Key Quote
“"It is the unofficial force — the Baker Street irregulars"”
Sherlock Holmes · Chapter 8
Focus: “unofficial”
Holmes's network of street children — the Baker Street Irregulars — reveals both his pragmatism and the novel's engagement with Victorian London's invisible underclass of homeless youths.
Technique 1 — OXYMORON / MILITARY METAPHOR
The phrase 'unofficial force' is an oxymoron — a force is by definition organised and official; an 'unofficial' force contradicts this. The contradiction reveals Holmes's subversive relationship with authority: he operates alongside the police but outside their rules, using resources and people the official system ignores. The military metaphor ('force,' 'irregulars') elevates the street children to soldiers — giving them dignity while acknowledging their unconventional status.
The term 'irregulars' has a specific military meaning: irregular forces are fighters who operate outside the formal army structure — guerrillas, partisans, scouts. By naming his street children 'irregulars,' Holmes both legitimises them (they serve a purpose) and acknowledges their marginality (they are not part of the regular system). The name captures their double status: useful to the system but not included in it.
Key Words
RAD — STAGNATE
The Irregulars themselves stagnate — they live on the streets, excluded from education, social mobility, or institutional protection. Their usefulness to Holmes does not change their social position: they remain homeless, invisible, and expendable. Holmes pays them but does not rescue them. The social system that produces street children remains unchanged by their participation in detection.
Key Words
Technique 2 — IRONIC NAMING — INSTITUTIONALISING THE MARGINALISED
Giving the street children a formal name ('The Baker Street Irregulars') is ironic: naming them institutionalises (brings into a system) those who exist precisely because institutions have failed them. The name parodies official organisations — police forces, army regiments — by applying their language to the most unofficial group imaginable: homeless children. This parody (humorous imitation) simultaneously dignifies the children and critiques the society that abandoned them.
Holmes's relationship with the Irregulars mirrors his relationship with the police: he uses both for information but belongs to neither world. Holmes exists in the liminal (in-between) space between official and unofficial, respectable and criminal, genius and addict. The Irregulars are his mirror: like Holmes himself, they are useful precisely because they do not belong.
Key Words
Context (AO3)
STREET CHILDREN IN VICTORIAN LONDON
An estimated 30,000 homeless children lived on London's streets in the 1880s — orphans, runaways, and abandoned youths surviving through begging, petty crime, and casual labour. The Irregulars reflect this real social crisis, which reformers like Dr Barnardo were struggling to address.
SURVEILLANCE & THE CITY
Holmes uses the Irregulars as a surveillance network — they can go everywhere adults cannot, observe without being noticed, and report back. This anticipates modern surveillance culture: information is power, and those who watch without being watched hold the greatest advantage.
Key Words
WOW — BARE LIFE (Agamben)
Giorgio Agamben's concept of bare life — life stripped of political rights and reduced to mere biological survival — describes the Irregulars precisely. They exist within London but are not citizens of it: they have no legal protections, no social identity, no political voice. They are 'homo sacer' — beings who can be used, exploited, or discarded without legal consequence. Holmes's use of the Irregulars, however well-intentioned, replicates the logic of sovereign power: he treats them as instruments, paying them for services but never integrating them into his world or advocating for their rights. Agamben would argue that the Irregulars represent the structural violence of Victorian society: a system that produces disposable people while congratulating itself on its civilisation.
Key Words