The Adventuresses of Sherlock Holmes

Gutta cavat lapidem, non vi sed saepe cadendo.

Born out of discrimination and in protest the exclusion of women in Sherlockian spaces, the Adventuresses of Sherlock Holmes (ASH) is the world’s oldest women’s Sherlockian society. The group was founded by a group of students at Albertus Magnus College in the late 1960s after women were barred from investiture with the Baker Street Irregulars (BSI). The six founding adventuresses organized a protest of the annual BSI dinner in response to their exclusion of women and went on to continue their protest by hosting their own events during the BSI’s annual dinner in the decades that followed. In 1991, women were finally invited to invest as fully-fledged BSI members, and Adventuresses were among the very first to be invested.