On March 1st… Watson Was A Woman!

At the annual dinner gathering of the Baker Street Irregulars in 1941, Rex Stout delivered a paper with a shocking premise to the members of what was at that time a men-only organization.

On March 1, 1941, the paper was published for general consumption in The Saturday Review of Literature:

WATSON WAS A WOMAN

It created a huge stir amongst the members of the BSI. (Legend says the assembled membership carried Stout out of the building and dumped him in the snow!) Stout concluded both his speech and paper with a promise to produce results of future research study in a two volume study. It never materialized.

Source
Information came from the volume A Curious Collection of Dates, by Leah Guinn (JHWS “Amber”) and Jaime N Mahoney (JHWS “Tressa”)

Posted by The Dynamic Duo Co-columnists Ron (JHWS “Chips”) and Beth (JHWS “Selena”).

One Reply to “On March 1st… Watson Was A Woman!”

  1. What fun, looking back on this event from decades later. It clearly was not fun for some of the attendees at the BSI dinner, maybe some liked it covertly, of course, but it also shook them up, not a bad idea. It perhaps helped to usher in the beginnings of different thinking, maybe leading to the approach of the women (oh, my, women–yikes!) to the BSI. What a great piece of Sherlockian history. Daisy

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