him. She fled from the scene, threw the jewels in the pond, and left the butler to die. Her conscience (we must presume, from the way she’s acted) must have eaten away at her, yet she ignored it for the sake of saving her own skin and avoiding scandal. Selfish and homicidal were her actions, and she gained nothing by them, save a psychological scarlet letter that promises to follow her to her own grave.
26. Mary Holder, The Beryl Coronet
Arthur Holder’s niece and adopted daughter, this traitorous woman betrays her uncle and her brother, leaving Arthur, who has remained chivalrously silent, to face the threat of prosecution, while she elopes with the degenerate Sir George Burnwell. So treacherous! So selfish! So ungrateful! For Mary’s actions, this reader hopes that the ultimate destination in her elopement is a drafty cell in the Tower of London.
25. The Duke of Holdernesse, The Priory School
“Unjustifiable” is Holmes’ fair assessment of the duke’s conduct. Indeed, if I were to put myself into the duke’s shoes, and I found that one of my children had conspired to abduct the other, then I would not have behaved so uncharitably to the victim as the duke does. Holmes lets Holdernesse off lightly thanks to the duke’s passivity and station. In reality, however, the duke seems to me to be nearly as culpable of crime as Rachel from The Musgrave Ritual: both characters had the opportunity to right a wrong, and both failed to do so.
24. Mr. John Turner, The Boscombe Valley Mystery
Old Black Jack of Ballarat has a temper. As a bandit, he was a murderer himself in his young, red-blooded days. As an old man, after bearing all the indignity from McCarthy that he can stand, Turner crushes McCarthy’s head with a stone when he feels that McCarthy has finally gone too far. Now McCarthy’s son stands in the dock, but Turner does not come forward to save him, though he certainly ought to. Holmes secures Turner’s confession, and Holmes says he’ll use it if necessary to save McCarthy’s son. Clearly there was a reason that Black Jack became the leader of a gang, and there’s a reason that the old expression, “A leopard never changes its spots” has survived so long.
23. Beppo, The Six Napoleons
A luckless Italian who perhaps ought to have operated with greater subtlety, Beppo is caught red-handed. After his capture, Holmes does what Beppo ought to have done all along, viz: to simply buy the Napoleons instead of stealing them. Had Beppo done so, his profile might have remained lower, and he might have gotten away with the black pearl of the Borgias. As it stands, the fellow shall return to the place whence he came: prison.
22. Abe Slaney, The Dancing Men
It is not Abe himself who develops the ingenious alphabet of dancing men, it is that Sequoyah of a father of Elsie’s: Patrick, leader of the Joint. Abe merely uses the alphabet, having been taught it. His role in The Dancing Men is to harass and hound poor Elsie, and, when her husband intervenes, then Slaney’s entire, poorly thought-out plot goes up in a puff of smoke. Thanks to his harassment, Abe ends up murdering an innocent man and nearly killing the woman whom he professes to love. For his troubles, Slaney gets a prison term, and one may only hope that, by the time he’s emancipated, he will have overcome his consuming love for Elsie.
21. Josiah Amberly, The Retired Colourman
Derivative of Jonas Oldacre of Lower Norwood is Mr. Josiah Amberly of The Haven. His description places him closer to the “Medieval Italian,” than the “modern Briton,” classifies him as a chess player, and, like Oldacre, a miser. The retired colourman could perhaps have surpassed Oldacre, if only we had been able to spend more time with him. I would have loved have seen an interview between Holmes and Amberly, in which Amberly plaintively wails about the ingratitude of his wife, while Holmes listens with a mistrustful ear. As it is, Amberly is left to chafe Watson with his stingy ways, and we readers are chafed by the rather stingy portions that we receive of Amberly’s character, and of this case in general.
20. Reuben Hayes, The Priory School
Though overshadowed by the jealous secretary, James Wilder, the oafish Reuben Hayes nevertheless deserves an entry of his own on this list. After all, it is Hayes who murders the German master, Heidigger, and so precipitates Wilder’s downfall. Hayes was intended to be Wilder’s ace-up-the-sleeve, but he proved to be part of a hand that was aces and eights. Unpredictable and violent, Hayes acted autonomously in a far more bloodthirsty capacity than Wilder dreamt of. The result is that Hayes will end in the gallows, and that Holmes will not lift a finger to save him.
19. Patrick Cairns, Black Peter
In killing Captain “Black” Peter Carey, Patrick Cairns says that he’s saving the law “the price of a hempen rope.” Cairns may well be right. However, casting iniquity on Black Peter does not transmute Patrick Cairns into a saint himself. Let’s be clear: Cairns is a man who invited himself to Black Peter’s cabin in order to extort the captain, and, as the two fell to rum and to arguing (two descents that often well pair), their tempers flashed. Black Peter drew his knife. Cairns was quicker, and he put a harpoon through the old sailor: driving the steel through the captain’s burly chest and pinning him, like a butterfly, to the wall. Though the killing was done in the heat of passion, it hardly exonerates Cairns, for he appeared at the cabin on an evil errand of his own devising, and—like a battered, piratical mercenary—was driven by nought but memories of the wild old days and of fantasies of the gold ahead.
18. Colonel Valentine Walter, The Bruce-Partington Plans
A traitor to his country and a man whose actions are so abhorrent as to bring about his brother’s death from sheer mortification, Colonel Valentine Walter’s case is, improbably, not as bad as it could be. Holmes suspects that Valentine’s murdered Cadogen West, but, in fact, Oberstein has done the deed with, oxymoronically, a life preserver. Additionally, Walter makes efforts at reparations. Dictating a letter at Sherlock’s command, Walter draws Oberstein out of hiding, where the agent is nabbed by the authorities and sentenced to fifteen years confinement. Still, Walter is a traitor to his country and, therefore, a louse.
17. Baron Adelbert Gruner, The Illustrious Client
A character who causes me indecision to rank, for he both confronts and wounds Holmes, Baron Gruner perhaps ought to be considered more villainous, only I find his character annoyingly stereotypical. Unlike, for instance, Colonel Walter, Baron Gruner seems drawn from stock. His mannerisms come off as trite, and his speech is a tad theatrical. For instance, upon having vitriol throne in his face, he exclaims, “It was that hell-cat, Kitty Winter! Oh, the she-devil! She shall pay for it! She shall pay!” I appreciate the fact that Doyle does not want to use foul language, so he substitutes curse words with language like ‘hell-cat’ and ‘she-devil.’ That said, I can’t shake the fact that throughout the story, I always end up feeling that Gruner is a mite too artificial.
Tier Two: Distant Lamps in a Dark Forest
These villains draw readers to them, and we find that, even as we approach, there is an air of uncertainty, danger, and almost magical trickery. Nearer though we come, we cannot determine these villains’ true selves till we know them better; their disguised menace hides their charming charismas, and that charm lures us to stay with them awhile.
16. Beddington, The Stock-Broker’s Clerk
Beddington, alias Mr. Pinner, is one of a pair of brothers. The other was captured in a daring, violent, and foiled bank robbery. Beddington is left with a “ghastly smile” and attempts to hang himself. Their brothers’ plan, which appears in the same genus as the one from The Red-Headed League, was solved without interdiction from Holmes, whose main role in the case is to save the suicidal criminal.
15. Mortimer Tregennis, The Devil’s Foot
With “Radix pedis diaboli,” Mortimer Tregennis kills his sister and sends his brothers to the madhouse. His murder method is artful; his motive is clear; his crime is vile. What prevents Tregennis from more careful consideration? In the first place, the “devil’s-foot root” does not exist, and so the means of murder is a bit fanciful. In the second place, Tregennis’ character is overshadowed in the story by that of Dr. Leon Sterndale. Like Dr. Leslie Armstrong in The Missing Three-Quarter, Dr. Sterndale is a powerful presence, a lion who dominates the page. By contrast, Tregennis is a wallflower. He’s a murderer, sure, but, by the end, so is Sterndale. More importantly, Tregennis’ personality is not so robust as Sterndale’s. Tregennis is bland and milquetoast; Sterndale is masculine, independent, and willful. Accordingly, when readers think of the story of the devil’s foot, they think first of madness, of the fantastic plant, and of the commanding doctor. Tregennis, for all his villainy, is the afterthought.
14. Mr. Jephro Rucastle, The Copper Beeches
Mr. Rucastle and his wife have imprisoned their own daughter. Not only that, but the devilish old fellow has enlisted the services of a young, capable woman to ward off the beseeching entreaties of Alice’s suitor. Rucastle’s personality is a mix of the selfish, narrow-minded, and tyrannical, and it makes him quite a frightening specimen of humanity. He seems to care for no one other than himself, and he seems, like Dr. Roylott, to have no limit on his willingness to get his way. We readers are left with an impression of an early Milverton study—the Pickwickian face and deceitful smile—bound up in the body of a bully. To this reader, this particular personality type is reminiscent of tinpot, demagogue dictators, of the species of Mussolinis and McCarthys that wreak havoc.
13. Joseph Harrison, The Naval Treaty
Mr. Joseph Harrison, a patient but rather unlucky criminal, succeeds in slicing Holmes’ knuckles open with a knife and in pilfering the vital naval treaty. He does so at the expense of Percy Phelps, the man who is soon to be Mr. Harrison’s brother-in-law by way of Percy’s sister, Annie. But Joseph’s luck is short-lived. When Percy collapses in a brain fever, Joseph cannot access the papers that he risked his reputation and freedom to get. Still, he shows himself to be a calloused, hard criminal: “I can only say for certain that Mr. Joseph Harrison is a gentleman to whose mercy I should be extremely unwilling to trust,” says Holmes. Harrison has considerable “page-presence” (like unto stage presence), and is dangerous, savvy, and unscrupulous. He’s a worthy Holmes adversary, but, because his crime was motivated mainly by opportunity (and was thus less calculated than some of the other villains’), he cannot enter the highest tier of villains.
12. J.P. and Alec Cunningham, The Reigate Squires
That a justice of the peace and his son could kill the butler and attempt to kill Holmes reminds this reader of the Alex Murdaugh case: a sensational and homicidal affair in which someone who is pledged to uphold the law instead grossly violates it. Motivated by greed, selfishness, and a desperation to get free of blackmail, the two Cunninghams take the law into their own hands. They commit murder, then, once caught, the younger Cunningham, Alec, shows himself to be completely unrepentant.
11. Colonel Lysander Stark, The Engineer’s Thumb
A violent man who is responsible for one of the goriest stories in the canon, Stark chops off an engineer’s thumb with a butcher’s cleaver. Stark’s depiction, like Professor Moriarty’s, is one which we can credit Sidney Paget with stamping irrevocably on our mental retinas. Spare, thin, aquiline, and brimming with menace is the colonel. He is not a man with whom I would be comfortable sharing a meal, nor even sharing a row on any sort of public transportation. He seems to exude ominousness. It is a shame that we hear from Stark only from Hatherley, our engineer, and that Stark (along with the woman and the morose Englishman) escape entirely from Holmes’ clutches. Presumably, Colonel Lysander Stark (what an apt name!) goes on to profit in his criminal ways elsewhere in the world and to make others’ lives miserable in so doing.
Tier One: The Stars of Holmesian Villainy
These villains are recognizable for their ingenuity and, save for one, are extraordinarily powerful characters on the page. These miscreants are wily, awful, and heinous, and each is a worthy adversary of Sherlock Holmes.
10. “Holy” Henry Peters/Rev. Dr. Shlessinger and Annie Fraser, Lady Frances Carfax
The Australian pair are led by the husband, a fraudulent religious type in the vein of Keith Raniere, Ron Hubbard, and Peter Popoff. Henry Peters and Annie Fraser proceed with cunning and malice, and their machinations are clever. Peters and Fraser thwart Watson and Carfax’s knight in shining armor, Philip Green. Peters and Fraser nearly get the best of Holmes. The coffin trick is an brilliant one, and it takes Holmes quite a bit of time to figure out what is happening. If not for a chance remark, made off-hand by the undertaker, then Carfax would have surely gone all the way to the grave, instead of diverting course when half-way there. Holy Peters and Fraser also escape justice. Their plan is, more or less, a success. They have pawned some of Carfax’s jewelry, and so made a profit. They have escaped from their predicament without having committed a murder. No doubt, to rogues of their cloth, they will undertake similar escapades in the future, and hopefully then—if the good public has any luck—Peters and Fraser will caught, tried, and imprisoned.
9. John Clay aka Vincent Spaulding, The Red-Headed League
John Clay can reasonably be attributed to being lead villain in the first of many Holmes stories in which an elaborate ruse is created that draws a person from their intended place or occupation. This type of device is used again by “Killer” Evans in The Three Garridebs. And other stories’ plots derive from it: The Stock-Broker’s Clerk, The Resident Patient, and, to a lesser extent, The Adventure of the Dying Detective (in which Holmes’ ploy draws out the villain). But at the font of this wellspring lies John Clay. The originator of the Red-Headed League, Clay’s inventiveness must have caused the London reading public to marvel. Clay was as cool as ice when caught, and he retained his manners and diplomacy. In him, we find a villain whose cleverness is as great as, or nearly as great as, Holmes’, thus making him an admirable foil.
8. James Winter, aka Killer Evans, The Three Garridebs
If James Winter is Doyle’s American, gun-toting version of John Clay, then Winter is a superb variant. In fact, Winter is the best of all of Doyle’s American characters, partly because he has cleverness, and also partly because he does so little talking. Compared with John Clay, Winter is coarser, more violent, and less aristocratic. Yet it is Winter who nearly inflicts on Watson a mortal wound, and it is Winter (and not Clay) who draws Holmes’ most livid ire. Had The Three Garridebs been written and published before The Red-Headed League, I believe that it is likely that Winter would go down in literary history as one of Holmes’ greatest enemies, rather than being forgotten to all but the most ardent of Holmes enthusiasts. As it is, Time has seen the shadows grow long over Winter, while Clay has grown accustomed to an even and steady light.
7. Maria Gibson, née Pinto, Thor Bridge
Far and away the most committed villain on this list, Maria Gibson of Thor Place, Hampshire, is also perhaps the most calculating villain in the canon. Passionately in love, fanatically jealous, and wretchedly unhappy, Maria Gibson seeks to feed three birds with one scone. She hopes to deliver herself from her unhappiness, to ruin the happiness of the man who jilted her, and to destroy her romantic rival. She nearly completes the trifecta, and likely she would have if not for Holmes. Her method of suicide was absolutely matchless. In the very first line of the very first story, Watson says that Holmes refers to Irene Adler as “the woman.” It is this reader’s opinion that Maria, originally of Manaus, Brazil, surpasses Adler by a full length in the race to see which woman is the most formidable in the Holmes canon. Only (in my opinion) because Holmes hadn’t had Maria Gibson to compare Irene Adler with does Irene receive the vaunted title of the woman. But though Adler shines brightly, Maria Gibson scintillates. She is absolutely unwavering and wily, and the only reason that she does not rank as the premier villain on this list is that, thanks to her own actions, we do not get to meet her. Paradoxical it is: Maria is well regarded because of what she does, yet she cannot be regarded any better because of what she did. The sword cuts both ways, and a brace of pistols proves to be both Maria’s medium and her undoing.
6. James Wilder, The Priory School
Wilder is a sort of one-of-one in the Holmes canon, and The Priory School is, in its own way, a very unique story as well. The bastard son of the Duke of Holdernesse, James Wilder’s misbehavior is purportedly the result of a spoiled upbringing. However, it seems that the strain of deviance is congenital. For Wilder’s father behaves no better than his son when it comes to protecting the welfare of his younger child. Rather than rescue the kidnapped child at once, the duke leaves his son, Lord Saltire, with Reuben Hayes of the Fighting Cock Inn—a man who is a known murderer. While neither Wilder nor the duke display the moral courage, care, or judiciousness requisite for men of their station, Wilder is proactively evil, and, as a man who kidnaps his own brother, finds himself in elite company on this list of villains.
5. Jonas Oldacre, The Empty House
I have a feeling about Oldacre that recalls ACT equivalency questions, viz.: that Jonas Oldacre is to Josiah Amberly as John Clay is to James Winter/Killer Evans. Just as Oldacre and Clay are the originals, Killer Evans and Josiah Amberly are their facsimiles. Curmudgeonly, miserly, cunning, and cruel, Jonas Oldacre takes out a decades-old vendetta on the unwitting son of a woman who spurned him. By faking his homicide and framing the innocent lad for his murder, Oldacre carries out an act so heinous that, even today—in our society which is somewhat inured to sensational scandal—would be jaw-droppingly, pearl-clutchingly extreme. It is no wonder that Oldacre’s venom has left him friendless, save for his housekeeper, and ready to begin a new life under an assumed identity. This is a man who is desperate to get away even from himself.
4. Colonel Sebastian Moran, The Empty House
Col. Moran is mentioned throughout the Holmes canon. In The Illustrious Client, Holmes puts him into the same sentence as Moriarty. Moran’s name is tossed into The Last Bow. He’s talked of in The Valley of Fear. He is described as a tiger hunter with the career of “an honourable soldier,” and as “the best heavy game shot that our Eastern Empire has ever produced.” More importantly, Holmes describes him as “the second most dangerous man in London,” indicating that, for Holmes, Moran is second only to Professor James Moriarty. Certainly the praise for Moran’s villainy is unstinting, and it is only left to the reader to determine whether such praise is well-placed or not. In my view, it is. Light years ahead of his time, the wily colonel uses a nearly silent rifle—an air rifle made by a blind German—to attempt to assassinate Holmes. Moran is only thwarted in his attempt by the brilliant maneuvering of Sherlock Holmes, who arranges to have a wax bust placed in his stead on the very night of the attempted murder. But the effort that Moran goes to, and the very high levels to which his match-play brings Holmes, suffice to render the colonel one of the worthiest and most dangerous villains in the canon.
3. Professor James Moriarty, The Final Problem
Certainly the most famous of all Holmes’ villains, Moriarty has a name that has entered the general public and has become associated with Machiavellian evil. Drawn superbly by Sidney Paget, Moriarty is the arch-criminal’s arch-criminal. He could as easily lead SPECTRE as he could replace Karla. His personality type: cunning, cold, scheming, and ruthless brings him in line with the greatest of the great villains. If only we had seen Moriarty’s successes more obviously, he could have grown in stature even further. As it stands, he’s referenced multiple times throughout the stories and the novels, always with respect, yet he never triumphs over Holmes as Baron Gruner, as Joseph Harrison, or as Irene Adler do. This reader wishes that Moriarty was the main villain in other stories, perhaps even a collection of stories, and that, from time to time, he would emerge victorious over Holmes, or at least draw even with him.
2. Charles Augustus Milverton, Charles Augustus Milverton
Perhaps my favorite Holmesian villain, Charles Augustus inspires antipathy. He’s an oily, despicable fellow with a false smile and a heart of ice. No character in Doyle’s literature is more aptly described. Milverton springs to life from the page, and one can easily imagine him, in modern times, plying his extortion trade and/or mucking about with America’s most majestic guarantees as he strives selfishly to make a name for himself in national politics. Milverton is truly abominable, and he possesses Falstaffian magnitude.
1. Dr. Grimesby Roylott, The Speckled Band
The rotten doctor, Roylott, is perhaps the most physically imposing of all Holmes’ nemeses, and he’s one of the most cunning as well. Armed with a dastardly mind, one working in tandem with such a powerful body that it can bare-handedly bend a fireplace poker, Roylott possesses a murderous temperament, a taste for the exotic, and an absolutely black ethical code. After killing one of his daughters, he beats and attempts to kill the other. Are spiders so loathsome as that? He threatens Holmes and attempts to physically intimidate him. Roylott goes so far as to modify a wing of his house to make it into a murderous chamber. The gall! If Holmes and Watson had fallen asleep during their midnight vigil, it is possible that Roylott would have succeeded in killing Holmes. As it stands, the supremely villainous doctor gets a taste of his own medicine that proves overpowering and sends him, hopefully, further down than a mere six feet below the soil.
