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Hello my beautiful watchers. Few fictional characters enjoy more
name recognition than Sherlock Holmes, consulting detective.
Created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle of Great Britain, the adventures of Holmes and his
sidekick Dr Watson encompassed 4 novels and 56 short stories between the years of 1887 and 1927
and since then the world has rarely gone more than a few years without some sort of film,
tv or stage adaptation, spin off, parody or unofficial sequel.
Sherlock Holmes is the Guinness World Record holder for being the fictional human character
with the most portrayals in all of history….
And in the very first book, A Study in Scarlet there's multiple chapter tangent about the
founding of a settlement of murderous totalitarian Mormons in Utah and nobody seems to talk about it.
This is the debut story of the character that would become the world's most
famous detective, and he’s not in 5 of the 14 chapters
because Doyle decided he just had to completely halt the narrative
and tell us about this settlement of deady followers of the church of latter day saints.
But, I’m getting ahead of myself. Lemme throw out some context.
A Study in Scarlet, like most of the Holmes novels is narrated by Watson
in the form of a published journal entry.
It starts with Watson introducing himself and his backstory as a former army doctor
and shortly later describes his meet cute with his soon to be BFF S.Holmes.
The mystery, when it's introduced, is pretty much exactly what one would expect from a
Sherlock Holmes story: Two men are dead under mysterious circumstances,
bumbling police officers are baffled, Holmes uses his deductive reasoning to extrapolate tons of
information from tiny details... all the stuff that becomes classic staples of the character.
There's some minor hiccups but of course Holmes eventually figures it all out,
and identifies the killer as an American by the name of Jefferson Hope.
When they apprehend him, like the very second the police tackle this guy, the
story non-diegetically switches to this... other story, which I’m about to do my best to explain.
It starts in 1847, which is 40 years prior to the events of the rest of the book,
in Salt Lake Valley America. A traveling group of 20 or so people had misjudged
the space between water and had all died one by one until there were just two survivors,
an aging but extremely tough man by the name of John Ferrier and a child called Lucy.
Ferrier tries his best to make it to salvation but has no idea where he’s
going and after days without water has finally run out of strength.
He has to break the news to the confused Lucy that her mother is dead and they are
pretty much doomed, and she takes it oddly well because she’s unbelievably innocent,
pure and just in general too good for this world. She basically assures him
it's ok he couldn’t save her because you know heaven is probably quite fun.
Just as they’re on death's door they’re discovered by a
massive caravan of mormon settlers who are apparently fleeing religious persecution
by traveling west without an exact destination in mind, in a Jesus take the wheel sorta setup.
They agree to save the pair and take them with them on the condition that
they convert to the mormon faith and really commit to it, which they do because
otherwise certain death? Ferrier adopts Lucy as his daughter to keep her safe.
Their journey is summarized as being very difficult, but successful because Mormons are
descended from the English which according to Doyle gives one extra tenacity powers…
They eventually arrive in Utah and establish a town there,
along the way Ferrier has proven himself to be so tough and helpful they grant him
a big plot of land, and he builds a pretty successful and profitable farming estate.
Alas, things don’t stay happy for long, as after a decade or so of self governance,
the mormon elders go mad with power.
In Doyle’s words the victims of persecution turned prosecutors and
they don’t do it by halves; things go full 1984 up in this joint.
Anyone in the town who so much as questions the church of Latter-day Saints
immediately disappears, then they eventually decide that there's not
enough women to go around as some of the elders only have like 7 wives so
it's very heavily implied they start sending out bands of masked horsemen
to attack caravans, slaughtering all the men and taking the women back as slave wives.
Ferrier has started to work his way onto their shitlist because
he’s been resisting pressure to take on a few wives of his own for the last 12 years,
thus making them suspect he’s not as into this whole mormon thing as he promised to be.
Meanwhile Lucy has grown up to be the most stunningly beautiful young woman in
the whole settlement and managed to hold onto her purer than mountain water outlook on life,
making her the fixation of every man in a 100 mile radius.
She’s entirely indifferent to the attention until she meets Jefferson Hope.
Silver prospector, tracker, expert hunter and all round badass frontier adventurer. When Hope saves
her from being trampled by some rowdy cattle and they can’t help but fall instantly in love.
As he’s basically a young Clint Eastwood and more importantly not a psychotic Mormon,
her father is all for the pairing and gives his blessing for them to get
engaged as soon as Hope asks for it which he does just before leaving for a month
or two to try to earn some serious moolah so he can provide for Lucy.
This is a huuuuge no no for the mormon elders who summon him before them and tell him in no
uncertain terms that Lucy has to marry a mormon,
and they’ve picked out two suitable sons of theirs: Stangerson and Drebber.
She can choose which one she marries, but
it has to be one of these two men and she only has a month to decide.
Ferrier has an internal “over my dead body” reaction to this,
which unfortunately doesn't stay internal for long as Stangerson and Drebber turn up in his
house like they own the place looking to haggle with him over who gets to shag his daughter
and he understandably loses his temper and throws them the heck out.
This does not go down well at all with the mormon mafia
and this is where the story starts to get really weird. Ferrier gets a threatening note
saying that he has 29 days left on Lucy’s month and then *guurrch* and every day after that,
he and Lucy find a new countdown number has been graffitied inside their house somewhere.
No matter how well they lock up the house, no matter how diligently he stands guard with his
shotgun, they never see or hear a thing but always find another number the next morning.
Ferrier quickly realises his house is completely surrounded by religious zealots
able to come and go like the darkness, leaving no trace and killing at will. Mormon Ninjas.
Knowing he’s not well traveled enough to take Lucy and escape through the wilderness alone,
Ferrier sends a SOS message to Jefferson Hope asking him to come rescue them. He starts to
despair when the world's most stressful egg timer has ticked down to one and he still hasn’t shown
up, but suddenly out from the blackness of the night creeps a stealthy savior. Hope has returned.
It turns out the mormon ninjas have met their match in him because
he was raised by native americans who taught him their skills at traveling
silently through the forests and sensing your opponents from far off.
Yeah the mighty whitey trope had really started to take off around this time and just in case there
was any doubt in your mind; yes the 19th century white British man was super racist about it.
Using his culturally appropriated mad skills Hope helps Lucy and her Dad escape
despot Mormon controlled territory. Their success however is tragically short-lived,
as Hope splits up from them for a just a few hours to hunt for food and when he comes back
he finds to his horror that Stangerson and Drebber have led a raiding party after them,
killed Ferrier in cold blood and dragged Lucy back to town.
For some reason he instantly knows he’s not going to get a chance to even attempt to rescue her,
which turns out to be entirely accurate because Lucy “Padmés”
right out of this world and dies of a broken heart almost immediately after her wedding.
Hope swears he will get revenge and deliver justice upon Stangerson and Drebber,
a goal that you would think would be made easier by them
leaving their little theocracy due to a schism amongst the mormons, but
actually ends up taking 20 years and a chase all around the known world to achieve.
Eventually at LONG last and right after discovering he has a fatal heart condition
that will kill him in less than a week, Hope corners the two in London and commits
the murders that Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson spent the first part of the book investigating.
The narrative then switches back to the journal of Dr Watson and Hope’s full and cheerful confession
(Hashtag no regrets apparently). Hope then proceeds to drop dead with a smile on his face.
So yeah this wasn’t even the backstory of the killer, most of it was told from Ferris’s
perspective and Hope only pops in and out of the narrative. It's the story of his victim’s victims.
I do want to make it clear that my incredulity stems
not from a disbelief that colonial period Mormons would be capable of violence
but that their iron fisted rule took the form of this almost omnipotent black ops organization.
I also don’t think we need to necessarily get into a debate about historical accuracy, as before his
death Doyle explained that while the events were loosely based on the real life Mormon military
group The Danites, his book was definitely riddled with blatant inaccuracies about Mormons.
Anyway, while the events of this part of the book obviously take center stage regarding what makes
this so weird to me because nothing can really contend with the concept of invisible Mormon
desperados, I do feel I need to stress upon you what a colossal segue it felt like as well.
It's like a completely separate thriller short story within a mystery book,
that also happens to be about hyper competent totalitarian mormons.
As far as I can see there’s no intrinsic link between any of this murder Mormon content and
the eventual method of Hope’s vengeance, you know, the only part of this whole thing
thats in any way actually relevant to Sherlock Holmes and the other two thirds of this book.
Don’t get me wrong, the method he uses to kill is interesting but it's definitely not a callback to
how they killed Ferris and Lucy, or to their tyrannical rule over the Utah settlement and
Hope’s motive isn’t something that Holmes uses to solve the case so it's effectively irrelevant.
It does serve to make you sympathetic towards Hope but…
I mean he was a killer but he wasn’t exactly villainized in the story.
Holmes certainly never had an issue with the guy.
Nothing in this was personal to him, he was just in it for the thrill of solving the mystery and
the occasions where Hope seemed to be getting the better of him only served to entertain him more so
flipping our view of the guy right before the end has no impact whatsoever.
The really funny thing is: Despite everything, how bizzare parts of the concept felt and how crazy
out of keeping with the rest of the book it was I have to confess that due to Doyle
being an annoyingly good writer, it's still a pretty darn solid little story.
You feel for the characters, the death mormons are legitimately terrifying at times and
the tragedy of it hits you pretty hard.
Thank you for joining me my beautiful watchers, before I fade back in into the darkness mumbling
incoherently about how not enough people acknowledge the subject of today's video
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This is the pitch at which I’m supposed to talk if I don’t wanna blow out my vocal cords...Hello
Sir Terry.
Psychic Dr. Watson and com-Oh my goodness my mouth is suddenly so dry.
What has happened. What witchcraft is this.
Encompassed four novels and fifty shits-six..Fifty shits.