The John Bennett Shaw Sherlock Holmes Workshops

1977 Notre Dame University (South Bend, IN / July 31 - August 4)

1978 Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore, MD / June 16-18)
Popular Culture Society of Western New York (Buffalo, NY / June 23-25)

1979 Wayne State University (Detroit, MI)
Colby College (Waterville, ME / July 6-8)
Second Cleveland Canonical Convention (Cleveland, OH / July 13-15)

1980 Pleasant Places (St. Petersburg Beach, FL / January 18-20)
Duquesne University (Pittsburgh, PA / May 30 - June 1)

1981 Stanford University (Palo Alto, CA / July 19-23)

1982 Rockhurst College (Kansas City, MO / July 9-11)

1983 Benedictine College (Lisle, IL / June 3-5)
Berry College (Rome, GA / August 5-7)

1984 University of Dubuque (Dubuque, IA / August 17-19)
University of Minnesota (Minneapolis, MN / September 28-29)

1985 Stevens Technical Institute (Hoboken, NJ / August 9-11)

1987 College of William & Mary (Williamsburg, VA / July 24-26)
Stanford University (Stanford, CA / August 19-23)

1990 Holmes on the Range (Kansas City, MO / August 31-September 2)

1993 Santa Fe Community College (Santa Fe, NM / August 6-7)

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1996 The John Bennett Shaw Memorial Conference: Remembering John Shaw
Santa Fe Community College ~ A Gathering of Inquiring Minds (April 19-20)

1977

The First Shaw Sherlock Holmes Workshop
1977 Notre Dame University
(South Bend, IN / July 31 - August 4)

John Shaw conducted his first Sherlock Holmes workshop at the University of Notre Dame, his alma mater, in 1977. The first Shaw Sherlock Holmes Workshop was a full five-day event, but subsequent workshops evolved into weekend events, Friday thru Sunday. John was the main presenter and a faculty of invited guests (most often, noted Sherlockian scholars), presented Sherlockian papers and film clips. There were book discussions, sing-alongs, and one or more of Shaw’s “diabolical” quizzes. There was great fellowship around meals and a fair amount of imbibing on the part of everyone.

Standing with Shaw at this 1977 Notre Dame event are Ted Schulz (BSI 1961-The Amateur Mendicant Society) and Evelyn “Evy” Herzog (BSI 1991-The Daintiest Thing Under a Bonnet). John Bennett Shaw (BSI 1965-The Hans Sloane of My Age) would be an important part of both of these people’s lives.

Ted Schulz belonged to the San Francisco scion society, The Scowerers and the Molly Maguires, and he and Shaw were BSI friends and well-known Sherlockians. Ted visited John in Santa Fe often, helping him organize his vast collection.

John had befriended Evy Herzog in 1968 when she organized six female students from Albertus Magnus College in New Jersey and marched in protest against the male-only Baker Street Irregulars at their annual dinner in New York City. The two remained friends, and John added Herzog to the faculty roster of several of his workshops in future years, thus announcing to the Sherlockian world that female scholars had much to contribute to the unfolding saga of Sherlock Holmes and scion societies. Even so, it would be another 14 years, in 1991, before Herzog would get her investiture as a member of the BSI.

Steven Doyle (BSI - 1996 The Western Morning News), author of Sherlock Holmes for Dummies, publisher at Wessex Press (Gasogene Press), and publisher of The Baker Street Journal, made his start in Sherlockian publishing with his critically acclaimed periodical, The Sherlock Holmes Review (1987). He is also the mastermind behind the five Gillette to Brett conferences, held at the University of Indiana in Bloomington. Doyle had this remembrance of his experiences at the 1977 Notre Dame Sherlock Holmes workshop.

“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.”

In another post at the Shaw Facebook page, Steven remarked, “Here's another relic from that weekend. . .an 8.5" x 11" flyer advertising the event. What is striking to me in this modern age is the simplicity of the thing. No email address. No website or Facebook page. Not even a phone number. Nope. . . just a simple mailing address. And it was enough. . .this thing was well attended! I am not certain where I got this. . .I believe it might have been posted at the South Bend Public Library, or even somewhere on the campus of Notre Dame. . .places that, as a boy, I spent a lot of time at. It has been over 40 years, so I can't quite remember. But there it is, fresh out of my shelf of many scrapbooks, bearing witness to being a Sherlockian collector from the earliest of ages. “

Chris Redmond (BSI - 1966 Billy) commented on the importance of that first Sherlock Holmes Workshop. “Not only did that conference establish Shaw’s national reputation; it changed the course of the Sherlockian world, opening up our enthusiasm to people of all ages and sexes in a way it had never previously been.”

Let’s look closely at the schedule

The Notre Dame Workshop was patterned on the 1975 SHERLOCK LIVES! conference designed by Ronald De Waal in Fort Collins, Colorado, and continues to be the model for most of the Sherlockian conferences today. Steven Doyle admits that all his conferences are built on this model, the only difference being that Shaw’s five-day event was overly ambitious. That model was reduced to a three-day weekend event. (See more on the two conferences prior to Shaw’s events below.)

Presenters in that first symposium included Notre Dame faculty members Michael Crowe and Fred Crosson, as well as other professors with Sherlockian backgrounds, notably, Ely Liebow from the Northern Illinois University and Frank Hoffman from the State University College of Buffalo, NY.
John’s BSI friend Michael Whelan (BSI - 1974 Vincent Spaulding) led a session on The London of Sherlock Holmes. Three years later Whelan would become the fifth leader of the Baker Street Irregulars in 1977.

It would be almost a year before the next Shaw Sherlock Weekend would be held. John adjusted the schedule and set the program for all those to follow.

Two pivotal conferences prior to Shaw’s first workshop
SHERLOCK LIVES! and The Great Alkali Plainsmen Dinner

Sherlock Lives! 1975
A Symposium organized by Ron De Waal

SHERLOCK LIVES! - A Symposium on Sherlock Holmes, conceived and hosted by Ronald De Waal on the campus of Colorado State University, February 2-5, 1975, was the blueprint John Shaw was looking for to kickstart his own "road show" of Shaw workshops. Billed as an international conference, the presenters included Cameron Hollyer of the Toronto Public Library, the international contingent in the group, Sherlockian scholars and authors Samuel Rosenberg (author of NAKED IS THE BEST DISGUISE), Robert Fish (author of Schlock Homes), Peter Blau, and John Bennett Shaw.

De Waal’s mission in life, among others, was to make a bibliographic record of everything about Sherlock Holmes. He had already been cataloguing John’s Sherlock Holmes collection, first in Tulsa, and later in New Mexico after the Shaw’s moved to Santa Fe in 1970.

Many of the attendees at SHERLOCK LIVES! were members of the Denver Sherlock Holmes scion society, Doctor Watson’s Neglected Patients. The event was reported in the scion newsletter, the Medical Bulletin, by two of the members: Nancy Wynne and Bob Alvis.
(See a 10-page pdf of that newsletter.)

This rare copy of Sherlock Lives! program is worth studying. Note that De Waal states, “Sherlock Lives! will be the first affair of its kind ever held in the United States; and the second in the world.”

The ideas presented here were used in Shaw’s Sherlockian symposiums from 1977 to 1993. This is where the idea of a “roadshow” came to be a reality for John Bennett Shaw. The images below show the front page, the summary back page, and the two detail pages for the conference. (The pages may be enlarged by clicking on them.)

In January 2023, Peter Blau sent me a newspaper article from his files that covered this history-making symposium. John Shaw, Peter Blau, and Cameron Hollyer are featured in photos accompanying the article.

This information came to light in a Fortnightly Dispatch interview about Shaw, hosted for the Baker Street Irregulars by Steven Doyle. It was an informal chat between Peter Blau, Ray Betzner, and Jim Hawkins. Steven asked if we knew of an event that prompted Shaw to begin his Sherlockian Symposiums. Peter Blau spoke right up and shared the information about De Waal’s 1975 event, two years before Shaw held his Notre Dame symposium, the first of 20 such events across the USA.

Promotional poster for a Sherlock Homes symposium that was held February 2-5, 1975 at Colorado State University. This symposium was spearheaded by the noted Sherlock Holmes bibliographer and researcher, and at the time a librarian at CSU, Ronald De Waal. "A Gathering of the Country's Renowned Sherlockians."

Great Alkali Plainsmen Dinner
August 1976

The other Sherlockian event that finally encouraged John Shaw enough to actually plan and calendar his first symposium was a dinner in Kansas City in the summer of 1976. Jon Lellenberg suggested it was the tipping point for the Shaw Symposiums.

(But) an event which helped convince Shaw of the possibilities of such a program, drawing people from afar, was a Great Alkali Plainsmen dinner a year earlier to which he came, now that the scion society to which he'd belonged in the 1960s was restored to life and hitting its stride. It attracted people from four other scion societies as well, the closest of them 200 miles away. See the attached section of my Plainsmen history.  That very lively dinner was quite an evening, more so than any of us had expected; it got Shaw thinking, and his first workshop a year later was a result.
(From an email sent by Jon Lellenberg, April 15, 2019)

Planning was already underway for a major extravaganza on what turned out to be the blazing hot day of August 21st (1976). John Bennett Shaw was coming up the Santa Fe Trail to his old scion for the first time since 1968, and both he and Lellenberg talked the meeting up a great deal to neighboring scion societies on the edge of the Plain. John Ferrier would have been impressed by the fair crowd that came. Besides fifteen Plainsmen and Shaw’s separate entourage of eight, the meeting was enlivened by three Afghanistan Perceivers, two Arkansas Valley Investors, four Maiwand Jezails, no less than ten Noble Bachelors of St. Louis, plus two wide-eyed NBC TV people from New York. In Kansas City to cover the just-concluded Republican National Convention, they had taken in the spectacle of the Irregular mob at cocktails – Shaw had insisted on a ninety-minute cocktail “hour” – and asked if they might join the bacchanalia for the meeting.

Shaw has always been a good drawing attraction, and this was no exception. Lellenberg was in the Chair, Shaw reigned as conquering hero returned, and a more lively Plainsmen dinner has seldom been seen. Traditional toasts by Milt Perry, Bill Wright, and Richard Miller of The Brothers Three of Moriarty were followed spontaneously by the additional toasts from the floor. There was indignant Shavian spluttering when the guest of honor discovered that Lellenberg had thoughtfully arranged for him to drink the toasts in his traditional Plainsman grape juice.

Shaw was disconcerted to hear his own wife Dorothy introducing him, satirically, along the lines of Watson’s cataloging of Holmes’s knowledge in “A Study in Scarlet.” But he overcame this difficult beginning to give the assembled multitude a rousing talk, recalling his Plainsmen years in the 1960 and how hard it was to get a drink in those days. He had brought a quiz, and Milt Perry shocked his compatriots by winning it. Ernest Willer and John Altman, as founders of the Great Alkali Plainsmen, presented Shaw with a scroll honoring his tireless efforts to make “the fair crowd even larger and fairer wherever his journeys take him.”

The Great Alkali Plainsmen of Greater Kansas City, a 25th Anniversary History by Jon Lellenberg, October 20, 1988 ( http://www.bsiarchivalhistory.org/BSI_Archival_History/GAP_GKC.html )

Now, on with the John Bennett Shaw Roadshow. The 2nd Shaw Workshop.

An Irish Secret Society of Buffalo and
the Western New York Popular Culture Society
(Buffalo, NY - June 23 - 25)

Following on the heels of The Johns Hopkins University workshop, Shaw held another 3-day June event in Buffalo, NY. This was now his third Sherlock Holmes Weekend, and he chose his presenters carefully. Unfortunately none of these men are still with us, so we do our best to remember them at this website. Although Charles Henry and Frank Hoffmann are not listed as BSI for this event, they did get their investitures (see Jon Lellenberg’s notes below.) The event was sponsored by An Irish Secret Society of Buffalo and the Western New York Popular Culture Society. Lellenberg knew each of these men and had these remembrances of them.  

Chuck Henry was one of the BSI's gentleman scholars, an unassuming scientist of the human brain whose work has helped countless people.  He was "The Lion's Mane" in the BSI, liked by all who knew him. (Note: the year that Chuck Henry received his BSI investiture, 1980, the Two-Shilling Award went to Peter Blau and John Bennett Shaw.) A frequent contributor to this website, Ray Betzner, featured an article about Chuck Henry in his Studies in Starrett blog. See the article.

Paul Herbert, "Mr. Leverton, of Pinkerton's," was one of the BSI's leading experts on Sherlock Holmes in parody and pastiche, and a much-enjoyed speaker at many Sherlockian symposia, not only John Bennett Shaw's. (BSI investiture, 1977)

Frank Hoffmann was a professor of film at SUNY Buffalo, an expert on the Sherlock Holmes movies especially, and founder of the BSI scion society An Irish Secret Society at Buffalo, leading to his investiture in the BSI as "Altamont." (BSI investiture, 1979)

Cameron Hollyer, born in Buffalo, N.Y. in 1927, became in Toronto a leading figure in the Canadian society The Boot-Makers, and the first and always gracious curator of the Toronto Library's Conan Doyle Collection -- establishing it as one of the world's foremost collections on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's life and work.  "The Three Students" in the BSI, 1978.

Herb Tinning ("Dr. Leon Sterndale," BSI), though living in his native New Jersey his final years, earned his Sherlockian spurs in Chicago's Hugo's Companions and Hounds of the Baskerville (sic) scion societies, at the same time that he became an ordained Episcopal deacon, eventually becoming his new vocation after years in business organization work. (Note: Herb Tinning and Jon Lellenberg “Rodger Prescott” received their BSI investitures in 1974, and Dorothy [Mrs. John Bennett] Shaw was named The Woman.)

(My thanks to Jon Lellenberg for his notes about these pioneer Sherlockians and to Steven Doyle for supplying the event portfolio of materials.)

1979
Second Cleveland Canonical Convention (July 13-15)

The Second Cleveland Canonical Convention (July 13-15, 1979) was not a bona fide Shaw Symposium, initiated by John, but one to which he responded favorably when asked by the Mrs. Hudson’s Lodgers scion society to organize and be the main speaker. He invited Sherlockian scholars he had used before, namely Cameron Hollyer, Frank Hoffman, and Paul Herbert, along with others invited to speak for the first time at a Shaw conference. Also helping to organize this event was Chuck Henry. Introductory words for each of these illustrious men are in the section above, the Buffalo, NY event in June, 1978.

A significant addition to the speakers was Dorothy Rowe Shaw, John’s wife. In the program she is described as “investitured (sic) Adventuress of Sherlock Holmes, “The Woman” at the B.S.I. Banquet of 1974, nationally known miniaturist, specializing in Victoriana.”

The program below was sent to us by Ray Betzner, who received the program from Chuck and Margaret Henry.

An inquiry about a "missing" Shaw symposium in 1979 came to us from George Skornickel (BSI-1987 Heidegger). ”I am looking for a copy of the program for the Shaw conference held in Cleveland in 1979 for the introduction for a book of mine that is being published. I checked your site but was surprised the Cleveland conference was missing. I know there was one, because I attended it. I would appreciate any assistance you might be able to give me."

Ray Betzner scanned the program and added this insight in his email to me.

”I got that program from the late Charles and Margaret Henry, who were living in Cleveland at the time and helped plan the conference. The Canonical Convocation was a big event for several years and I’m sure securing John for the program made the second one a special event indeed. There were the features one would expect of a Shaw conference: quizzes and films and John giving a few talks himself. So call it what you will, it certainly was a weekend of Sherlockian fun and John was the featured act in the center circle of the big tent.”

1980

Shaw visits Pleasant Places in Florida
January 18-20, 1980

The Shaw Workshop in St. Petersburg Beach, FL
Hosted by the Pleasant Places of Florida,
January 18-20, 1980
At the Colonial Gateway Inn

Opening Session 4:00 PM on Friday, January 18 (Room 221B)
At 6:00 PM, there was a PAP – “Personality Adjustment Period”—Shaw’s words. Basically, this was an informal cocktail party in the Oom Pah Pah Bar at the Gateway Inn.

After the 7:30 PM Dinner was a movie session hosted by Robert Pohle, showing, ”Sherlock Holmes Baffled” and “They Might Be Giants,” right out of the 1975 Holmes Alive playbook by Ronald De Waal. Shaw learned his lessons well from De Waal.

FACULTY:
John Bennett Shaw and his wife Dorothy Rowe Shaw

The informational flyer that was mailed out prior to the event included this description of Shaw.

“Mr. Shaw is one of the country’s most prominent experts on Sherlock Holmes, on whom he has lectured in twenty-two states, at many universities, and in three foreign countries. He is a member of the select Baker Street Irregulars, is a Knight of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, and is the founder of the Scion Society, the Brothers Three of Moriarty. At present, Mr. Shaw is a resident of Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he maintains what is widely recognized as the finest collection (over 10,000 items) of Sherlockian materials in the United States.”

Dorothy Shaw spoke about her 221B miniature room she built in Santa Fe after marrying John in 1970 and joining him wholeheartedly in his Sherlockian hobby after they moved from Tulsa.

Other sessions during the weekend were conducted by
Peter Blau – “A. C. Doyle”
Tom Mitchell – “Battle of Maiwand”
Ann Byerly – “Sidney Paget”
Pat Herst – “A Real Live Case”
Ronald De Waal - panelist on Sunday

The Final Session was on Sunday, January 20 — “Church and Breakfast on your own”
(This session is worth noting for the people involved.)

*A Quiz on “The Yellow Face”
*A slide lecture on the canon by John Shaw
* ”Moriarty” by Richard Goodman
* A Panel Discussion on “Collecting Holmesiana”
Panelists included John Bennett Shaw, Peter Blau, and Ron De Waal

Below is a report on the meeting in the Tampa Tribune on February 12, 1980. Pleasant Places of Florida member, Jeffery Dow, was kind enough to send this news clipping of the event. His wife, Wanda Dow, was one of the founding members of PPoF. Take a minute to read the article by Helen Wesson. I learned from Ms. Wesson’s article that Dorothy Rowe Shaw graduated from St. Paul’s High School in St. Petersburg, FL. Holmes would have been proud of Ms. Wesson’s work because “she did not slur over work of the utmost finesse and delicacy, in order to dwell upon sensational details which may excite, but cannot possibly instruct, the reader.” (from ABBE)

Workshop Draws Many Interested in Pursuit of Sherlock Holmes

The Second Shaw Workshop of 1980

Duquesne University
(Pittsburgh, PA - May 30 to June 1)

This meeting between a young Ray Betzner and John Bennett Shaw
would have long-lasting reverberations among Sherlockians.

A Sherlockian Weekend, was sponsored by The Pennsylvania Small Arms Company. (Does the “PA Small Arms Co.” ring a bell? In "The Valley of Fear", Sherlock Holmes finds a sawed-off shotgun and identifies it as being made by the Pennsylvania Small Arms Company). This may have been a ruse, cleverly set up by John Shaw just to tie his workshop to an event in the canon. But notice that one of the assigned readings is “The Valley of Fear” from which we get the Pennsylvania Small Arms Company. I believe this was a “made up” sponsor by the clever and “diabolical” John Bennett Shaw. It sounds exactly like the kind of fun he would have had with his first workshop in Pennsylvania. There was indeed a scion in Pittsburgh (South Hills) by the name of The Pennsylvania Small Arms Company, but it has been inactive for many years.

A group of young ladies who were graduates of Albertus Magnus College were present at the Small Arms Workshop. Under the leadership of “Evy” Herzog (in the circle), they had formed The Adventuresses of Sherlock Holmes in 1968.

Six of these co-eds had registered their complaints about the BSI being a male-only organization by staging a protest march outside the Cavanaugh Restaurant in New York, where the annual BSI Dinner was in progress. John Shaw and Peter Blau had come to their rescue by getting them out of the cold and into the first-floor bar, but not into the dinner on the second floor. Shaw carried a written note from the protesters and gave it to Julian Woolf, “Wiggins,” but Julian was not moved. The girls did not dine with the men of the BSI that night. They showed their admiration for Shaw and Blau by attending as many of the Shaw Workshops as possible, where they were free to dine with everyone else.

Just as the Notre Dame workshop encouraged a young Steven Doyle to become a major player in Sherlockian publishing and programming, this event in Pittsburgh set another youngster on his way to Sherlockian stardom: Ray Betzner (BSI - 1987 The Agony Column).

1981

The First Stanford University
John Shaw Sherlockian Seminar - July

In 1981 Shaw was persuaded to “take his show out West” to the campus of Stanford University. The Scowrers and Molly Maguires scion society had an ambitious and learned group of Sherlockians, and John was delighted to present his seminar there. The event went so well that Shaw held a second event there in 1987. Laura Parker, who was editor of the Sherlockian newsletter Vermissa Daily Herald in 1981, posted the enthusiastic responses following the event. One person remarked, “Tomorrow I have to go back to the real world.”

John Shaw was delighted with the event, replying with this, “

“I am still  high on the fun and games we all had. What a delightful time. I will try to pen something for the journal but gotta have a week or so to get back to earth. What fine people Holmesians are – what an assortment of shapes, careers, voices, smiles (but all have one), aims and so on – but what single minded devotion to Mr. Holmes and our Cult. I guess anyway you Cult it is FUN.” (Vermissa Daily Herald, Oct. 1981, p. 11)

Slides from the 1981 John Shaw Sherlockian Workshop, provided by Laura Parker, show Shaw chatting with Poul and Karen Anderson, and Marilyn MacGregor, members of The Scowrers and Molly Maguires scion society. These 40-year-old images are being shared with the public for the first time.

1982
Rockhurst College
Kansas City, MO - July 9 - 11)

From Jon Lellenberg’s 25th Anniversary history of the Great Alkali Plainsmen (1988). John Lehman, Lellenberg's local assistant, moved into the leadership position and continued pressing the Plainsmen ahead. His first year was marked by a very successful workshop by John Bennett Shaw at Rockhurst College. "Ninety-eight pilgrims, nearly a record for Shaw's workshops, came from seventeen states, Texas, and Canada."

1983

Benedictine College
(Lisle, IL - June 3 - 5)

Brad Keefauver (BSI - 1989), creator of the Sherlock Peoria blog, sent information and photos (taken by his wife Kathy Carter) from this event. “The year was 1983. The place was Illinois Benedictine College at Lisle, Illinois. John Bennett Shaw had speakers like Jack Tracy, Evelyn Herzog, and Paul Herbert on the bill. And the good Carter was taking black and white photos so we could print some in The Baker Street Chronicle.”

Pictured above (click on arrows to access images): The Program (images 1 and 2), and (3) Evelyn Herzog at the lectern with Shaw seated.

1983 Second Workshop
Berry College (Rome, GA / August 5-7)
A Weekend with Sherlock Holmes featuring John Bennett Shaw

Holmeswork
The cases around which the quizzes will revolve (Shaw’s wording) are The Stockbroker’s Clerk and The Problem with Thor Bridge. Participants are encouraged to bring a copy of the Holmes Canon and a copy of Starrett’s The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes.

Ed Vatza (BSI - 1987 A Typical American Advertisement) was most helpful in supplying photographs of this event. Remember that this event took place forty years ago. Stories are told by Sherlockians who were there that John Shaw was taken by surprise when he learned that no alcohol was allowed on the Berry College campus. Somehow, he managed. In the photos you will see members of The Confederates of Wisteria Lodge scion society. Some of those attending include David McCallister, Ray Betzner, David Hammer, Charles Henry, Paul Herbert, Marsha Pollock, and other notables.

Images courtesy of Ed Vatza, who organized this Berry College John Shaw Workshop in 1983. The photo on the left is Shaw with Jason Wetzel. In the middle is John Bennett Shaw with Ed Vatza. The final photo shows David  McCallister - John Shaw, and - Richard Cameron.

1984

University of Minnesota
Minneapolis, MN

An international Sherlock Holmes conference featuring John Bennett Shaw
and English author Michael Harrison.

Highlights from the Program: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes in Minnesota
The conference was held at the Radisson Metrodome in Minneapolis, MN, September 28-29, 1984

Selected Program Personalities (as listed in the program)

SHAW, John Bennett (B.S.I.)
Santa Fe, New Mexico. Senior Fellow, University of Minnesota. Preeminent Sherlockian and phenomenal collector in the field.
My Library. Was Dukedom large enough?

SHAW, Dorothy Rowe (A.S.H.)
Santa Fe, New Mexico. Creator of the unique reconstructed dwellings in miniature of 221B Baker Street.

HARRISON, Michael (B.S.I.)
London. Preeminent Sherlockian scholar whose classic works include In the Footsteps of Sherlock Holmes and The World of Sherlock Holmes. His forthcoming book is A Study in Surmise.
London, thou art of townes A per se.
Soveraign of cities, seemliest in sight.
Of high renown, riches and royalties.
Of lordis, barons, and many a goodly kynight;
Of most delectable lusty ladies bright;
Of famous prelatis, in habilitis clericall;
Of merchauntis full of substaunce and of myght;
London, thou art the flour of Cities all.

McDIARMID, E. W. (B.S.I.)
Incredible Old Man: Professor Emeritus, University of Minnesota. Founder of The Norwegian Explorers (1948), BSI scion society, and editor and contributor for the volumes published by The Norwegian Explorers.
The hives are heavy with the combs.
Before, before, before my door.

MALEC, Andrew
St. Paul. Incredible Young Man: bibliographer, and scholar who has researched the career of Frederic Dorr Steele over the past year in preparation for the conference exhibit on the famous American illustrator.
And still they gaz’d, and still the wonder grew,
That one small head could carry all he knew.

1985

Stevens Institute of Technology
Hoboken, New Jersey

Several leading Sherlockian headliners were present at this 1985 workshop on Sherlock Holmes. John Bennett Shaw introduced those in attendance to Michael Hardwick, Edith Meiser, Al Rodin, and other outstanding speakers carefully chosen to make a lasting impression.



Edith Meiser, an American actor, was famous for producing radio script adaptations of the Sherlock Holmes stories. The first production, The Adventure of the Speckled Band (1930) starred William Gillette as Sherlock Holmes. Meiser’s contributions to Sherlockian history are detailed by Mattias Boström in his book, From Holmes to Sherlock (2018).

Meiser died in Roosevelt Hospital (Manhattan) on September 27, 1993 from a heart attack, one year before John Shaw died in Santa Fe. In a career that spanned half a century, Miss Meiser, a versatile performer with a satiric wit, appeared in more than 20 Broadway shows, including "Garrick Gaieties," "Sabrina Fair" and the 1960 production of "The Unsinkable Molly Brown." (copied from The New York Times archives. https://www.nytimes.com/1993/09/27/obituaries/edith-meiser-95-dies-actress-and-a-writer.html)

Michael Hardwick, English author of Sherlock Holmes: My Life and Crimes (1984), and The Sherlock Holmes Companion, co-authored with his wife Mollie Hardwick. Hardwick was from Kent, England, and was a popular presenter for John Shaw.

See the program below for other impressive lecturers at this workshop, the last one prior to the Sherlock Holmes centenary in 1987.

1987

College of William & Mary Workshop
Williamsburg, Virginia

We come now to the 1987 Williamsburg, VA, workshop at the College of William & Mary.
Ray Betzner was the organizer, and here is a bit of background from him about the event.

“This deserves a little explanation. I had attended a few Shaw workshops (Duquesne, Stevens Technical Institute, one in Georgia) and really wanted to host a Holmes conference in Williamsburg. I was shifting careers at the time, leaving the Daily Press and starting to work in PR at the College of William and Mary. W&M had a small summer conference program, and we (Chuck and Peggy Henry, John Lanzalotti and I) put together a pitch to Shaw. This is the letter where he agreed to do it (below). You can see he wanted to it to be a hit, and it was. We budgeted for 100 and had to stop registration at 200 because we didn’t have space for everyone. It was exhausting and wonderful and one of the great adventures of my life. (Ray Betzner) 

Ray Betzner, new to his position in public relations at the College of William and Mary, worked tirelessly to make sure John Shaw had everything he needed and that the conference was on track. Betzner had everything organized except the weather, obviously out of his control. It was extraordinarily hot all week. Michael Harrison, the British headliner for the event, (Shaw being the major attraction) dressed in a wool suit for each of his sessions. Betzner suggested that Harrison could remove his wool vest and no one would think any less of him. Harrison replied, “You know, my boy, one must do what one can for the ladies.”

Attendees at this Williamsburg symposium enjoyed an outstanding roster of presenters and a cleverly designed program. The headliners were John Shaw and Michael Harrison, of course, but beyond those superstars were others who shared their Sherlockian expertise, giving the weekend an extraordinary depth of quality. No one felt like there were holes in the program; it just continued to build from one session to another.

Here, on the final day of the conference, you see sessions by Charles “Chuck” Henry, Dr. Robert Katz, and Ely Liebow. Sherlockian scholarship was never in better hands. All three were close friends of John Shaw, chosen carefully by him to speak to their topics. This would have been a good day to be at William & Mary College just to hear these three presentations.

A quiz by John Bennett Shaw on The Sussex Vampire
was administered at the Williamsburg Workshop in 1987.
There are nine multi-part questions on the quiz; here are the first five.
The answers are in very light print below the questions.

John Bennett Shaw Quiz on SUSS

For every Shaw Workshop, John prepared several devilish quizzes on the canonical stories presented during the 3-day event. The Sussex Vampire quiz was administered at the 1987 College of William and Mary Workshop in Williamsburg, VA. I attended this Sherlock Holmes Centennial Symposium and took the quiz. I no longer have that paper, nor do I remember how I did. Presented here are the first two pages. Good luck! (This was reproduced from The Really Ragged Shaw, Master Sleuth Quizbook, Gasogene Press, 1993)

A further note: we must include the “rest of the story”—
the connection to the Nashville Scholars and my personal involvement.

Seven Nashville Scholars, including Jim Hawkins (attending his one and only Shaw workshop), made the drive from Nashville to Williamsburg. Gael Stahl was president of the Scholars at that time, and he brought with him a proclamation from Governor Ned McWhorter of Tennessee, “that people of Tennessee commemorate the one hundredth anniversary of Sherlock Holmes’ first appearance in print.” Stahl arranged for a group photo to be taken with the BSI leaders in attendance: Bob Tomalen, Tom Stix Jr, and John Shaw. As president of our scion Gael decided to be in the picture (these days we call it photobombing!).

Update.
The photo of the BSI officers above was taken by Dorothy Stix, the wife of Tom Stix. I recently sent Dorothy, The Woman in the BSI in 1971, a copy of the Baker Street Journal Christmas Annual 2023. Her husband, Tom Stix, was “Wiggins” of the BSI from 1986 to 1997, the first head of the BSI to use the term "Wiggins.". She now lives in Florida and is a spry octogenarian with memories from all those wonderful years. She says she met me at the Williamsburg Shaw Workshop, but it has slipped my memory. She and Tom were good friends of John and Dorothy Shaw, and they visited the Shaws in Santa Fe, and John and Dorothy visited them in New Jersey. She shared this story with me.

John and Dorothy visited the Stix’s at their home in New Jersey one time back in the 1970s. One of the Stix children, Julie, would be required to give up her bed for visitors. So, Tom came back from the airport with John and Dorothy, and the children ran out to meet them. One look at John Shaw and Julie went running back into the house, in a loud voice, declaring to her Mom, “Mommy, he is going to break my bed!”

I look forward to more conversations with Dorothy Stix!

Eight years later, on the occasion of the dedication of the John Bennett Shaw Library (1995), The Detective and the Collector: Essays on the John Bennett Shaw Library was published. As I turned the pages of the book, remembering the good times with John and Dorothy Shaw at their Santa Fe home, I came to this photo, but without the hand-written notes, added later by Gael and Susan Stahl. Our Nashville Scholars have laughed about the “missing Stahl” often.

Upon our return from Williamsburg, Gael Stahl, a writer by profession, submitted this article for the Nashville Tennessean.

Many significant events were held in 1987, the centenary of the first appearance of Sherlock Holmes in A Study in Scarlet. It was such a joy to be able to attend the Shaw Weekend at Williamsburg, even though I had to sell the 20-gauge shotgun I had inherited from my father to have enough money for the trip. I had been in Shaw’s Santa Fe home in 1986, so it was wonderful to see him doing what he loved most—leading a Sherlockian seminar. And this was a very special one for me; it changed the course of my life in that 25 years later (2022) I am still a devoted Sherlockian and am tied to John Bennett Shaw in ways I could not have imagined.

The Second Stanford University Seminar
August 19 - 23, 1987
Sponsored by Scowrers and Molly Maguires of San Francisco

It was one of those rare occasions when John Shaw was ill and could not attend the meeting. In this centenary year of the appearance of Sherlock Holmes, Shaw gave it his all and then some. He turned the program over to trusted friends, including Ted Schulz and others who stepped up to fill in for the ailing Shaw.

The 1987 meeting was reported fully and published in the Stanford Vermissa Daily Herald (January, 1988) by former Stanford student and seminar attendee, Ron White.

This was the second Stanford Shaw Seminar hosted by the Scowrers. The first one took place in 1981.

Here is the complete 1987 Stanford University John Shaw Sherlockian Seminar,
the one he was unable to attend. Faculty is listed on the last page.

1990

Holmes on the Range Workshop

On the last day of August, 1990, and the two days following, an event was held in Kansas City, MO titled Holmes on the Range. This was in essence a John Bennett Shaw workshop with a very specific name, sponsored by The Great Alkali Plainsmen of Greater Kansas City scion society established in 1963 by Ernest Willer, his son Bob, and John Altman. Shaw had been a very active member of The Plainsmen from mid-1964 until his move to Santa Fe five years later, and had made a triumphant return at a multi-scion Plainsmen dinner in Kansas City in August 1976. Two years before Shaw’s Holmes on the Range event The Great Alkali Plainsmen had celebrated their 25th anniversary as a scion. BSI historian Jon Lellenberg prepared a booklet for that event. See the entire publication here on The Great Alkali Plainsmen website.

Lellenberg shared this about the 1988 event,
”The BSI scion society was founded in the autumn of 1963, and was approaching its 25th anniversary in 1988. I’d been involved since 1972, despite living in Washington D.C. by then, and decided to mark the occasion by researching and writing a history of it. Making that possible was the fact that the Plainsmen had always been good archivists. (Today those archives are in the Sherlock Holmes Collections at the University of Minnesota Libraries — something the late John Bennett Shaw BSI, a key figure in The Great Alkali Plainsmen’s history, appreciated since his own great collection of Holmesiana was going there as well.)”___from The Great Alkali Plainsmen of Greater Kansas City website.
The cowboy image for the Holmes on the Range 1990 program (above) and the one in this slideshow are by John Tibbetts. The couple holding the program Ann and Dick Brown. An image of the entire group is shown and a close up of three notables in attendance: Tom Stix, Jr., John Shaw, and Jon Lellenberg.

Jon Lellenberg published a one-page summation of the event, presented here. This was such a fitting and nostalgic event for John Bennett Shaw and many of his close friends, coming as it did near the end of his Johnny Appleseed journey across the Sherlockian landscape to plant as many scions as he could, The Great Alkali Plainsmen being one of the first.

1993

John Shaw’s Last Sherlockian Workshop
August 6 and 7
Santa Fe, New Mexico
Santa Fe Community College

Brad Keefauver, along with his wife Kathy Carter and friend Greg Ewen, attended the 1993 Shaw Sherlock Holmes Workshop at Santa Fe Community College. It proved to be the last workshop that John Bennett Shaw was to lead. Brad was elated at the friends he made there and wrote about it enthusiastically in the September 1993 issue of the Hansoms of John Clayton newsletter Plugs & Dottles.

“Okay. Suppose you got to go to some really trendy part of the country, like New Mexico, maybe, for a Sherlock Holmes workshop. And you got there and they had guacamole dip and sangria and gave you a free t-shirt and showed you all sorts of Sherlockian video bites. Then, like, the head of the Baker Street Irregulars and the head of the Adventuresses of Sherlock Holmes showed up and actually talked to you, because it turns out they're just regular guys (except for maybe the head of the Adventuresses, 'cause she's definitely not a guy, which is cool). And then the World's Greatest Sherlockian dropped in and said it's okay if you come over to his house and see his stuff. And you went. Wouldn't that be great?”
See the entire post here.

The John Bennett Shaw
Memorial Conference 1996

Three years after the 1993 conference at the Santa Fe Community College, friends gathered there once again to remember John Shaw at the 1996 Sherlock Holmes Conference-”A Gathering of Inquiring Minds”. The special guest was Dorothy Rowe Shaw.

Other notable guests representing the B3M, the Brothers 3 Moriarty (the scion society Shaw founded when he moved to Santa Fe in 1970) were Saul Cohen, Trisha Stanton, Jay Kanitz, and Graham Sudbury. Their presentations during the conference are noted in the program images below.

One of the highlighted presenters was Chuck Kovacic, famous for the 221B Baker Street sitting room he erected in his California townhouse. The other special guest was Leslie Klinger, author of the New Annotated Sherlock Holmes (W. W. Norton & Co., 2005) who spoke on the topic “Strategies for Collecting Sherlockiana,” an endeavor John Bennett Shaw knew something about.

TULSA to SANTA FE LIBRARY WORKSHOPS FRIENDS