[1] Many fans of Sherlock Holmes participate in societies around the world, and engage in a variety of activities such as discussion, tourism, and collecting.
[18] In many of these groups, members often play the Sherlockian game, analyzing the stories under the premise that Holmes and Watson were real historical people.
[23] In 1934, Christopher Morley hosted a dinner in New York City in honour of Sherlock Holmes which led to the formation of The Baker Street Irregulars, or BSI.
[24] Unlike most Sherlock Holmes societies, membership in The Baker Street Irregulars is by invitation only.
[23] Membership is open to anyone in many of these groups,[25] for example the Norwegian Explorers of Minnesota, a scion society of the BSI which was founded in 1948.
[29] There is also a Sherlock Holmes society in Vancouver, BC, Canada, known as the Stormy Petrels of British Columbia.
[23] An organisation named the Sherlock Holmes Society was formed in London in 1934, after the formation of The Baker Street Irregulars.
The organisation was succeeded by the Sherlock Holmes Society of London, founded in 1951[34] by a group of five people who organised the Sherlock Holmes exhibition at the 1951 Festival of Britain, including Freda Howlett, who was at one time the last surviving founder; she remained a member until her death nearly seventy years later in 2020 and was once president of the society.
[29] The London society also unveiled the world's first statue of Sherlock Holmes in Meiringen, Switzerland, near the Reichenbach Falls, in 1988.
[39] The society's events include discussions, lectures, film viewings, and Victorian cricket matches.
[34] There are also other Sherlock Holmes societies in the UK, such as The Crew of the S.S. May Day, founded in 1992 in Belfast, Northern Ireland.
[69] The Hounds of the Internet is a Sherlockian listserv which was founded in the early 1990s and is open to anyone with an interest in Sherlock Holmes.
[74] People who have been interviewed on the podcast include Bert Coules, Laurie R. King, Leslie S. Klinger, and many others.
Trifles is a shorter, weekly podcast presenting discussions about the original Sherlock Holmes stories,[73] and has 187 episodes as of July 2020.
[79] Most of these tours start at Piccadilly Circus and include nearby locations that are mentioned in the stories or have been used as filming sites for screen adaptations.
A statue of Sherlock Holmes is located outside Baker Street tube station in London, and was unveiled in 1999.
[38][79] Tours for fans of Sherlock Holmes are offered in Dartmoor, an area in southwest England which serves as the setting for much of Arthur Conan Doyle's novel The Hound of the Baskervilles.
[81] Another place associated with Sherlock Holmes that fans can tour is Undershaw, which was once the home of Arthur Conan Doyle and is located in southeast England.
[82] A statue of Sherlock Holmes, sculpted by Gerald Laing, was installed in 1989 in Edinburgh, Scotland, near Arthur Conan Doyle's birthplace.
[17] The Sherlock Holmes Society of London has organised group trips to the Reichenbach Falls intermittently since 1968.
[87] In 2019, a statue of Holmes titled "Sherlock & Segar" was unveiled in Chester, Illinois, United States, as part of the Popeye & Friends Character Trail, a series of statues honouring the work of American cartoonist E. C. Segar.
[91] Noted Sherlockian John Bennett Shaw,[92] who received an investiture in The Baker Street Irregulars, at one time amassed the largest collection of Sherlock Holmes items in the world, including books, recordings, advertising, and other memorabilia.
[93] Shaw compiled a list of 100 books, pamphlets, and periodicals essential for Sherlockian study entitled The Basic Holmesian Library.
The collection started in 1969 when the library purchased a large number of books from the estate of a private collector, and is displayed in a room styled after the study of Holmes's fictional Baker Street residence.