Sherlock Holmes And A Giant Rat

Sherlock Holmes And A Giant Rat.

“Matilda Briggs was not the name of a young woman, Watson, “ said Holmes in a reminiscent voice,

“It was a ship which is associated with the giant rat of Sumatra, a story for which the world is not yet prepared.“

The above quotation is from the Sherlock Holmes story The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire. This was first published in The Strand Magazine 100 years ago. Ever since then it has intrigued Sherlock Holmes scholars. It has also inspired other writers to produce their own giant rat tales. 

The giant rat of Sumatra is a wholly fictional creation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. But this has not stopped Sherlockians from suggesting possible inspirations for the rat - albeit retrospectively.

One of these is the Mountain Giant Sunda Rat. In 1983 this species, upon its discovery, was referred to as ‘the giant rat of Sumatra‘ in an article in The New York Times. Living in forested mountains in southeastern Asia, this rat weighs in at around 0.3 kilograms. It grows to some two feet in length.

Another contender is the Woolly Rat. This species was discovered in 2007 in the Foja Mountains of Papua, Indonesia. This is a bigger beast altogether. It is about five times the size of an ordinary brown rat, and weighs an impressive 1.4 kilograms.

The name Matilda Briggs has also long fascinated Sherlockian scholars. One theory links it to the ill-fated ship Mary Celeste. Found abandoned at sea in 1872, it was commanded by Captain Benjamin Briggs. He mysteriously disappeared along with the crew and passengers on the ship. Among these was Briggs’s daughter, Sophia Matilda Briggs.

Arthur Conan Doyle would certainly have been familiar with the story of the Mary Celeste. Indeed, he wrote his own fictionalised version of the case. J. Habakuk Jephson’s Statement was published anonymously in The Cornhill Magazine in 1884. Conan Doyle made a number of changes in his story. These included naming the ship Marie Celeste instead of Mary Celeste. The names of the Captain, crew, and passengers were also altered. However, these fictional elements came to be accepted as facts over the following years.

The giant rat of Sumatra has inspired a number of non-canonical Sherlock Holmes stories. Among these is Fred Saberhagen’s 1978 novel, The Holmes-Dracula File. In this Sherlock Holmes teams up with the vampire Count Dracula, to foil a plot to destroy London with plague-ridden rats.

Leading Sherlockian author David Stuart Davies novel, Sherlock Holmes and the Shadow of the Rat, was published in 1999. It concerns a scheme to unleash the giant rat of Sumatra (again carrying bubonic plague) on to the streets of London. 

In 1942, the radio series The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes included an episode titled The Giant Rat of Sumatra. This features Professor Moriarty, who sends the plague-infected giant rat to England. He does this by means of a ship named Matilda Briggs.

The 1945 film Pursuit to Algiers starred Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes, with Nigel Bruce as Doctor Watson. While on board a ship bound for Algiers, Doctor Watson recounts the story of the giant rat of Sumatra to his fellow passengers. 

More recently there was a reference to the giant rat in the BBC television series Sherlock. The episode titled The Empty Hearse features a London Underground station named Sumatra Road.

The fossilised remains of seven new species of giant rat were uncovered on the island of East Timor in 2015. Among these was a fossil of the largest rat that ever lived. This weighed a massive 5 kilos, (11 pounds) in size it would have been comparable to a small dog. News stories at the time of the discovery referred to it as ‘the giant rat of Sumatra.‘

If only Sir Arthur Conan Doyle were still here to write a story about it. What a tale that would be! 

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