HolmeWork Assignment – September 2015: A Sherlock Holmes Silver Medal from the 1890’s?

“She had flung into the lake a bag containing some curious contents.”

– The Adventure of The Musgrave Ritual (MUSG)

This month’s HolmeWork assignment comes via a letter published in the July 7, 2002 issue of The E-Sylum:

Christopher Eimer writes: “The ongoing correspondence in The E-Sylum relating to Sherlock Holmes, and in particular Alan Luedeking’s request for numismatic references in today’s issue, reminds me of a medal that I purchased many years ago, which is said to illustrate a scene from a SH mystery.

The medal is silver, uniface, and measures 95 mm. (3.75 inches) in diameter, and can be dated to c.1890-1900. It shows a landscape in which a policeman, accompanied by two other men (detectives?) run towards a lake, in the foreground, in which can be seen two men.

The manner of dress and the atmosphere conjured by the scene is certainly redolent of a Sherlock Holmes mystery, and I have never had reason to doubt the attribution. I had hoped that after all these years, I would by chance come across a print or book illustration relating to this medallic image, but that has not been the case.

However, the current correspondence in The E-Sylum raises the chance that this image may well come to be identified.

I will email an image of the medal to any subscriber who is interested in seeing it.”

Wayne Homren, editor of The E-Sylum, included an email address for Mr. Eimer.  I reached out to Mr. Eimer, with faint hopes after 14 years had gone by, and received this response back:

I recall the medal but alas no longer have an image of it, nor do I remember to whom it was sold.

It is the only such specimen that I have come across and the connection with SH was an educated hunch – same period, scene of a policeman and a figure and a dog by a lake, as I distantly recall, cast or chased on a thin circular piece of silver, c. 80 mm. and around 1900 in date.

Anyone have any suggestions or clues as to this medal?

UPDATE September 3, 2018: See our updated post Update on HolmeWork Assignment: A Sherlock Holmes Silver Medal from the 1890’s?