Whitechapel, 1888in 3D · Holmes Hub

What is this?

Not a Holmes story. In the autumn of 1888 five women were murdered in these streets; no one was ever convicted. This view shows where they were found, on 11,717 buildings traced from the Ordnance Survey map of the time, over Charles Booth’s poverty map of 1889. Their names and dates are given; the details of the crimes are not.

▶ demo tells it in order of date, and that is where the insight lies: five sites within a single mile, every one of them in the black and dark-blue streets of Booth’s map. Seen in sequence, on the ground, the pattern says more about that autumn than any account of the crimes.

The stories

Read

📖 Read all 87 stories: the sixty by Doyle, his other Holmes pieces and the early parodies, with every place on the map marked in the text.

Told on the map, in 3D

12 stories are told as a flight through the part of London where they happen: the camera goes from place to place, and at every stop you read what happened there, with Doyle’s own words, checked against the text. Tap a title to start that flight.

▶ Or let chance pick one. On the flat map, ▶ demo tells a different story each time.

Told on the flat map, in 2D

49 stories told on the map of 1889 as a whole: a magnifying glass travels from place to place, with Doyle’s words at every stop. Tap a title to start it.

Finds

What reading London house by house turned up: an upholsterer said to have been a duke, Darwin’s son-in-law, a Tolkien in the City, the Queen’s tea. Every stop opens the card of the building, with its source.

Spot the culprit

▶ How soon is the culprit on stage? Measured on 42 stories: where the culprit is first mentioned, and where Holmes unmasks him. The names stay hidden until you ask for them.

Who lived here, 1889

The Post Office Directory of 1889 lists London house by house. These flights colour the houses of six streets by trade; afterwards, click any coloured house to read who lived there.

The books, 1887–1927

  1. 1887A Study in Scarlet
  2. 1890The Sign of the Four
  3. 1892Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
  4. 1894Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes
  5. 1902Hound of the Baskervilles
  6. 1905Return of Sherlock Holmes
  7. 1915The Valley of Fear
  8. 1917His Last Bow
  9. 1927Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes

Conan Doyle’s London

Arthur Conan Doyle wrote most of the Holmes stories without living in London for long. He knew it the way a reader of maps and newspapers knows it, and he used it with remarkable precision, until the moment the story needed a door that did not exist.

A proposition: Doyle’s London is real right up to the moment a crime is committed. Then the address disappears from every map.

Holmes and Watson stroll down Regent Street, cut across Hyde Park, take a cab from Charing Cross, and anyone can follow them there: 155 of the places Doyle names sit exactly where he put them. But look where the deeds are done. Enoch Drebber is found dead at 3 Lauriston Gardens. Eduardo Lucas is murdered at 16 Godolphin Street. The Red-Headed League keeps its office in Pope’s Court, and its victim lives in Saxe-Coburg Square. Neville St Clair vanishes into the Bar of Gold in Upper Swandam Lane. Mycroft Holmes sits in the Diogenes Club, in a Pall Mall that never had one. Not one of these can be found on a map of London. They are among the 83 names on this site that no map knows. Even 221B did not exist: when the first stories appeared, Baker Street’s numbers stopped well short of it.

London sets the stage; the deeds are done behind doors that never existed.

And Booth’s map adds a second reading. Rich and poor lived close together: behind the gold squares of Mayfair ran dark-blue alleys, and in Marylebone red and gold streets lie a few minutes’ walk from black courts. That is exactly Holmes’s city. Doyle has his clients step from one world into the other, sometimes within a single story. He rarely says so. The map does.

Sidney Paget, The Death of Sherlock Holmes, 1893
The Death of Sherlock Holmes. Sidney Paget, The Strand, December 1893. The falls are real; the fall, as Doyle let Holmes explain ten years later, was not. Commons, public domain.

Up for debate

Is that right? Perhaps the invented doors are simply discretion, a doctor’s habit of changing names. Perhaps Doyle did not know London well enough to be exact, and the precision is ours, added after the fact. Or perhaps the gap between the real street and the invented door is precisely what makes the stories feel true. I would like to be argued with: tell me in the comments below.

Further reading

Others have walked these streets long before this map. A few places to go on from here, each of them checked on 30 September 2026:

The societies. The Sherlock Holmes Society of London, founded in 1951, runs walks, talks and the twice-yearly Sherlock Holmes Journal. In New York, The Baker Street Irregulars is the oldest literary society devoted to Holmes; The Beacon Society brings the stories into schools.

On Doyle and the stories. The Arthur Conan Doyle Encyclopedia collects Doyle’s writing, the first editions and the illustrations, and Sherlockian.net is a long-running guide to Holmes scholarship. The texts themselves are free at Project Gutenberg.

On Victorian London. Lee Jackson’s Dictionary of Victorian London gathers what Londoners of the time wrote about their own city; The Victorian Web covers the century around it.

The maps. Charles Booth’s London at the LSE has the poverty maps and the notebooks behind them; Layers of London and MAPCO lay other old maps of the city side by side.

Books. Michael Harrison, In the Footsteps of Sherlock Holmes (1958), one of the first books to go looking for the London of the stories; Thomas Bruce Wheeler, The London of Sherlock Holmes (2011), more than 400 sites in Greater London, grouped by Underground station; Rose Shepherd, Sherlock Holmes’s London (2016), a guidebook for walking it today. And to stand in the rooms: the Sherlock Holmes Museum in Baker Street, which carries the number 221B.

The maps

▣ See them full screen, one by one →

Underneath the places lie four old maps and one street network, all from the years in which Doyle was writing. Press K (or the map button) to cycle through them: Booth 1889, the Ordnance Survey, Booth 1898–99, Bacon’s map, and none. On a phone, pick one from the dropdown. Below, for each map: where it comes from, what it is made of, and what was done to it here. The five pictures show the same few streets between Marylebone and Oxford Street, so you can compare them.

None of these maps was drawn to fit a modern street plan. Old surveys are slightly stretched, sheets were scanned at a tilt, paper shrinks. Every sheet was therefore fitted to the street network of 1889: first as a whole (position, scale and a slight rotation), then, for the Booth and Bacon maps, patch by patch, by sliding small windows of the map until its streets lie on the known streets. The remaining error is measured on those windows and given below as the median and the 90th percentile.

The streets of 1889

The street network of 1889 around Marylebone
The base: every street that existed in 1889.
Source
OpenHistoricalMap, a volunteer map of the past
Made of
5,241 street segments and 388 railway lines whose start date is 1889 or earlier and that had not yet gone
Used for
the dark map you see without an old map, and the yardstick every old sheet is fitted to

Charles Booth, 1889

Booth's poverty map of 1889 around Marylebone
Booth 1889: gold for the wealthy, black for the poorest.

Charles Booth, a Liverpool shipowner turned social investigator, had London walked street by street and coloured every street by the means of the people living in it.

Map
Descriptive Map of London Poverty, 1889
Source
Wellcome Collection, CC BY 4.0
Made of
four sheets (north-west, south-west, north-east, south-east), with their printed borders cut away
Fitted
to the 1889 streets, window by window; remaining error about 5 m
Covers
from Kensington to Limehouse, and from Islington to Kennington
Lowest class vicious, semi-criminalVery poor casual, chronic wantPoor 18s. to 21s. a weekMixed some comfortable, others poorFairly comfortable good ordinary earningsMiddle class well-to-doUpper-middle and upper wealthy

The Ordnance Survey, 1869–1880

The Ordnance Survey 1:2500 around Marylebone
The Ordnance Survey: every house drawn.

The Ordnance Survey’s town plans at 1:2500 are so detailed that every house is drawn. The 3D buildings are traced from these same sheets, so the buildings and the sheet match by construction.

Map
Map of the City of London and its Environs, 1:2500, surveyed 1869–1880
Source
Wikimedia Commons, public domain (the National Library of Scotland has the full series)
Made of
16 sheets, numbers 024–027, 033–036, 042–045 and 053–056: from Marylebone and Bloomsbury to the City, and south over Westminster, Lambeth and Southwark
Fitted
sheet by sheet (position, scale and a rotation of up to a degree) to the 1889 streets and OpenStreetMap; the edges of each sheet fade out and are mirrored outward, so neighbouring sheets merge without a seam

Charles Booth, 1898–99

Booth's poverty map of 1898-99 around Marylebone
Booth 1898–99: the same colours, ten years on, with churches and street names.

Ten years on, Booth’s team walked London again, this time with the police on their beat, and printed a second poverty map. It reaches further than the first: Hampstead, Hammersmith, Greenwich. The colours mean the same, so you can see a street rise or fall in a decade.

Map
Map Descriptive of London Poverty, 1898–99, 6 inches to the mile (1:10,560)
Source
LSE Library, via Wikimedia Commons; no known copyright restrictions
Made of
all 12 sheets
Fitted
per sheet, first as a whole, then window by window; median error 3–6 m per sheet, 90th percentile 9–16 m
Gaps
where Booth printed no sheet, Bacon’s map fills in underneath

Bacon’s map, 1880s

Bacon's map of the 1880s around Marylebone
Bacon: less detail, but all of Greater London on one sheet.

A commercial map rather than a survey, but the only one here that shows Upper Norwood, Norbury and Streatham as Holmes knew them.

Map
Bacon’s New Ordnance Map of London and Suburbs, G. W. Bacon, 1880s
Source
Bibliothèque nationale de France, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain
Made of
one sheet, from Willesden to Woolwich and down to Croydon
Fitted
first from the map’s own half-mile grid and the Royal Observatory at Greenwich, then in 258 windows; median error 6 m, 90th percentile 15 m

3D and the demo

Four districts can be flown through in 3D, on all four maps. On the flat map the ▶ demo travels across London and lifts a circle of the old map at every stop: the Ordnance Survey where it covers the place, otherwise Booth.

About me

The first case. I was eight. London, a family holiday, and somewhere very close to Baker Street. I knew exactly who lived a few streets away, and I asked to go. My parents, reasonable people with a day already planned, said no. A reasonable answer. Not, to an eight-year-old, an acceptable one.

So I did what Holmes would have done. I kept my own counsel, and I went. Nobody saw me go. One street, then another, then the number itself: 221B. And a small boy standing in front of it for as long as an eight-year-old can stand still, which is not long, but long enough.

Then came the problem every runaway discovers too late: the way back. I worked out a cunning detour that would, by pure deduction, deliver me exactly to wherever my parents would be. It had no business working. London is very large, and I was very small. And yet, at the turn of one corner, there they were. Furious, and frightened, and entitled to be both. I have rarely been happier. I had seen 221B.

The vault

That walk went on through a lifetime of London, Holmes, computers and, later, AI. Behind this map sits my vault: a personal knowledge base of plain-text notes in Obsidian that works as a second brain. The stories, the sources, every correction and every decision about this map live there. The canon is cut into passages and stored in Qdrant, a vector database, so each place can be matched to the sentence in which Doyle mentions it, by meaning rather than by keyword.

The idea, and the thinking behind how it is built, are mine; the machines did the tracing. It is a hobby project and still a little rickety here and there. Not your thing? No hard feelings.

Martijn Krop · The Holmes Hub
Write to me: martijn.krop [at] gmail.com
Corrections, sources I have missed, and ideas are all welcome.

Manual

You made it to the manual. Holmes would call that a promising sign; most visitors never get past the map, and that is fine too, because the map works the moment it opens. But almost everything here can be set to your liking: which places you see and how they look, which map of the time lies underneath, how the demo runs, how the stories read. This page tells you what every button does, briefly. It is, after all, the little things that are infinitely the most important.

The flat map

Dots are the places Doyle names; bigger means named more often. Hover for a preview, click for the card with Doyle’s own sentence, photos and every story that mentions it. Tap or click an empty spot to close the card.

Choose a story (top left) shows only that story’s London and zooms until all its places are in view. Hovering a dot then shows the sentence from that story. Sort the story list next to it: A–Z, most places, most mentions, most spread out, furthest from Baker Street, most Baker Street.

Central / Greater London switches between the centre and the districts further out: Norwood, Norbury, Lee, Blackheath and more.

⤢ overview (bottom right) always brings you back to all the places.

On a phone or tablet, pinch to zoom, on the flat map and in 3D. The small gold dot bottom left clears every menu away, leaving only the map and its pins; tap it again to bring them back.

The category chips (streets, squares, stations, buildings, parks, water, districts) switch groups of places on and off. The list on the left, L to hide it, sorts them by mentions; click one to fly there.

Search

The search box above the map finds everything: the places Doyle names, all 4,090 streets of 1889, even the ones he never mentions, the stories by title, author or year, districts, characters, the names no map has, and every paragraph of every book. Several words must all appear; put a phrase between quotation marks to find it exactly. Accents and apostrophes do not matter: simpsons finds Simpson’s. A street is marked with a gold pin; tap the pin to find the street in the books. A passage opens the story at that paragraph. The library has the same search, with a link back to where you were.

Maps of the time

Press K or the map button to cycle through the old maps: Booth 1889 → Ordnance Survey 1869–80 → Booth 1898–99 → Bacon’s map, 1880s → none. On a phone, pick one from the dropdown. The name of the map appears top left for a few seconds each time you switch. In the … menu, the 1889 slider sets how strongly the old map shows through (Booth 1889, the Ordnance Survey or Booth 1898–99), the Bacon slider does the same for Bacon’s map, and the vault slider sets how strongly our own map of the streets shows. In 3D the same K cycles the old maps under the buildings, and the 1889 and vault sliders in its … menu work the same way.

Full-screen map, in the … menu: one of the four old maps across the whole screen with nothing else in the way. The strip at the bottom switches maps and turns the pins on or off. × or Esc closes it.

The maps is a page of its own for the old maps: one large map of the streets of 1889, and at the bottom the four old maps. Pick one and it flows in under the streets, with a card telling where it comes from, how it was fitted and what AI did and did not do with it. pins shows the places Doyle names, with a card on what they mean, only the map clears the rest away, and on the Ordnance Survey ▲ raise the buildings lifts the buildings of that sheet in 3D, right where you are looking.

3D

▲ 3D opens a district in three dimensions. Q/E rotate, W/S tilt, R reset, N north up, drag to pan, scroll to zoom. Click a light for Doyle’s words, a building for its name and photos. Switch district with the buttons top right, or pick district and map from the … menu; ▼ 2D takes you back to the flat map.

All of London puts every district together: 301,627 buildings from the Ordnance Survey. It is heavy, about 13 MB, so you are asked first; on a phone it runs slowly. Marylebone is the lightest place to start.

3D: legend and keys

Building traced from the Ordnance Survey Gold roof a building with a photo Dark block estimated, where no sheet covers it Light a place Doyle names; bigger means named more often
Q / Erotate
W / Stilt
Rreset the view
Nnorth up
Kthe old maps in turn: Booth 1889, the Ordnance Survey, Booth 1898–99, Bacon, none
Ffull screen
Escstop the demo, leave full screen
scroll or pinchzoom
dragpan
click a lightDoyle’s own sentence
click a buildingits name and photos

Demo

▶ demo runs on its own. On the flat map, a red dot travels across a still London, leaving a trail of ink and a numbered seal at every stop; at each place a circle of the old map lifts off the city, with Doyle’s sentence beside it. On the flat map the demo leaves the full old map out: only the magnifying glass shows it, over our own map. In 3D every demo flies the same way as All of London: the camera turns a little further at every stop, tilts, and circles some of them. Marylebone and Whitechapel tell a story stop by stop, the other districts take a tour past the places and the buildings with photos. At every stop the Ordnance Survey lies half see-through under the streets, or Booth’s map where no survey sheet reaches. You can click any pin while it runs. Press Esc or click the map to stop. F for full screen. The screen stays awake while the demo runs.

Your pins

The … menu top right, on the flat map and in 3D, sets how the places look and the colours of the map, and remembers it on this device:

The stories

Read opens the library: every Holmes story by Doyle, his pieces outside the canon and the early parodies, with the illustrations of the day. Inside a story, a place name links to the map and the map links back to the very paragraph, so you can read with the city open beside you. That trip into the city shows only the magnifying glass over our own map, never the full old map behind it, so it is quick and light on data; a short title card covers the first moment, and ← back to the story works at any time, even while the map is still loading. One tap on the note opens the place’s card. Aa sets the type, ☾ the light.

On a phone

The first time you open Holmes Hub on a phone it starts with a page of A Study in Scarlet beside the map of 1889: Open the books takes you to the library. From there a place in a story is the way into the city, and a light in the city the way back into the story. Open the site a second time, or follow a link to a story or a place, and you land straight on the map.

Read offline

⤓ Offline, in the bar above the map, in the library and on every story (⤓ next to Aa), saves Holmes Hub on your device, so you can read on a plane or anywhere you would rather not spend data. Save this story (its text, pictures and the map), or a pack: Light, every story as text and the map of 1889; Medium, adding the illustrations, photos, Booth’s map and Marylebone in 3D; Heavy, all of London, every old map and every district in 3D. Stop whenever you like: Resume carries on where it left off, and nothing is fetched twice. Remove saved frees the space again. On an iPhone or iPad, add Holmes Hub to your Home Screen first and save from there, or Safari may clear it after a week without a visit.

Everything else

The names London doesn’t know at the bottom are places from the stories that no map has; spot one you can place, and tell us in the comments. When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains must be a real street.

💬 Discuss on RedditShare on Reddit
Greater London ▼ 2D v 03-10, 02:47
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Comments

Corrections, missing places and favourite passages are very welcome. Be kind; comments are moderated.

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