About The Adventure of the Red-Headed League

Dr Watson reads while client Jabez Wilson and Sherlock Holmes listen. This illustration by Sidney Paget originally appeared in The Strand Magazine where ‘The Red Headed League’ was first published.

The Adventure of the Red-Headed League is a classic story, loved for its wit, originality and dramatic final conclusion.

Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson are paid a visit by a red-headed pawnbroker who has been left puzzled by his bizarre hiring and sudden firing from the strange Red-Headed League.

The group had offered Jabez Wilson a highly paid part time job copying out pages from an encyclopedia purely because he had flame colored hair.

Then within weeks the League – and their job – had disappeared.

But was there an ulterior motive? Holmes heads to the pawnbroker’s shop to investigate, and is greatly concerned by what he finds.

“Fleet Street was choked with red-headed folk, and Pope’s Court looked like a coster’s orange barrow. I should not have thought there were so many in the whole country as were brought together by that single advertisement.”
– Dr Watson, in The Adventure of the Red-Headed League