Holmes' Height

Sooo...I apologize for the sudden slow-down of posts. But, I seem to have forgotten what the third installment of my series was going to be. Oops. lol

I have been wracking my brain for the past few days, trying to come up with a suitable topic, and have settled upon something that I wondered about (yes, I do wonder about strange things, hah) a few months back. I never got around to doing the research, and now I have compiled a little bit of information to write up a post on it :)

As the title suggests, this post is about how tall our favorite detective was. Through implications in the canon, I have believed for some time now that Holmes was about as tall as my piano teacher, who is about 6' 5" or so (as far as I can guess, lol).

I knew, however, that there are several actual references to the height of our detective in the canon, though I couldn't for the life of me remember where they were. So, when I decided to write up this post, I went hunting for them. Thank goodness for Google, I tell you :)

This one is from "A Study in Scarlet:"

"In height he was rather over six feet, and so excessively lean that he seemed to be considerably taller."

Keeping in mind that this is the first time Watson ever laid eyes on the man, and the fact that Watson was probably of shorter stature (I've heard talk that he was somewhere between 5' 8" and 5' 10"), this could be entirely untrue. He could have appeared to be over 6 feet tall...simply because Watson was short (lol, and perhaps because of his leanness/gauntness).

I have also heard that the average height of a Victorian gentleman was between 5' 6" and 5' 11". So, if Holmes was indeed 6 feet or taller, he would have most definitely stood out in a crowd of average-sized Victorian men.

Moving on to another quote, I found this from "Abbey Grange:"

"Man, Watson, man. Only one, but a very formidable person. Strong as a lion - witness the blow that bent that poker! Six foot three in height.....I could not reach the place by at least three inches - from which I infer that he is at least three inches a bigger man than I."

Here, Holmes himself states, though indirectly, that he is 6 feet tall. This slightly contradicts what Watson said earlier in "A Study in Scarlet."

I have concluded that my original thoughts about Holmes' height were...slightly off, to say the very least. It seems that, based off of these quotes and meager facts, Holmes was somewhere in between 6' 0" and 6' 3".

:) Just a thought.