If John Shaw was not at home in Santa Fe with his beloved Dorothy or with his Brothers Three of Moriarty scion friends in Moriarty, there was no other place he would rather be than with his Sherlockian friends at the annual Baker Street Irregulars dinner in New York City. In this photo, John is addressing the BSI Dinner at the Regency Hotel on January 10, 1986.

And here is Shaw holding forth at the Martha Hudson Breakfast that same week in 1986. Sitting beside him is Ann Byerly Marlowe (ASH-1977 “Rachel Howells”). To Ann’s left is George Burroughs (BSI-1964 “Dr. Grimesby Roylott”).

At the 1986 BSI Dinner, Shaw displayed and defended a newly discovered life mask of Sherlock Holmes. It was also at this 132nd anniversary of Holmes’ birth that Julian Wolff announced his retirement from the BSI leadership, naming Tom L. Stix, Jr. as his successor.

(Notes were taken from the BSI Trust website.)

Also, at the 1986 dinner, Julian’s announcement of his retirement was met with dismay and consternation. His brother Ezra, also an Irregular, captured the moment in his traditional morning-after poem recording the dinner’s goings-on:

The Commissionaire said, as he rose,
That his tenure had come to a close.
His hearers, amazed,
Spontaneously raised
A thunderous chorus of noes.

(Comments in italics come from https://www.bsiarchivalhistory.org/BSI_Archival_History/Wolff.html)

In this Friends Section, we will explore the unique relationships that contributed to John Bennett Shaw's lore. When these individuals encountered John and Dorothy, sparks flew, lights went off and on, sirens sounded, drinks and stories were exchanged, and history was made.

This website came about because I had long wanted to share John Bennett Shaw’s story. I first met John and Dorothy at their home in Santa Fe in 1986 and was fortunate enough to visit almost every summer and fall for the next seven years.

After retiring in 2017 and attending Holmes in the Heartland (St. Louis, 2018—my first Sherlockian workshop in 16 years), I decided the time had come to build the website I had in my head. I was encouraged and inspired by several Sherlockians, including Mattias Boström, Tim Johnson, and Brad Keefauver. The first step was a Facebook page where some 120 friends and fans of Shaw (as of April 2024, there are 264 members) signed up and contributed stories, letters, photographs, and other items they had stored away from their long-ago encounters with him. I heard from many Sherlockians who agreed it was time to honor him with recollections of the images and stories that filled his life. The result was the original Facebook page. (Friends of John Bennett Shaw)

Now, on with Friends and their remembrances of John and Dorothy.

Friends who knew John personally are becoming scarce. So many people I would have loved to interview for this website have “gone beyond the Reichenbach.” These names come to mind: Martin Gardner, Paul Herbert (BSI-1977), Gordon Speck (BSI-1986), Michael Harrison (BSI-1964), Ronald De Waal (BSI-1969), and many more. Many of the Baker Street Irregulars counted John as a close friend; some of their stories will be touched on here. (PDF of invested BSI members.)

These recollections abound with facets and characteristics of the John Bennett Shaw we remember and honor. Here, we hope you will find laughter, astonishment, and tears.

Peter E. Blau (BSI-1959 and ASH-1980)
“I never knew Sherlock Holmes, of course. So I want to toast someone I did know, and who deserves to be remembered: John Bennett Shaw. I like to say that he taught me everything I needed to know about being a Sherlockian.”—from a toast to Shaw.

Recently the BSI published a special booklet about Peter E. Blau, “In Honor of the 60th Anniversary of His Investiture in The Baker Street Irregulars.” Much like the Baker Street Journal issue that honored Shaw in 1990, Peter E. Blau: A Festschrift (Leslie Klinger, editor) is a collection of stories written by friends and family (family being his wife, Beverly Wolov, “The Woman”). Stories about Peter Blau and John Shaw are included, especially one by Evelyn Herzog we shall get to momentarily.
But first, a toast to John Shaw.

Late in November of 2018, I asked Peter to contribute anything he wished to the Friends of John Bennett Shaw Facebook page. He shared this:

A Toast to the Best and the Wisest Man Whom I Have Ever Known
(delivered at the request of Michael Quigley at the meeting of
The Diogenes Club of Washington, D.C., on Oct. 20, 2018)

Back to that story by Herzog. . . Peter Blau and John Bennett Shaw will forever be linked in the history of the Baker Street Irregulars. They were the two BSI members who took it upon themselves to help a group of young college women eager to become Irregulars and attend the annual male-only BSI Dinner in New York City. The year was 1968. The group was from Albertus Magnus College in New Haven, Connecticut. Their fearless leader was Evelyn A. Herzog (BSI-1991 ASH).

In her article, “Guide, Philosopher, and Friend,” Evy Herzog recounts the oft-told story of the famous Picket Line Protest outside Cavanagh’s Restaurant on that cold January afternoon in New York City. Shaw and Blau figure prominently in the tale. (To order Peter E. Blau: A Festschrift click here)

Still marching in the arctic wind, we were joined by John Bennett Shaw and Peter Blau (in their shirt sleeves yet!) who lent an ear to our stories, and who then took pity on us and ushered us into the bar, that is, Cavanagh’s public bar, not the one upstairs which was serving those assembled for dinner. We will leave it to the discretion of those two gentlemen to clarify their motives. Did they act out of simple charity, or the urge to find out what was going on down there, or were they prompted by power-that-be to get us off the sidewalk, or was it all three? In any case, JBS agreed to present a statement from ASH (Adventuresses of Sherlock Holmes) following the dinner. Scribbled on a brown paper bag (or a cocktail napkin), it read, “Gentlemen, this is it! We have long been distressed by your apparent reluctance to admit ladies into the BSI. In order to bring our opinion to your attention we have come here, through the bitter chill of winter to ask you to reconsider and bow to the feminine influence. It is not for ourselves that we have come—oh, no! It is for those lovers of Sherlock Holmes everywhere (he did get around a lot). We hope that when you are choosing new members you will give equal consideration to the feminine Irregulars.” (Evelyn Herzog, 1990)

”All in all, JBS provided a short course in how much there was to do and how many places there were to go in the Sherlockian world. Perhaps we, too, in time, could start to follow in his steps—but only if we divided up among the lot of us the tasks that JBS was accomplishing single-handed.” (From the article by Evelyn Herzog entitled “Johannes Magnus” —Baker Street Journal, Dec, 1990)

Recently Steven Doyle has been interviewing significant Sherlockians in an effort to preserve for posterity the “official” record of how our community of devoted fans got to where we are in 2022. One of those unforgettable milestones happened in January 1991 when Tom Stix (Wiggins) decided it was time to break a 57-year tradition of excluding women as members of the The Baker Street Irregulars. The beginning of that 23-year journey, from 1968 to 1991, is recorded in Evelyn Herzog’s words above. Hear now that complete story as told by Evy in an interview with Steven on his Fortnightly Dispatch series. On that historic day she became “The Daintiest Thing Under a Bonnet,” a full member of the BSI.
(38 minute video)

John Shaw tells “his” version of the story.

Not long after I began regular attendance at the annual dinners, I began to present papers. On one occasion I shared the program with Rex Stout, and I noted that we made an interesting trio at the podium: Shaw at some 265 pounds, Rex at about 130 and Julian there the center of all eyes….

At the last dinner held at The Players (and I do not believe that I was the cause of its being the Last Dinner), I delivered my thoughtful paper To Shelve or Censor — on the many obscene passages in the Holmesian Canon, Noting considerable acceptance of my erudite theories on the part of the audience I asked Julian, the Editor, if he would consider publishing it in the JOURNAL. He hesitated, then began by paying me a rather bibliophilian (sic) compliment by saying that my talk “was quite a tail piece,” and then he stated that THE BAKER STREET JOURNAL was unworthy of such a composition.

John continues his story with the Albertus Six affair in 1968.

Certainly my most memorable (and really not regrettable) encounter with Dr. Wolff, Editor, Commissionaire, Leader, was at the 5 January 1968 dinner. I was by some quirk of fate acting as an “adviser” (a concept utterly ridiculous) to a group of Sherlockian women, all students at Albertus Magnus College in New Haven, Connecticut, banded together as “The Adventuresses of Sherlock Holmes.” And on that cold January night in 1968, six of these scholars deployed outside Cavanaugh’s Restaurant on West 23rd Street and, Heaven Help Us!, they picketed the BSI as being unfair to women. The first I knew of this, that they had lived up to their threat to defy custom, propriety, the laws of the City and our sacrosanct all-male literary society, was that a very red-faced, apoplectic, excited, and angry Julian Wolff said, “Shaw, your [bleep] girls are downstairs … do something!” I did, of course, for who can withstand a Wolff angered? I recruited my friend Peter Blau, an eligible bachelor (to save research: he still is), and we hastened to the scene of the crime. And it appeared so, for a nicely-spoken policeman (much nicer in speech than Wolff to Shaw) told the ladies that they could not picket without a parade permit. One of them rummaged through a purse and came out with a letter signed by Mayor John Lindsey giving them permission to parade. It was a stand-off, an open rebellion, a shocking reversal of roles, for it was women getting the attention, not the erudite gentlemen upstairs drinking away. Reason in the person of Shaw-Blau prevailed, and the six cold coeds were brought into the bar, warming liquid was purchased, and the then-flustered Shaw agreed to read a statement to the assembly. I still have this in my file, and it reads:

“To Whom It May Concern. The A.S.H. wish to announce that, while not forsaking their noble quest
for the admission of ladies to the B.S. I., they will graciously refrain from any public display
that might be a cause of embarrassment to this august body. But we still want in!”

That message was read and booed, and to this day I catch Julian looking not pleasantly askance at me. Almost I feel that while I am not branded with a Scarlet A, I carry a brand that reads A.S.H.

It should be recounted that the next year they again returned and attempted to crash the Cocktail Party, which precedes the dinner. They were rebuffed, and I spent the rest of the evening vainly trying to look small and be unnoticed. (Baker Street Journal Vol. 36, No. 1, pp 88-89) 
[End of Shaw quote.]

The stories surrounding that entire episode are too involved to tell here, but according to “Evy,” there are three accounts of that evening when six young female college students marched with signs of protest: Blau has one account, Shaw has another, and Evy has one. Each differs in detail. Shaw is recorded as saying, “Ours are better.”

We have already mentioned the connection between John Shaw and some of the women who were invested in the Baker Street Irregulars by Tom Stix at the 1991 BSI Dinner. Three of those women are mentioned here in the Friends section of this website: Evelyn Herzog (“The Daintiest Thing Under a Bonnet”), Edith Meiser (“A Fascinating and Beautiful Woman”), and Susan Rice (“Beeswing”).

We must include Katherine McMahon (“Lucy Ferrier”), one of those people who received the crossword puzzle sent out by Christopher Morley in 1934 as an invitation to the first BSI Dinner if you completed the puzzle correctly. McMahon completed the puzzle correctly, but she was not extended an invitation because she was a woman. Tom Stix broke that tradition and made things right by granting full membership in the BSI to these women and others. John Bennett Shaw, as the BSI “Simpson,” had the honor of giving Katherine McMahon her investiture in Santa Fe while Stix was announcing the new investiture in New York in 1991.
(For more on the 1934 BSI Dinner, see “ABORIGINALS”- The Earliest Baker Street Irregulars, 1934-1940 by Harrison and Linda Hunt. McMahon is mentioned in Chapter IV, The Crossword Puzzle Solvers, pp. 193-241)

Susan Rice was, well, Susan Rice. There was no one like her. I met Susan and Mickey Fromkin at my first William Gillette Luncheon in New York City in 1988 and immediately fell under their spell. They were inseparable, and the love between them was obvious. Even today, Mickey goes by ricefromkin in her email client.

This website began as a Facebook page—The Friends of John Bennett Shaw, but Susan would have nothing to do with Facebook, stating flatly that she “didn’t care for how they effortlessly used the term friend.” Other (real) friends and acquaintances of John Shaw said they would have nothing to do with Facebook either, and if I wanted them to see what I was doing to honor JBS, I would have to put up a website. That was my next step. Once the website “went live,” Susan was one of the first to send her congratulations. Her words have encouraged me so much ever since the day I opened her email.

Susan penned this poem to help celebrate one of John’s favorite stories, The Blue Carbuncle. I include it here with permission from Mickey Fromkin, to whom Susan was married for many years.

John Shaw had so many friends there isn’t room in this format to list but a few. One of those we cannot leave out is Susan Rice (BSI-1991, “Beeswing”-2s, ASH). As noted in the Library section of this website, Susan was the co-author, along with Vin Brosnan, of The Sage of Santa Fe in 2013. She was a favorite member of every group she joined and was one of the first women to be accepted into the Baker Street Irregulars. She and Evelyn Herzog (BSI-1991 “Daintiest Thing Under a Bonnet”, ASH) were in the group of women that Tom Stix, Jr. invited to be Irregulars in 1991.

”In 1991, Stix made an announcement that would change the BSI forever. At the BSI’s annual Cocktail Reception on the Saturday of the BSI Weekend, he announced that he had some investitures to make. The investitures included six women, and the BSI has been co-ed ever since.” (BSI Trust website, Evolution of the BSI. https://bakerstreetirregulars.com/bsi-history/)

According to Roger Johnson and his wife Jean Upton in their book The Sherlock Holmes Miscellany (The History Press, 2012. www.thehistorypress.co.uk), Susan had this to say about the event,
“Wiggins had not only unlocked the door—he had kicked it open! History was being made before our eyes. The BSI was truly open at last. Just to be certain that nobody could misinterpret what had happened this day, Wiggins added, “I want to make it plain that these are full investitures, with all the rights and privileges thereof.”’ (pp. 170-71)

(The following paragraph is from the article Evelyn Herzog wrote in remembrance of Susan Rice. Reading it, you will discover the wonderful and talented lady many of us knew and loved. For the complete article, follow the link given below. Originally published in The Serpentine Muse, Managing Editor: Evelyn A. Herzog, 301 Warren Ave., #203, Baltimore, MD 21230, and is here published with permission.)

In Memoriam Susan Rice
by Evelyn Herzog
The Serpentine Muse, Vol. 36, No. 4 (10/28/2020)

On September 28, 2020, the world lost an outstanding Sherlockian, Susan Rice.  ASH lost one of its dearest members, invested in 1981 as “Practical Handbook of Bee Culture, with Some Observations Upon the Segregation of the Queen.”  She leaves behind her loving wife, ASH Mickey Fromkin, as well as uncounted friends.
The product of a loving, intellectual, and humorous family of teachers who gave Susan her first Canon, she initially encountered Sherlockians in Detroit through a chance meeting with R.G. Harris of the Amateur Mendicant Society.  He encouraged her enthusiasm and introduced her to Russell McLauchlin and Bill Rabe, and later, Gene Leeb.
She took up teaching and formed a Sherlockian students club, The Trifling Monographs.  Each member chose a name from one of Holmes’ writings, and Susan claimed for her title Holmes’ magnum opus, which later would become her ASH investiture.  Some of those students remained her lifelong friends.
(download the full pdf)

An Unforgettable Interview
An Important Announcement

July 7, 1983 — Minneapolis, MN
An interview of actress and writer Edith Meiser (BSI - 1991) by the Sherlockian collector John Bennett Shaw at the University of Minnesota. The interview is introduced by Dr. C. Paul Martin, a member of the local Sherlockian group The Norwegian Explorers. Other comments are offered by E. W. McDiarmid, in recognition of Edith Meiser, and by Austin McLean, then curator of Special Collections & Rare Books. As part of McLean's comments it is announced that the John Bennett Shaw Collection will come to the University of Minnesota and that Shaw has been named a senior fellow by the Regents of the University.

Link to the interview (Length is 1:19:27)

Corresponding with Friends

Countless Sherlockians received personal notes from Shaw, typed on the famous Smith-Corona Selectric typewriter John kept beside his desk. His notes and letters went literally around the world. For a time, he was Simpson (Secretary) for the Baker Street Irregulars, a position now held by Peter Blau. John took his job seriously and did his best to knit Sherlockian fans together into a homogeneous group. Georgia Shaw, John’s daughter-in-law, shared with us that “he was the fastest two-fingered typist I ever saw!”

When beginning the Friends of John Bennett Shaw Facebook page, I worked closely with Steven Rothman, editor of the Baker Street Journal. One day I received a message from him and a picture of a pin he thought would be appropriate for a society honoring John Bennett Shaw. He discovered it on the Harry Ransom Center website in Austin, Texas, where you can also peruse a fabulous showcase of Beeton’s Christmas Annual.

Tim Johnson, curator at the UMN Special Collections Library, and I had researched background on Shaw’s typewriter, comparing photos from his library with images of typewriters now out of style. This post at the Friends of JBS, typed in Special Elite font, is what we concluded had to be right.

This roster of friends would not be complete without highlighting John’s dear friends, Saul and Anne-Lise Cohen. The Shaw’s moved from Tulsa to Santa Fe in 1970 just about the time the Cohen’s moved there from Los Angeles. Saul, an attorney, had represented famous Hollywood stars in his star-studded career in Los Angeles. Now he was ready for a more relaxed life-style. His wife Anne-Lise Engle Cohen, a native of Copenhagen, was quite the match for Saul. Her resume included study at the University of Copenhagen and the Sorbonne in Paris, with a PhD from UCLA in Romance Languages. She was the acting architect for their beautiful adobe home near Tesuque, NM. There was no field that Anne-Lise couldn’t tackle and master.
(Image of Saul Cohen-copyright by Genevieve Russell, StoryPortrait Media of Santa Fe, NM)

When I met Saul in September of 2019, it had barely been two months since the passing of his dear Anne-Lise who died of natural causes at the age of 90. He was very gracious to talk with me and Jon Lellenberg for three hours about John Shaw and the scion society they formed around the village of Moriarty, NM, in 1971—the Brothers Three of Moriarty. Three years later, in May of 2022, I made a return visit to Saul’s home near Tesuque for a very specific purpose: he was gifting me with his B3M lapel pin, in my mind, and extraordinarily kind gesture. Please watch this short video about that event.

Steak Tonga and Devil’s Foot Lentil Soup

As John Shaw entered into the life of Santa Fe he made friends with whom he could make headlines, especially in The Santa Fe New Mexican. John and friend Saul Cohen decided to enter the March of Dimes Cook-off to help with fundraising, giving it a definite Sherlockian twist.

The Santa Fe New Mexican newspaper.
(January 27, 1982)
Steak Tonga. By ROSANNA HALL

Two Santa Fe cooks who will participate in the Gourmet Gala on Friday have taken a clue from Sherlock Holmes and will prepare Devil’s Foot Lentil Soup, named after a Holmes mystery novel. Meanwhile, they’re sharing the recipe for Steak Tonga [Not included in this excerpt], a Sherlock-inspired recipe to be eaten as evidence. John Bennett Shaw and Saul Cohen prepare to investigate Steak Tonga, a dish adapted from the great British detective Sherlock Holmes novels, stimulates the imagination as well as the appetite of the 20th century. In the mysteries about crime in 19th century England, Holmes described his taste for French food as art in the blood.

Shaw and Cohen, Sherlock Holmes mystery book experts, kneaded raw ground beef as they talked one day recently in Shaw’s kitchen about Victorian British cooking. The two will prepare another dish called Devil’s Foot Lentil Soup as contestants in the Gourmet Gala, a March of Dimes fund-raising event, at 7 p.m. Friday in Sweeney Center.

The lentil soup recipe, taken from the cookbook Dining with Sherlock Holmes by Julia Carlson Rosenblatt and Frederic H. Sonnenschmidt, was named Devil’s Foot, Shaw said, because it is a dangerous concoction. It was named after a Holmes mystery called Adventures (sic) of the Devil’s Foot, about a Dr. Leon Sterndale who poisoned people by placing an African poison called Devil’s Foot on lamps. When the lamps heated, a deadly poison was emitted into the room. Shaw’s fascination with Holmes is lifelong. In the 1930s, he began to build a library of every book written about Holmes. Today, he has a library of 25,000 items with every book ever written on the subject. (End of The Santa Fe New Mexican article.)

When the March of Dimes Celebrity Cookbook was published the editor didn’t get the joke and changed the Devil’s Foot to Devil’s Food. That makes it even funnier.

Later, in 1982, Linda Brandt sent a memo to advertise a John Shaw lecture on the campus of the University of Minnesota on July 20th at 1:30 PM. Tim Johnson, the Sherlock Holmes Collections curator, sent us a copy of that memo. Notice that Devil’s Foot Lentil Soup is mentioned.

What happened in Santa Fe did not always stay in Santa Fe; Shaw used it to his advantage
whenever he could.

Holiday Greetings
The Cards

The Shaw’s sent greeting cards every Christmas, most often with a Sherlockian theme built into the message. The one below, from 1989, uses the “Blue Carbuncle” story, which is always a favorite of Sherlockians at Christmas because of the opening line, “I had called upon my friend Sherlock Holmes upon the second morning after Christmas, with the intentions of wishing him the compliments of the season.” (Click image below to read Shaw’s explanation about the first Christmas greeting from Santa Fe, NM.)

The 1971 Christmas card (below), sent by John and Dorothy from their new home in Santa Fe, incorporated a crossword puzzle designed by Dorothy. It was reminiscent of the crossword designed by Christopher Morley’s brother in 1934 as an invitation to join the newly formed Baker Street Irregulars.

One more greeting card from John and Dorothy, this one for 1992, a year after the first women were invested as Baker Street Irregulars. It seems, on the surface to be about the Hound of the Baskervilles, but it’s not that simple. He was actually protesting the negative reaction by some of the BSI members who were not yet ready for females to become “Irregulars”. Shaw explains his “devious” intent on the back of the card, “I have selected the happy lady and the sad dog to suggest that the female is off to join The Baker Street Irregulars and that the grumpy hound depicts the minority of the members of this unusual organization who have been disturbed by the change in policy.” He really was a champion for women—ahead of his time.
(See this story from the Baker Street Irregular Trust website regarding Tom Stix Jr. at a cocktail party in 1991 announcing that women would now have full privileges in the organization.)

Inspired for a Lifetime

Steven Doyle (BSI-1996 “The Western Morning News”, 2 Shilling award in 2010) shared a letter sent by John congratulating him on his publication, The Sherlock Holmes Review (1987). Shaw was forever encouraging the quality of scholarship Doyle had put into this new publication. Steven’s comments, accompanying his post at the JBS Facebook page, gives some important background about Shaw’s letter of praise. (see below).

“Having a day off after Thanksgiving gives me welcomed time to work in my Sherlockian library. While I was looking for something else I ran across this. . .a letter from John Bennett Shaw dated 16 July 1987, sent in response to his having received the second issue of THE SHERLOCK HOLMES REVIEW. For context, before Wessex Press/Gasogene Books, before publishing the BSJ, before From Gillette to Brett, before SHERLOCK HOLMES FOR DUMMIES, there was SHR. The first issue came out a mere 9 years after that first Shaw conference at Notre Dame and my in-person encounter with JBS. Not a coincidence. I was 26 years old. I can say with certainty that my 30+ years Sherlockian publishing career has its roots in the early encouragement of John Bennett Shaw. So when I got this letter, with its kind praise followed by the chatty words about his personal health, his upcoming seminar in Williamsburg and Stanford, and some snarky Sherlockian gossip, it felt like, again, the kind of peer-to-peer conversation a young ambitious Sherlockian craved. At the time I knew few, if any, Sherlockians outside of my own local Indiana scene. There’s a reason I hung onto this letter.” (Shared here with the permission of Steven Doyle.)

Very recently Steven Doyle reminisced about his first Sherlock Holmes Review.

It's funny how things come back to you. At hand is a copy of THE SHERLOCK HOLMES REVIEW, Vol. 1, No. 1 that was encountered in a used book store. There was no way it could be left behind, so it came home with me. This modest publication was my very first foray into Sherlockian publishing. I have been contemplating it, and the memories it brings…this was certainly stuffed into an envelope, addressed, and mailed by me 32 years ago out of the Bloomington, Indiana apartment my wife Pam and I were living in after getting married. I was 26 years old, and just decided to publish a Sherlockian quarterly. My inspiration was THE BAKER STREET JOURNAL and THE BAKER STREET MISCELLANEA. SHR had a ten-year run, and in its day published on a national and international level. It was called by one critic "the last of the great Sherlockian periodicals."
The first issue was printed in a run of 100 copies, was professionally typeset, and featured art direction by my then-partner Charlie Largent (some of you will recognize that name…he went on to much greater things). The SHR logo on the front cover was by him, and is still, to this day, one of the greatest artistic renderings of Sherlock Holmes. Of course, this was done way before desktop publishing, and that meant typeset galleys, art boards with blue line guides, rubber cement and paste up…a real, literal labor of love. And then, to our great but happy shock….it sold out in a matter of three weeks. And everything I've done since…publishing books for The Illustrious Clients of Indianapolis, Wessex Press/Gasogene Books, publishing the BSJ (something I would have never dreamed of back then)…all of it, started right here, with this. 
And lately, I've been thinking it's probably getting time for THE SHERLOCK HOLMES REVIEW, in some form, to make a return. . .

Extended Stay(s) — Tulsa and Santa Fe
The Universal Sherlock Holmes

Shaw influenced many lives with his enthusiasm for Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes. In the case of Ronald Burt De Waal, the reverse was true. De Waal had a tremendous effect on John’s life, the importance of which John explains in his Foreword to The Universal Sherlock Holmes (see below).

De Waal’s funeral service program is pictured here in two parts, Top and Bottom.

Ron De Waal attended the B3M meetings as often as he could. This Santa Fe news clipping mentions his new book, The World Bibliography of Sherlock Holmes, published in 1974. John Shaw had lots of educating to do about his scion society and the Baker Street Irregulars, of which he and De Waal were members. The newspaper erroneously states that the BSI was formed in London when it was actually begun by Christopher Morley in New York in 1934.

John Shaw’s Foreword from The Universal Sherlock Holmes
(copyrighted 1994 by Ronald Burt De Waal and George Vanderburgh)

I am interested in Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and the world in which they live. So what do I do? I obtain as many books, pamphlets, periodicals, Holmes society publications, video and audio tapes, and other material such as statues, puzzles, plaques, T-shirts, mugs, and even a Professor Moriarty toilet seat as I can. When a person becomes interested (in my case, fascinated) in a subject, he/she needs guidelines, help, and references about sources of information on the subject. And if Sherlock Holmes is the subject, the person needs, nay, must have a bibliography. And that leads to Ronald Burt De Waal and his massive compilations.

Let us begin at the beginning. I have been a reader of the Sherlock Holmes stories since childhood. Later, after college, I made a simple (and how rash!) decision to collect Sherlockiana. And now, after five decades, I am still acquiring, reading, and shelving this material.

Twenty-seven years ago at a Baker Street Irregulars' dinner on West 23rd Street in New York City I met a young man who said, "I am Ron De Waal and I plan to compile a world bibliography on Sherlock Holmes." I thought, "He is mildly insane," and then, "Good heavens, I hope he does it." The outcome of this chance meeting led De Waal to spending ninety-seven days (and by `day' I mean a full twelve hours) in my library working on his bibliographical project.

He visited several times when I lived in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and then many times in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Further, there have been countless letters and phone calls. It seems we are a good pair: I am a blotter-type collector and he is obsessed with listing and describing it all.

Ronald De Waal and his prodigious and ambitious literary project are a success — for him a triumph; for me a justification for being a one-subject collector. It is De Waal who made my efforts worthwhile.

This new edition is an astounding source of information. "Never," as Christopher Morley wrote, "has so much been written by so many for so few." The bibliography contains entries (many include more than one item), which in some way relate to the Great Detective and Conan Doyle and their numerous friends everywhere.

Sherlock Holmes lives and continues to thrive because of the genius of Conan Doyle (often referred to as Dr. Watson's Literary Agent) and of scholars like De Waal. The accounts of Holmes and Watson, as well as the writings of the imitators and commentators, will always be read and enjoyed. And the pleasure of these readers will be enhanced and encouraged by Ronald De Waal's efforts. This is a most enduring scholarly production.

As a reader and collector of the printed word, I can never thank Ron enough for his incredible contribution, foresight, and energy to the cause of "keeping green the memory of the Master Detective." 
John Bennett Shaw, BSI
"The Hans Sloane of My Age"
October 10, 1993

Too much of a good thing? Friends who knew the relationship between De Waal and Shaw have shared with me that, at times, De Waal would become the unwelcomed guest, staying far too many days in a row and working on his bibliography much too long into the night. His obsessiveness, now and then, put the Shaw family on edge. The tension never came to the point of breaking the friendship, but it was a nagging inconvenience from time to time. The note below, written the year before John’s death in October 1994, hints at the love and admiration De Waal had for the Shaws.

Don Hobbs (BSI 2012 - Inspector Lestrade) shares his story of becoming a Sherlockian when he visited John’s annual “UN-Happy Birthday, you bastard, Moriarty” party in 1991, and stays up all night talking about it with Ronald De Waal.

From London, a Note on John Shaw’s Passing (Oct 3, 1994)

Soon after John Shaw’s death, letters of condolence began to pour in from all over the globe. Roger Johnson, a long-standing member of The Sherlock Holmes Society of London and former editor of the Society’s newsletter (The District Messenger), posted a notice of John’s passing in the newsletter, then wrote a touching article for the Sherlock Holmes Journal.

Let me take a brief pause here to share the remarkable career of Roger Johnson and Jean Upton. They are husband and wife, and their story is highlighted here by Roger.

I'm a retired librarian. Jean is also retired, but her career has encompassed a remarkable range of jobs, in her native America and in England. For several years she lived and worked in Hollywood, where she was introduced to the Masquers Club by Stan Laurel's son-in-law; she's now an honorary life member. We met through the Sherlock Holmes Society of London, and we think ours was the first transatlantic Sherlockian marriage. Dame Jean Conan Doyle was an honoured guest at our wedding in 1992. We're both entitled to put "BSI" and "ASH" after our names (I am, as far as I know, the only British-based male Adventuress of Sherlock Holmes). For more than 25 years we have been semi-official custodians of Holmes & Watson's sitting-room at the famous Sherlock Holmes pub in London. We share our small Edwardian house with several thousand books and three cats, named Mehitabel, Benedict, and Nicholas.

Shown here with Steven Moffat (co-creator of the television series Sherlock), Roger and Jean published The Sherlock Holmes Miscellany in 2012.

JOHN BENNETT SHAW, 1913-1994

It was my good fortune to come to Holmesiana through correspondence with an American, and from the start I found myself almost as frequently in contact with Sherlockians in the United States as with Holmesians in the United Kingdom. One of the first, with a friendly and encouraging letter, was John Bennett Shaw.

He was chatty, humorous, wise and convivial, and he appreciated the value of Sherlock Holmes as an inspiration for friendship. Eventually, we met in the mid-1970s, when John attended our Society’s annual dinner. He could have spent his time with the senior members, most of whom he knew, but he chose to chat with me, to introduce me to his wife, Dorothy, and their guest, John Gardner.

John Bennett Shaw collected Sherlock Holmes, with all the discrimination of a vacuum-cleaner (his phrase, not mine). A whole room at the house in Santa Fe was given over to the library; it would probably have been a bedroom in any normal household. In fact, when I visited the Shaw’s during my first trip to the United States in 1980, I was told that the library had to double as a guest bedroom. John actually apologised. I don’t think he realised that many people would have paid for the opportunity to sleep in that room.

The Shaw library now forms a part of what must be the largest public collection of its kind, at the University of Minnesota. The books and other items were sent on their way last year, in an appropriate 221 boxes, but even after they’d gone, John never stopped collecting, and his enthusiasm never waned. His investiture in the Baker Street Irregulars was “The Hans Sloane of My Age”, and we were delighted that he could find the time and energy to contribute an essay on “The Significance of Hans Sloane” to the Society’s book Back to Baker Street.

He was a large man, both physically and spiritually. His open generosity embraced all devotees of Sherlock Holmes and Arthur Conan Doyle. It didn’t even matter, I suspect, whether they were sincere; what mattered was that he was sincere. He was the ideal person to encourage the formation of Holmesian groups, large or small (Shaw’s Formula is famous: all you need for a Sherlockian society is two Sherlockians and a bottle – and at a pinch you can do without one of the Sherlockians).

He also approved the affiliation of groups to the Baker Street Irregulars as official scion societies. Jean’s experience was typically enthusiastic and hilarious when she began The Occupants of the Full House – which, as the only English-based BSI scion transplanted from the United States, is now something of a living and lively memorial to John Bennett Shaw.

In August, John suffered a severe heart attack. He seemed to be recovering well, but on Sunday 2nd October, just a week before his 81st birthday, he was struck by another and died instantaneously.

To John Bennett Shaw all Sherlockians were friends, and those friends will miss him, for his knowledge, his humour, and his kindness. There was no-one else quite like him.

ROGER JOHNSON
 The Sherlock Holmes Journal
Winter 1994

When Roger sent us his article about John Shaw in The Sherlock Holmes Journal, he prefaced it with this personal note.

What isn't mentioned there is that on just one occasion I dreamed about meeting him again after a gap of more than ten years. I remember telling him what a pleasure it was to see him looking well and like his old self.

The following day we had the news that John had died during the night. I like to think that he had made a point of coming to say goodbye to an old friend.

Peter Blau reports on Shaw’s passing in his Spermaceti Press Scuttlebutt issue, October 1994.

Soon after John Shaw died in October 1994, the French artist Jean-Pierre Cagnat produced an indelible memory in art. Sherlock Holmes supposedly met his death in a duel with Moriarty at the Reichenbach Falls in Switzerland. Sherlockians refer to the event as going beyond the Reichenbach. Cagnat’s image shows Holmes greeting his old friend, John Bennett Shaw, as he steps through the falls.

And just as Holmes was resurrected by Conan Doyle, we hope to keep alive the spirit of Shaw with this website.

The image is published in Jean-Pierre Cagnat’s book it is Always a Joy - Around the World of Sherlock Holmes in Fifteen Years, edited by Thierry Saint-Joanis. (Published by Mycroft’s Brother Editions, 2001, Paris)

This record of John Shaw’s life would not be complete without including an article from The Armchair Detective, Fall 1995, lovingly written by Sherry Rose-Bond with illustrations by her husband Scott Bond. It was their farewell letter to John who died on October 3, 1994.

For years Scott was the illustrator for many Sherlockian events, including the annual BSI dinners in New York City. His work is highlighted in the book he produced for The Baker Street Irregulars Press, Art in the Blood (2016), edited by Mark Gagen. This book is indispensable for all Sherlockians seeking to understand the lighter side of the Baker Street Irregulars.
Scott captured the very essence of John Shaw in one fantastic illustration, included in the following article: Report from 221B Baker Street.
(The Bond’s were most gracious in granting permission to reproduce their 1995 article. Their contribution to this website is greatly appreciated.)

Art in the Blood is Sold Out, but you can find details about it here.

A Toast to John Bennett Shaw
by Jim Hawkins

I recently had the honor of toasting John Shaw at a meeting of the Norwegian Explorers scion in Minneapolis, MN. Julie McKuras asked me to toast my mentor, Mr. Shaw, noting that this would be the first and only non-canonical toast given at one of their conferences. The occasion was the “Dark Shadows, Wicked Friends, and Strange Experiences” conference held on August 9 - 11, 2019 at the Graduate Minneapolis hotel. Here is the toast. (A note about Julie McKuras and her kindness towards me. She asked me back in 2002 to write a brief article about my meeting Shaw and his legacy. That article is in the newsletter of the Friends of Sherlock Holmes, Vol. 6, No. 3. From A Little Adobe House to the Sherlock Holmes Collections. Please read.)

I am inserting here the story I wrote about John Shaw in 1999 that appeared on our Nashville Scholars website, now replaced by a newer site. This is the story that editor Julie McKuras saw and then sent me a request to write that story for the Friends of the Sherlock Holmes Collection newsletter. These two images were saved from the website intact.

The Sherlockian stars came together for me in 1984. My wife presented me with Baring-Gould’s Annotated Sherlock Holmes by for my 40th birthday. Before long I found I was more interested in the stories about the stories than I was in reading every story in the canon. I kept seeing references to a man from New Mexico who traveled to New York City every January just to be with some nutty guys calling themselves the Baker Street Irregulars. Turns out they weren’t nuts, but they were highly IRREGULAR!

I kept hearing this John Bennett Shaw guy being interviewed on NPR at this gathering, and I laughed at his quips and quotes about Sherlock Holmes and how he was still alive because no one had ever produced a death certificate, and how people should vote for Sherlock Holmes because you couldn’t trust politicians, and on and on. I got really interested in this wacky world of Holmes. Sounded like a lot more fun than Hemingway.

The very next year I took a job in Nashville that would put me in Santa Fe every summer for two weeks. Here was my chance to meet John Bennett Shaw! Having read up on him I knew, or hoped he wasn’t dangerous. It turns out he was.

He set me on a course that now, at age 75, I am still pursuing. John became my mentor, my encourager, my friend and inspiration for my Holmes passion. Now, after a long hiatus from Sherlockian circles, I have put together a John Bennett Shaw Facebook page and website. It’s like John said of his books; I can’t help myself!

Everyone has a John Shaw story, and everyone is dying to tell theirs. Nearly 200 Shaw fans have now signed onto the Friends of John Bennett Shaw site, sending letters, photos, stories, and programs of events they attended, especially the Sherlock Holmes Weekends he hosted during the 70s and 80s. Stories from the Baker Street Journal and lots of information from the John Bennett Shaw Collections here at the University are included. I am astounded at all I’ve learned about Mr. Shaw!

Susan Rice may have penned the most poignant lines about Shaw when, after receiving her first letter from him, she wrote, “John’s letter puzzled me the first time I read it. It was quite a long letter and he told me things about his kids and Santa Fe and some recent Sherlockian activities and some other Sherlockians he’d heard from — remember this is a letter to a stranger. At the time I thought he was daft, but I came to understand that this sort of approach was typical for the generous Shaw. He simply opened his life and welcomed me in.” (The Sage of Santa Fe: Adventures and Public Life of John Bennett Shaw. Written and compiled by Susan Rice and Vinnie Brosnan. Sherlock in L. A. Press, 2013)

Briefly, I quote three of Shaw’s friends.

Peter Blau. He and John helped rescue a band of protesting college girls off the icy streets of New York City in 1968. They wanted to be included in the BSI, and they weren’t going to take NO for an answer. I checked out this historic bit of trivia with Peter and Evelyn “Evy” Herzog. It was true!

In a toast this past October to John, Peter had this to say, “I never knew Sherlock Holmes, of course. So, I want to toast someone I did know and who deserves to be remembered: John Bennett Shaw. I like to say that he taught me everything I needed to know about being a Sherlockian.”

Then there were these two gentlemen who told me Shaw had influenced their lives when they were teenagers: Steven Doyle and Ray Betzner. 

Steven Doyle encountered John Shaw at the first Sherlock Holmes Workshop, the 1977 weeklong Norte Dame conference.
He says, “I was a teenager in South Bend, Indiana, and attended this conference. I distinctly remember John Bennett Shaw, who took pity on the shy, intimidated boy in the back row during a break, coming back and striking up a conversation about Sherlock Holmes. Not talking at me, or down to me, but instead with me about our mutual love of the Great Detective. It was a foundational experience for me, and every conference I've ever put on (be it Sherlock Holmes Review or “From Gillette to Brett”) has its origin with this epic weekend.”
”I can say with certainty that my 30-plus years Sherlockian publishing career has its roots in the early encouragement of John Bennett Shaw.”

Ray Betzner’s letter to John, written as the introduction to the reprint of The Shaw 100, two years after John died, brings me to tears every time I read it. He writes,
“(Dear John,) I remember one of these workshops well. I was still new to the movement and too impossibly shy to introduce myself to anyone. I had sat in the shadows watching you move about,...working the room like a Chicago politician. And now, here you were, towering over me. ‘Are you doing anything after dinner?’ I looked up from my seat to see you there, a rotund man with your two constant companions: a cocktail in your left hand and a packet of paraphernalia in your right. ‘ A few of us are getting together for drinks in my room. Come join us.’ I followed you up.Your lovely wife, Dorothy, was already there, as were a few others. I sat on the floor of your suite and luxuriated in the camaraderie. The bad puns, the gossip, the spontaneous book reviews, all this and more made me feel as if I was at home among friends.”

So, I toast John Bennett Shaw, “the Sage of Santa Fe,” the “Hans Sloane of His Age,” the “Johnny Appleseed of Sherlockian Scions,” the MAN behind one of the world’s largest private Sherlockian collections ever.

Final Correspondence between John Shaw and Gael Stahl

In June, 2021, Gael Stahl, charter member of the Nashville Scholars of the Three Pipe Problem (Nashville, TN) bequeathed to me a folder of letters between John and himself, written in the early 1990’s. These two men were more than pen pals; both were Catholic and devout; both were avid Sherlockians and interested in the why and how of the history of the Holmes movement in this country. The only time they met was at the Williamsburg John Shaw Weekend (July 24-26, 1987), hosted at the college of William and Mary by Ray Betzner. It turned out that this was to be the only John Shaw Workshop I attended. All my other meetings with him were at 1917 Fort Union Drive in Santa Fe.
[In all cases with these letters, words in bold text have been highlighted by Jim Hawkins, not John Shaw.]

I was fairly new to Nashville, having arrived in 1985, joining the 3-Pipe Problem scion society in 1987. Stahl and I worked in buildings downtown just blocks apart, and we had become friends through the Nashville Scholars meetings. It was from his office that we started the Nashville Scholars website and our discussion group, WelcomeHolmes.

Gael made the event being held in Williamsburg that summer of 1987 sound so interesting that I signed up to go with the 8 members making the trip. I had visited the Shaw’s in Santa Fe the summer of 1986, so I was eager to see my Sherlockian mentor and new friends, John and Dorothy. After all, it was being held on the centennial of the first Sherlock Holmes story, A Study in Scarlet (1887).

The letters Gael gave me answered several questions I had concerning dates not listed in other papers I had read.

1) When were John and Dorothy married? Quoting Dorothy Rowe Shaw from her note to Gael Stahl in 1995, “As you all know, John was a prolific correspondent. Since our marriage in 1970…

There were so many friends to contact and thank for their kindness to John that Dorothy typed a form letter, expressing her thoughts to all, reproduced and personalized it with the recipient’s name written in and her signature at the bottom. In many of the letters she added a personal note.

2) When was the contract signed between John Shaw and the University of Minnesota for his enormous collection? This letter to Gael arrived in Nashville on 10 November 1993. In it John says, I started to write this note three weeks or so ago [around the first of November] but then I completed the deal with U of Minnesota and I started to get my library ready for transfer.

3) When were the books actually transferred to the Wilson Library, leaving John and Dorothy in an “Empty House”? Again, in this letter, On Nov. 1 the movers came and, believe it or not, the books took 221 boxes and art and otherstuff (sic) 50 mpre. (sic)

When Shaw says believe it or not, beware!

John had already prepared his friends for “The Big Move” with his and Dorothy’s 1993 Christmas card. In it Shaw typed, I first sent Sherlockian Holiday Greeting Cards in 1968 and it is fitting that this year’s card, which depicts the departure of my Holmesian collection to The O. Meredith Wilson library of the University of Minnesota this past November, may well be my final one.

I thank my friend and noted artist Jeff Decker BSI for his imaginative representation of The Big Move.

A FINAL LETTER to JOHN BENNETT SHAW

One of the finest writers among the Baker Street Irregulars (IMHO) is Ray Betzner (BSI-1987). He is the author of the Studies in Starrett blog and many articles in the Baker Street Journal, winning the Morley Montgomery Award  in 2007 for his article titled “The Wicked Beginnings of a Baker Street Classic!” Most recently, Betzner contributed “A Book and the Story It Tells” to Peter E. Blau — A Festschrift (Published by The Baker Street Journal, 2019)

Written as the introduction to The Shaw 100 two years after John “passed beyond the Reichenbach,” Betzner’s letter to John captures the essence of friendship that existed not only between Ray and John but between countless others who spent time with him. As you read this letter, consider your friendship with John Bennett Shaw and give thanks.

In October 1995, the John Bennett Shaw Collection was dedicated at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. The greatest gathering of John and Dorothy’s friends made their way to Minneapolis to honor and dedicate his collection, making it available to all who wished to visit, in person or online. Here are some images from that program. John often spoke fondly of bookseller Enola Stewart. She was very gracious to sign my program at this meeting.

Rephrasing Mark Twain, “Persons attempting to find a motive (substitute scholarship) in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral (substitute completeness) in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot (substitute personal aggrandizement) in it will be shot.”

This seems like a good place to sign off the website for now.
My goal is to keep adding to the site as visitors come here to meet again,
or for the first time, “The Sage of Santa Fe” —John Bennett Shaw.

TULSA to SANTA FE LIBRARY WORKSHOPS FRIENDS