[cheeseandonion]

"I used to work at the Sherlock Holmes Museum. It was the strangest six months of my life."

Wow. The Sherlock Holmes Museum. Where to begin? Nowadays, whenever my work history comes up people think it's the coolest thing in the world. "Wow! So you lived on Baker Street" "Did you get to see everything that goes on behind the scenes?" "Did you get to meet Benedict Cumberbatch?" I never quite know how to let them down easy.

The Sherlock Holmes Museum is genuinely the worst museum in the world. It was absolutely brilliant, in a way. Pre-pandemic they had a license to print money. The idea was that they'd get fifteen people through the door every ten minutes at between £10 and £15 per head. The museum space was tiny, if it was a real house it wouldn't have been big enough for a small family, barely even a couple. So you'd go in, you'd spend up to twenty minutes in there and you'd leave pretty quickly because you'd feel extremely cramped. Thus there'd be plenty of room for the next group of people. Hundreds of pounds would go through the door an hour, and that's just on ticket sales. We'd also move loads of crappy souvenirs. Big boxes of Sherlock Holmes teddy bears would arrive from China and sold at a premium, £40! They'd arrive and the first duty of the day would be to go through them all and remove the ones with missing eyes, broken violins. Maybe 30% were removed and the rest put on shelves? They were cheap, ansty rubbish, no way these things were worth that much but we'd sell them almost as quickly as we'd get them in. Tourists couldn't get enough of Sherlock Holmes themed crap. We theorised that they felt they got so little out of the actual museum that they had to fill their bags with junk so that the trip wouldn't feel like a total waste of time and being honest, pre pandemic tourists would throw about money like it was nothing. They were the easiest people to take advantage of, and the bosses knew this.

The bosses were extremely dodgy. One of them had inherited the museum and the other was like, their good friend or something? We couldn't figure out what their qualifications were. Neither of them had history or literature degrees or any curator experience or anything. Nothing to suggest that the care of a heritage site should fall to them. There were certain individuals we were told to look out for and deny entry to, because they would be connected to the ownership in some way and wanted money. Fun fact, the person who founded the museum wound up dying penniless. Of course, any knowledge we had about the ownership other than the little we were told we found out through old online articles. We were told not to ask questions and to be honest, we didn't want to know. We were getting paid £100 per day. For people with zero qualifications or experience, this was a fantastic salary. It was certainly more than any other tourist attraction in the city would offer. Now, visitors didn't actually know that we had no qualifications or experience because we were encouraged to talk up our credentials. I myself told people that I specialised in the restoration of antiques, for a while. The bosses believed that we could cover up the museum's less-than-authentic origins through simple lies. The desire of the average tourist to enjoy themselves in a working nineteenth century home would do the rest.

"Am I in authentic history museum dedicated to a famous detective from history?" "Well sir, is that what you want to believe?" "Naturally" "Then yes, we are!"

Yes, we were instructed to tell people that Sherlock Holmes was a real person. We would have to answer questions like we were experts in the fictional detective's life but in a way that presented him as a genuine historical figure. If someone asked about ACD we'd be very curt in our response and make it our like he was a good friend of Sherlock's, or his biographer or something. One of my esteemed colleagues even sent a couple of tourists off to a famous London cemetery looking for his grave. Another would simply say that no one knows where Sherlock's final resting place was, that it was a mystery lost to time. The blue plaque outside the museum was absolutely genuine, of course it was, the only one ever issued to a fictional character by English Heritage in fact. The truth is that museum asked for a blue plaque and were told no, so they made one and hung it up themselves. The museum isn't even at 221b, its at 237 or something, I mean really, its all so fake! The answer to the question of the museum's true address was that the length of Baker st changed several times due to the fluctuating size of Regent's Park, and that while the house wasn't currently where 221 should be, in the 1880s it would have been. One of the more important displays was the genuine Stradivarius violin. Sherlock's famous Stradivarius! The greatest and most majestic of all violins! The Stradivarius, which was missing strings and had varnish chipping away, that was just displayed leaning up against the wall and not in a glass case or anything, and that if anyone who knew the first thing about violins saw it they would either be appalled at its condition or know straight away that it was a fraud. Of course it wasn't a real Stradivarius! But that's not what we would tell people. With the money they made they could have bought a real strad, no problem. But this would involve putting more money into the museums and less into the owners' pockets, which could never happen.

Barely any of the antiques in the house are genuine, and if they are they're kept in extremely poor condition. If an item got damaged in any way it would simply be thrown into storage and replaced with something similar. You can go there youself and see, everything is very shabby or missing bits and pieces. The most interesting items in the museum are probably some very old copies of the Strand, over a century old. These are kept in the basement and have never been seen by tourists. They may have been simply forgotten about. There is actually some cool stuff down in that basement area but everything is left under white sheets, the true purpose of the basement is storage for all the crappy souvenirs. The bosses don't actually care about the stuff in the museum. It's all in terrible condition anyway, the waxworks are missing eyelashes and have scratches and stuff. I always wondered why the bosses never put any of the obscene money they made back into the museum. Get some props in from the tv shows and movies, update the waxworks a little, stuff like that. It has all the makings of a genuinely good place to visit. From time to time work was done on the museum, always by the same handyman who was likely paid cash in hand. Never to the actual exhibits, usually just to fix a creaky floorboard or to replace a missing baluster. Always during opening hours too, so once you'd paid your fifteen quid to get in you might also have to listen to power tools for the duration of your visit. Sometimes he'd straight up have to close one of the four or five rooms in the museum, so tourists would see even less than they usually did. I cannot stress enough how underwhelming this place was to people.

One of the few parts that everyone enjoyed was the photo opportunities. Once upon a time you got to sit in Sherlock's chair and put his hat on. It was a really neat photo that everyone enjoyed and that everyone got to have. Sadly, the bosses decided that this slowed down the queue too much and put a stop to that, citing "damage to the antiques" as the reason. Luckily you still got to take a photo outside with the policeman or maid in front of the famous door. The residents of Baker street fucking hate this museum and the swathes of people it would attract every day so they complained to the council. They comprised and said they'd stop the photo opportunities which helped smooth things over for a while. So part of the job ended up being to bark at people to get back in line when they approached the door hoping for a photo. Didn't enjoy that bit so much.

There are no security cameras in the musuem. If you go to an actual, real museum like Natural History or Tate Modern, not only are there cameras everywhere but there are also attendants that sit down and make sure no one is doing stupid shit to the priceless exhibits. There is none of that in the museum. Three employees operate in the museum at all times. First, there is the policeman or maid at the door. Then there is the "tour guide" a person who stays on the first floor and answers questions and gives a short, two minute speech about the house. Lastly there is a third person who wanders around the top two floors. They all have a job to do, and its got nothing to do with providing the guests with a memorable and informative experience. Policeman/Maid rings a bell to say that they're sending a group of fifteen upstairs. The tour guide rings a bell to say "yep, messaged received" and starts ferrying the people they're talking to upstairs into the rest of the museum. There's only one way in and out so they'd have to pay close attention all the time to how many people were inside. The person wandering around has to count all the visitors and make sure they're not violating the building's fire code or anything by having too many people in. This has become a bit redundant during covid times as guests now have to book slots but they still operate on a model of "get people in and out as fast and as often as possible" because that's how they make the most money, in terms of tickets. People spend about twenty minutes in the museum on average. If people asked about tickets we were to say "oh you know, most people spend 45 minutes to an hour. It depends on how thoroughly you investigate the exhibits!" knowing full well that maybe one or two weirdos a day would spend 45 minutes looking around, no one at all stayed past the hour mark. Officially it was important to convey that people could stay as long as they wanted. Unofficially, we were to make people feel unwelcome so we could get them moving. Fuck the guests, was the general attitude around 221b. There were no bathrooms or anything they could use, nowhere for elderly people to sit down and rest. We'd direct them to the pub next door. The pub hated this, but at the same time they had a sign outside saying "come get a drink at Sherlock's local!" They benefited massively from the museum and the crowds it brought, so I didn't weep for them too much.

The reason there are no cameras in the museum is because the bosses don't actually care what goes on in there. Once they've got your money off you they turn their attention to the gift shop. And my God, they guard this gift shop like a dragon might its hoard. They have staff at the door and in the shop, wandering around acting as security. The bosses will also be watching the security cameras most of the time. If someone gets caught pocketing something they'll radio the security and the person gets frog-marched into the office and sat down. They'll then be interrogated for a while. If they've bought their ticket already they'll be turned away. Refunds on tickets aren't given for any reason once someone's entered the store. There are also no refunds on any items purchased in the shop, no exceptions. I recall once a poor old guy who just seemed super confused put a miniature violin in his pocket and was taken into the office and threatened with prosecution. His wife and daughter were not allowed into the office and spoke very little English so there was only so much we could tell them. It was all just a big show and dance anyway, police came once and told them that they couldn't do much until £100 worth of stuff had been stolen. At least, that's what they told us. So they had to do the interrogations themselves, and if it was illegal for a shop to hold people in custody then the poor tourist who stole something didn't know it was. They even chased someone into a shop a little ways down Baker street once because they'd stolen a little pin. It was bizarre. No one cared if anything went missing from the museum exhibits themselves because none of it was worth any money. They took gift shop thefts super seriously when in reality they made so much money that they wouldn't have even noticed what went missing. They literally would not have noticed! Nothing was barcoded or scanned out, so how could they? Items went through the till as MISC BOOK or MISC OTHER, and prices keyed in manually. Every hour or so a supervisor would come and take a bunch of money out of the til in a paper bag and remove it. They wouldn't count it out of the til, they'd just take it and put it in a safe somewhere. No one had a clue how many miniature violins we had in stock or had ever had in stock because they along with fifty different items went through as MISC OTHER.

Sometimes I think back and wonder if I'd imagined the whole thing. Every single person who has ever worked at 221B Ltd, every "Baker Street Irregular" as we called ourselves, has stories like this. It was a great place to go and earn a little money for a short time until something better came along but it was too stressful in the long term. You always felt like you under scrutiny and being watched. The museum in its heyday was a well-oiled machine and none of the scam artists, not the cup game people on Westminster bridge, not the floating yodas in Trafalgar square, were anywhere near as good at parting tourists and their money as this museum was. Now as I understand it the museum isn't doing anywhere near as good. The owners had their golden goose, their system that printed money for them and didn't know how to adapt to covid. They don't know how to do websites, advertising, social media or anything. Their complete lack of expertise is showing. Literally anyone could have made money off that place in its peak, now it would take some serious cash injections and real care and attention to turn it into a real museum, not that a lot of people want to see that happen. The Arthur Conan Doyle estate wants nothing to do with the place. The residents of Baker street actively hate it. I still walk past it from time to time. I still can't believe the six months I spent there.

EDIT: Wow, this got more interest than I thought it would. Happy to answer any questions anyone might have.

Some FAQs from guests and the lies we'd tell them:

Q: Was the BBC show filmed here? (By far the most asked question) A: They weren't actually allowed to film here because of the risk of film crews damaging the property. However, they did model the set based on what you see here. Here, look, you can see the layout of the kitchen etc that they used for the show

Q: Those (points to fake bullet holes in the wall) don't look like real bullet holes, were they recreated somehow? A: No, those are the real deal! Its just that guns back in those days weren't as powerful as the ones we have now, so they only left tiny holes

Q: Why didn't anyone ever ask Sherlock to catch Jack the Ripper? A: They did, many times. It remains the only case Sherlock could never solve. It haunted him to his final days.

Q: What about the possibility that Professor Moriarty was Jack the Ripper? A: Yes, he remains one of the leading suspects. We could never put it past dastardly Moriarty to hide his involvement in those crimes so well! It may also surprise no one that no one else was slashed in Whitechapel following Moriarty's death.

Q: I heard that Sherlock was addicted to herion? A: No, this is a lie (This was said mostly because we often got kids in the museum, and anyway he mostly does cocaine in the books)

Q: Who's portrait is that? (There was this old painting above Watson's desk. I could never remember who it was, so I'd give the names of random football managers A: Lord Samuel Allardyce

Q: This must be the best job in the world? A: Yes!

Q (from Russian guests): I have heard that Vasily Livanov is the Queen's favourite Sherlock Holmes actor, is this true? A: Yes! The Queen adores Vasily Livanov (I have no idea which actor the queen prefers but Livanov got an MBE once, so maybe?)

Q: Do the royal family ever visit? (Tourists love the royals) A: It's difficult to arrange such a visit because of their popularity and the security threat a royal visit would create. They often correspond, however, and some of this can be seen in an upstairs exhibit (They've got a folder full of fan mail, and one such piece came from the Prince of Wales's office. He was invited to visit the museum and they received a very polite "no" in response)

Q: Do actors from the show ever visit? A: Yes, regularly.

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#muzeum #sherlockholmes #londyn

[HANTEK2]

@cheeseandonion: niezle ( ಠ_ಠ). Ja kiedys bylem w muzeum wikingow yorvik w Yorku. #!$%@? jaki niesmak mi pozostal po obejrzeniu tego kiczu to do dzis mnie mdli. A bylem tam z dobre 9 lat temu.