The current Board of Trustees are listed below. Thomas Horrocks is the Acting Chair of The Baker Street Irregulars Trust, and Les Klinger is Secretary-Treasurer. Many
other volunteers help with Trust activities, including the newsletter and this website.
Thomas A. Horrocks is an independent scholar. He holds a Ph.D. in history from the University of Pennsylvania, and spent 30 years working as a library administrator, including positions as Director of the Center for the History of Medicine at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School; Associate Librarian for Collections at Houghton Library, Harvard University; and Director of the John Hay Library at Brown University. In addition to his library management career, Dr. Horrocks has taught at Harvard University Extension School and has published numerous articles and books on American political history, with emphasis on Abraham Lincoln and his time. He has authored, edited, and co-edited eight books, including four on Lincoln,
Harvard's Lincoln (2010),
The Living Lincoln, co-edited with Harold Holzer and Frank J. Williams (2011);
Lincoln's Campaign Biographies (2014), and most recently,
The Annotated Lincoln, co-edited with Harold Holzer and published by Harvard University Press in 2016. He was invested into the BSI in 2013 as "Colonel Sabastian Moran." E-mail <
TrustChair@bakerstreetjournal.com>.
Peter E. Blau was introduced to the world of Sherlockians as a teenager. His father introduced him to Ben Abramson, who told Peter, "I publish a magazine you'll enjoy reading." It was
The Baker Street Journal. There was (and is) no better introduction to that strange and interesting world. He went on to become a member of the Priory Scholars of Fordham, and The Baker Street Irregulars ("Black Peter," 1959), and the Adventuresses of Sherlock Holmes ("Ship's", 1991). He is a collector who agrees with the late John Bennett Shaw (who liked to explain that he collected with the selectivity of a vacuum cleaner), editor and publisher of the monthly newsletter
Scuttlebutt from the Spermaceti Press, and the secretary of the BSI.
Bob Coghill ("John Hopley Neligan," 1983) has been a member of the Trust since its inception - first as an archivist and then as a member of the board. Bob's involvement has been primarily in sorting out donated materials and selecting and preparing materials for the archives. Bob is a long-time Bootmaker of Toronto and a member of the Stormy Petrels of British Columbia. He was awarded the Two-Shilling Award in 2010.
Bob Katz was born in New York City, becoming devoted to Sherlock Holmes while in his early teens. His BA is from Haverford College (alma mater of all three Morley brothers) and his MD from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. While training in Pathology at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, he became active in scion societies. He then moved to Baltimore, joining the Johns Hopkins medical faculty and eventually becoming Gasogene of The Six Napoleons. He entered private practice in Morristown, NJ in 1987 and recently retired after 35 years in Pathology. He received the BSI Investiture of "Dr. Ainstree" in 1983, the Two-Shilling Award in 1995, the ASH investiture of "Dr. Jackson," founded The Epilogues of Sherlock Holmes, and is also Headmastiff of The Sons of the Copper Beeches. Bob has been a speaker at a wide variety of Sherlockian events and has been published in
The Baker Street Journal, Ba
ker Street Miscellanea, T
he Serpentine Muse, and
The Watsonian. Most recently, he co-edited, with Andrew Solberg, two volumes in the BSI Manuscript Series:
The Wrong Passage and
Irregular Stain.
Michael H. Kean was reintroduced to Sherlock Holmes while in graduate school, when his girlfriend, (Connie, now his wife of many years), gave him a copy of the complete Canon as a birthday gift. As his career took him westward, from Philadelphia, to Chicago, to California's Monterey Peninsula, he became a member of the Sons of the Copper Beeches, the Hounds of the Baskerville (
sic), and the Diogenes Club of Carmel-by-the-Sea. He was invested in the Baker Street Irregulars in 1979 as General Charles Gordon. A retired publishing executive, he served as Co-Publisher of the BSI Press and received the Two-Shilling Award in 2013. He was named the BSI's "Cartwright" in 2016, and in 2020 he became the sixth person to lead the Baker Street Irregulars, succeeding Mike Whelan as "Wiggins."
The study of the lives of Mr. Sherlock Holmes and John H. Watson, M.D., has been Mr. Klinger's consuming passion since 1994. He has published numerous articles on Sherlockiana and a number of books, among them
The Life and Times of Mr. Sherlock Holmes, John H. Watson, M.D., Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and Other Notable Personages. He also co-authored the revised edition of
The Date Being—A Compendium of Sherlockian Chronologies and most recently
Sherlock Holmes, Conan Doyle & The Bookman. In 1998 Gasogene Books began publishing Klinger's Sherlock Holmes Reference Library, a ten-volume set, the first of which was
The Adventures of SH. In 2004 and 2005, W. W. Norton published Klinger's three-volume work
The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes. Klinger has twice received a "Special Sherlock Award" from
Sherlock Holmes Detective Magazine for the best Sherlockian work of 1998 and 2002 and won the Edgar for best Critical/Biographical work for the first two volumes of the Norton set.
Les is a member of The Baker Street Irregulars ("The Abbey Grange," 1999) and holds the Two-Shilling Award. He served as Series Editor of the BSI Manuscript Series and is presently the Series Editor for the BSI History Series. In his remaining hours, Les is married to Sharon Flaum Klinger, has five children and four grandchildren, and practices tax, estate-planning, and business law full-time.
Richard M. Olken, BSI (" Bob Carruthers," 2006) has loved Sherlock Holmes for as long as he has loved bicycles (and bicycles were his father's family business). A graduate of Harvard University and Boston University School of Law, Richard became the Executive Director and Congressional lobbyist for the BikesBelong Coalition. He was also the Dean of the School of Bartending at Harvard University. Now retired, he has served as Poker for the Speckled Band of Boston since 1995 and is a member of many other Sherlockian societies worldwide.
Marsha Pollak has been an avid mystery reader since her childhood when she devoured the complete sets of Judy Bolton and Nancy Drew adventures. As a librarian, her career took her to Buffalo N.Y. where she was present for the founding of her first Scion, An Irish Secret Society at Buffalo, and became a member of The Adventuresses of Sherlock Holmes (Mrs. Neville St. Clair). Holmes has stayed in her life as she moved and made more friends in societies in Florida, Texas and, for the last 27 years, California. She became a member of The Baker Street Irregulars in 1996 ("A Small But Select Library") and now leads the Oral History Project. She is also the Chairman of The Sub-Librarians Scion of the Baker Street Irregulars in the American Library Association, the oldest profession-oriented group interested in Sherlock Holmes.
Michael Pollak ("The Blue Carbuncle," 2009) graduated from Harvard College with a degree in international relations. He was a reporter for
The Worcester Telegram, and a reporter and columnist for
The Record, in northeast New Jersey, where he was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, before joining
The New York Times in 1989. He was a staff editor and a writer on the Metropolitan Desk, where he wrote a weekly column, "F.Y.I.," about New York City past and present. He was one of the writers for "The Lives They Lived," about the 9/11 victims, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. He retired from
The Times in 2016. Mr. Pollak and his wife, Laurie Fraser Manifold, ASH, MBt, are members of the Three Garridebs, in Westchester County, N.Y. They now live in Phoenix, Ariz. Mr. Pollak has had numerous essays published in
The Baker Street Journal and received the Morley-Montgomery Award in 2010. He became editor of The BSI Trust newsletter in 2020.
Dan Posnansky has been a student of The Canon since he could read and he became a "connoisseur" of fine books not long after that. He is remarkably generous with his time and knowledge of The Canon, books and U.S. publishing history, with collectors and libraries.
Dan is a longtime member of The Speckled Band of Boston, where he has served as The Keeper of the Band. Dan is also a most active member of The Baker Street Irregulars ("Colonel Hayter," 1977) and a founder of The Friends of Irene Adler. When not refining his knowledge about books and Sherlock, Dan rusticates in the woods of the great Northeast.
Constantine Rossakis has been a devout Sherlockian since the sixth grade, when he wrote a report on "The Greek Interpreter." His passion for matters bibliophilic as well as Sherlock Holmes continued to evolve since then, and he began to build his Sherlockian library almost twenty years ago, emphasizing first editions, first appearances, and manuscript material. He is the author of numerous medical and Sherlockian articles, lectured at the inaugural meeting of Mycroft's League in Philadelphia, and is a member of The Grolier Club. Costa received his investiture into The Baker Street Irregulars in 2004 as "St. Bartholomew's Hospital," and was the recipient of The Morley-Montgomery Memorial Award for
The Baker Street Journal outstanding article in 2004. He will be editor of The BSI Manuscript Series for 2008. Costa remains in private practice as an interventional and consultative Cardiologist in Bergen County, New Jersey, to offset the cost of his expanding family and collection.
Steven Rothman discovered that at heart he was a Sherlockian when he read with great amusement Baring-Gould's Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street. Thus vaccinated by canonical scholarship at the tender age of 12, he was destined to become an Irregular. He soon discovered that his other love in literature, Christopher Morley, was entwined with the BSI. In 1990 he edited
The Standard Doyle Company: Christopher Morley on Sherlock Holmes (Fordham University Press). Rothman's long association with the BSI ("The Valley of Fear," 1986) includes editorship of
The Baker Street Journal since 2000.
In 1950, Michael Whelan purchased
The Complete Sherlock Holmes, Garden City edition with his caddy tips. Neither he nor his mother who had sparked his interest in Sherlock Holmes, had an inkling of where that particular purchase would lead him. That passion, thus ignited, has continued unabated for over 50 years. Sherlockian zeal, wrapped as close as an Inverness cape, has accompanied him from coast to coast and around the world. Whelan led the Baker Street Irregulars as "Wiggins" for 23 years and is now "Wiggins
Emeritus." He is a retired business executive, married to Mary Ann Bradley [honoured as "
The Woman" of The BSI (1993) and invested as "Mary Morstan" (2012)], with three sons and six grandchildren. He is also currently the Board president of The Friends of the Lilly Library and a member of the Indianapolis Literary Club, as well as a proud member of several Sherlockian societies..
Tamar Zeffren ("The London Library," 2017) is an archivist in the New York area. In addition to serving as Content Manager for the BSI Trust website, she is a Baker Street Babe and sits on the faculty of the Priory Scholars. She received a BA in English literature and medieval history from Barnard and a MA in archival management from NYU, and is certified as a Digital Archives Specialist by the Society of American Archivists.
