The Valley of Fear - Professor Moriarty

Professor Moriarty

The Valley of Fear, notable for Professor Moriarty's involvement, is set before "The Final Problem", the short story in which Moriarty was introduced. This introduces a logical difficulty, as in The Final Problem Dr. Watson has never heard of Moriarty, whereas by the end of The Valley Of Fear he is, or should be, familiar with his name and character. The "Moriarty" element in the story is tied into the fate of the informer in the story. It ties the Molly Maguire background to another sensation of that period. This was the death of James Carey, the informer on the Irish National Invincibles who committed the Phoenix Park murders of Lord Frederick Cavendish and Thomas Burke. Carey was shot on board a ship off the coast of Natal in 1883 by Patrick O'Donnell, a committed Irish revolutionary. O'Donnell had relatives in the Mollies, and briefly visited the Pennsylvania coal mining district, supposedly looking for the suspected informer among them. He left the U.S. long before the Mollies were broken up. It is possible William Pinkerton, the son and successor to Allan Pinkerton in running the famous detective agency, mentioned this and much of the story to Conan Doyle, and the latter took the fate of Carey for the similar fate of Jack Douglas on board a ship off St Helena (on the opposite side of Africa).