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The Adventure of the Engineer's Thumb - a Sherlock Holmes Short Story
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The Adventure of the Engineer's Thumb (The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes)
Discussion Questions
1) Why do you think that the repeated note of Mr. Hatherley being both an orphan and a bachelor is significant, despite the fact that it was never explained in the story?
2) Why was Holmes interested in the horse? How did this aid him in discovering the location of the incident?
3) Given the circumstances, why do you think that the German woman was quick to warn and help out Mr. Hatherley?
4) Holmes points out an article with eerie similarities between the way an engineer disappeared earlier and what happened to Mr. Hatherley. Why do you think this was overlooked by Mr. Hatherley in the first place, considering how popular newspapers were in the 1800s?
5) This is an instance where Holmes and Watson were unable to bring the criminals to justice. What do you think happened to them?
There's no mystery here, but it's enjoyable. At the time of reading I decided that in reality, Sherlock Holmes tales are less mysteries than they are adventures. Later I circled around the introduction of my (Oxford) edition, which made the case that above all they are fairy tales or fables. I'm happy to run with that too. One thing I found quite ridiculous here was how chipper the engineer seemed to be despite his injury. Very stiff upper lip. And silly to that Watson would take him jolting along in a carriage to see Holmes, rather than get Holmes to come and see them! It's very minor of course, but ACD was a doctor after all!
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The nature of the criminals was also somewhat bizarre-imagine pressing someone to death in your money-making machine-the clean-up would have been horrendous and completely unnecessary-just shoot them and bury them in the garden, for goodness sake! I have to yield to Emily's idea that they are fairy tales or fables, at least this one is!
Frances wrote: "Yes, I found the chopping off of the thumb to be completely gratuitous and not particularly germane to the story, and will be quite an impediment to an engineer in future so yes he was ridiculously..."God yes, the clean up! But then that German man seemed quite hot headed, someone who pulverized people first and thought about the consequences later...
The amputated thumb was a big sticking point for me. That the engineer could suffer such a trauma, bleed so much, and then make it to Holmes by train and foot was very unbelievable. I enjoyed the story anyway and felt it had some gothic overtones.
Yes, everybody agrees that the amputated thumb was a serious injury. In the story the injury doesn’t appear serious at all, and what really got to me was after the hapless engineer was patched up (and of course he must’ve been still in agony) everyone (as usual), sits down to a hearty breakfast! But as I opined before, these stories are nothing but a farce, but they’re still entertaining.Footnote: Watson seems to be the leading character in this one.
No chance of the good doctor rejoining (ie replantation) the thumb except maybe as some Conan Doyle science fiction, because the first successful surgery wasn’t until 1965.https://www.onthisday.net/science/567...
An interesting story with that often used horror technique, crushed by ceiling/floor/walls closing in on each other. Horrible to have escaped that and then be accosted by an axe wielding murderer. Maybe his hilarity at the doctors was partly delirium having only just escaped such a terrible ordeal.
Another Holmes story where the criminals got away. The young lady must have had some sort of hold over the ring leader to be able to save the engineer because her actions put everything the criminals did at risk of exposure.
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The Adventure of the Engineer's Thumb (The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes)
Availability - The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1661
Background Information
"The Adventure of the Engineer's Thumb," one of the 56 short Sherlock Holmes stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, is the ninth of the twelve stories collected in "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes." The story was first published in The Strand Magazine in March 1892. Within the narrative of the story, Dr. Watson notes that this is one of only two cases that he personally brought to the attention of Sherlock Holmes.
Sherlock Holmes and Counterfeiting
By the time Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote "The Adventure of the Engineer’s Thumb" in 1892, Sherlock Holmes had already dealt with a wide range of crimes, including murder, manslaughter, and bank robbery. With "The Adventure of the Engineer’s Thumb," counterfeiting would be added to this list.
Publication
"The Adventure of the Engineer's Thumb" was first published in the UK in The Strand Magazine in March 1892, and in the United States in the US edition of the Strand in April 1892. The story was published with eight illustrations by Sidney Paget in The Strand Magazine. It was included in the short story collection The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, which was published in October 1892.
A Short Review
"The Adventure of the Engineer’s Thumb" takes its name from the basic fact that an engineer by the name of Victor Hatherley has had his thumb chopped off in a murderous attack. Hatherley had been employed by a shadowy German figure to repair a hydraulic press, and when the engineer had found out too much about its operation.
The case is one with no real mystery; the criminals are known, and even Victor Hatherley knows the reason why the attack occurred. The only possible mystery is the actual location of the press, and whilst Holmes deduces this, on arrival in the general locale, its location is obvious to all.
"The Adventure of the Engineer’s Thumb" is one of the handfuls of cases that were not dramatised by Granada TV for their Jeremy Brett starring Sherlock Holmes series. As such, it is often a case that is forgotten about, and of course, as there is no great detective work undertaken by Sherlock Holmes, it is less memorable than many other written stories.
Arguably, the one memorable point about "The Adventure of the Engineer’s Thumb" is the fact that the criminals are not caught. This is, of course, not unknown in Sherlock Holmes stories, as Holmes sometimes lets perpetrators go, as in "The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle," or natural justice catches up with the criminals, as in the case of "The Five Orange Pips," but in this case there is seemingly no justice.