As a resident Mycroft girlie I thought I’d do a breakdown of Mycroft references in Sherlock and Co to aid the sleuthing going on in the fandom at the moment after the introduction to ‘Lily Lestrade’ and her references to Sherlock’s brother!
So as of right now we have a few mentions both direct and indirect to Mycroft. There are spoilers for Sherlock and Co up to episode two of the Six Napoleons below the cut
Chronological but I’ll colour code for direct and indirect (mysterious third thing)
• The first, I believe, came in a Mailbag episode (a Patreon exclusive). I can’t remember the episode number but I’ll describe it:
Sherlock and John are discussing their childhoods whilst eating wasabi, Sherlock mentions that for the most part he was raised by people his parents hired “and of course myc- ”. He stops here because of the wasabi!
• The second comes in The Priory School part one.
The team are struggling with the financial demands on the business and they approach Sherlock to ask him to take on a more exclusive client. Sherlock is a bit apprehensive of the prospective cases at first takes the message on board and later reappears with a heads up about a wealthy client inbound. Sherlock is nervous but relays that the notice about the client is from:
Sherlock: “a relative - ”
Watson: “what?”
Sherlock: “ - a relatively well connected person”
So we see from this that Sherlock, worried about the state of the team’s finances has gone to someone he knows can connect him to wealthier clients - Mycroft. This one is indirect but it’s clear that Sherlock is talking about his brother.
• The third is in The Missing Three-Quarter.
In the search of missing three-quarter Godfrey Sherlock and John have broken into The Blood Archive. Once in the facility the boys begin to examine the vials of blood set out in wait for them by Dr. Armstrong.
Sherlock is concerned to find his blood, Gwen’s, John’s, Mariana’s, and “even Mycroft”.
Again, John asks Sherlock “what”; until recently it seemed possible that John knew the name and perhaps Sherlock had mentioned him “off mic”.
BUT this makes little sense with Mycroft’s original ACD introduction where it is clear even a way into their companionship Watson had no idea Sherlock had a brother. It seems much more likely that this is the way the show is going, and indeed is more or less confirmed by Six Napoleons part two.
• The fourth reference is in The Hound of the Baskervilles part three.
In this particular instance the reference comes when Mariana and John are trying to get Sherlock to accompany Sir Henry and Jamie to Dartmoor. Sherlock is seemingly stressed about his ‘Spider’ and is finding it difficult to move to another case. Mariana encourages him and tries to persuade him to go to Dartmoor saying:
To which Sherlock replies:
This is Mycroft. If you’re familiar with ACD lore you’ll know that Sherlock notes Mycroft is…more intelligent (this feels like the wrong way of putting it but it’s hard to summarise!) than he is but that Mycroft does not enjoy leg work! He prefers to think in comfort.
• The fifth is more of an Easter Egg and it comes in The Stockbroker’s Clerk.
There isn’t much to add about this one, it seems more of a tease:
But I can assure you I did screech whilst brushing my teeth when I heard this one!
• The sixth and seventh are, of course, in The Six Napoleons.
Now, I may be alone in this but I suspect the person Sherlock met at The Savoy in part one was Mycroft.
Now, I’m fully prepared to be wrong about this if we ever find out who he met but my theory is that Sherlock has been meeting Mycroft to consult about the ‘Spider’. Again, with ACD in mind, we lowkey need Mycroft for later events, and it would make a lot of sense if his involvement starts earlier in S&Co.
The next is in part two when we meet the really delightful addition of Lily Lestrade. Lily seems to be added to take on the more field heavy plots that involve Lestrade in some stories because let’s be honest the head of the Met police isn’t likely to be doing some of these things! There are some interesting theories appearing on how Lily knows Sherlock as the Lestrade family and Holmes family must be somewhat acquainted for Sherlock to have met a six month old Lily.
Although that said, I’m don’t think you need to be particularly close to someone to meet a six month old niece. For example, if Sherlock was already acquainted with Gwen (which seems likely going off the level of caring she showed him in her introduction), him being around her at the same time as a not new born niece is possible.
Lily’s knowledge of Mycroft is interesting, but again, if Sherlock was at Gwen’s home for some reason (we know he got himself into mischief so it doesn’t seem unlikely that she’d take on a bit of a caring role) and Mycroft collected him or picked him up when he’s been in trouble there is the space for Lily to have become at least aware of him.
BUT Lily’s words add another layer:
She must know Mycroft well enough to know that asking after him would throw Sherlock off balance. Sherlock is going out of his way to hide the existence of his brother at this point. I don’t think this is out of some issue in their relationship but more out of a reluctance to a) draw attention to Mycroft among Sherlock’s friends, and b) remember Mycroft is almost certainly an important but shadowy figure in the British establishment meaning in universe he probably doesn’t want his name thrown around in a true crime podcast!
So rather Sherlock’s reluctance to talk about Mycroft is more about who Mycroft is.
There’s more theorising there than I’d intended to add but I can talk about Mycroft for ages!
I think I figured it out: The Comprehensive, Cross-referenced, Compulsively Caveated Sherlock & Co. Timeline
Oh, DC Lily, you and your "I was seven months old" reply to Sherlock's embarrassing story from when he met you for the first time have opened up a whole world of possibility/arguable over-analysis. This originally started just as curiosity about reconciling Lily's comment with one from Dame Lestrade regarding how long she herself had known Sherlock, but as I dug deeper into cross-referencing Lily's age now and some overlooked info with Sherlock's time at Dulwich, everything just gradually coalesced together.
Above is the main ~Proposed Timeline~ visual from the result of a lot of time on Desmos doing basic addition so that I had a history for everything, while below the cut is the reasoning for my conclusions, in the following order:
Mariana's age range
Lily's age range
Cross-referencing Lily's possible ages, and her being a baby when she met Sherlock, with how long Gwen and Sherlock have known each other
Sherlock's age range
Sherlock's age at Dulwich, and the age range for his expulsion
Narrowing down specific years at Dulwich, Sherlock's starting year, and how old Sherlock was when he met Gwen and Lily post-expulsion
I've also spliced off separate posts under the topics for these sections with everything in paragraph form in case that's easier to read, containing bits of additional commentary that's been cut from this bulletpoint version.
Expanded commentary:
Part 1/3: Mariana's age, Lily's age range, and narrowing down the latter
Part 2/3: Sherlock's age, time at Dulwich, and age range for his expulsion
Part 3/3: Sherlock's starting year and date range for Dulwich, possible years for expulsion, and how old he was when meeting the Lestrades
With that, on to the bulletpoints below!
Mariana’s age range (present-day)
States she’s Gen Z, not a millennial, in The Beryl Coronet (Part Two)
Gen Z usually ranges from those born from 1997 to 2012
Now in 2026, that’s a range of people turning from 14-29 years old this year
Completed university education + already having had an overseas estate agent job 3 years ago + being included in the millennial talk by accident=>most generous range is 27-30 years old (born between 1996/1997 to 1999)
Most likely on the oldest end of that range, let’s say she’s 28 turning 29 years old this year. Would’ve been 25 years old when she met Sherlock and John
Lily’s age range (present-day)
Most likely substantially younger than Mariana, since Sherlock specifically points out her youth and mocks her as practically a child on the force ("Isn't it past your bedtime?" and "She’s young, her brain has been rotted by TikTok and memes and podcasts"-type comments)
Met Police website on DC eligibility and training states that you can apply to be a DC at 17, but you have to be 18 to start your training. Then there’s a 4-year training period, at the end of which you earn the status.
18+4=22, that means that the absolute youngest Lily can be at present is 21 turning 22 sometime this year.
However, being more generous with that range and if she’s not freshly graduated from DC training, let’s widen the possible range a bit to include her possibly being up to currently 24 years old.
That gives us her turning anywhere from 22-25 this year, that leaves us with the tentative starting premise of Lily being born sometime from 2001-2004.
Lily’s age, continued (cross-referencing with how long Sherlock+Gwen have known each other, Lily’s age when Sherlock met her as a baby, and when Sherlock must’ve met Gwen Lestrade)
Sherlock describes when he met Lily for the first time, and Lily mentions that she was seven months old at the time
In CAM Part 3, Lestrade says that she's "known [Sherlock] for nearly 20 years". That episode aired on May 5th*, 2025, so if they didn't know each other for 20 years exactly, then the earliest they seemingly could've met (19 years before) is 2006
So, was Lily born either that year (2006) or towards the end of 2005 to account for being a seven-month-old when Sherlock met Gwen’s baby niece for the first time? (This is assuming that he had to have met Gwen at/before meeting Lily)
Nope. Neither 2006 or 2005 can be right for a birth year, because that doesn’t account for the 4-year DC training period, even if we count her application/acceptance year (2023 or 2024) as Year 1.
She would either be still a trainee and earning her DC status in 2027, or have just squeaked by and earned it crazy recently in 2026. With The Six Napoleons coming out this month (March 2026 at time of writing), there’s been nothing so far from Sherlock or Lily to indicate that she’s had the official job for barely three months, even though that’s easy math and it’d be natural for Sherlock to bring up her being young and only barely accredited.
However, if we interpret Lestrade’s comment slightly differently and say that she meant in CAM that they were coming up on some anniversary of her and Sherlock having met 20 years ago that year, but hadn't reached the specific month-or-what-have-you, then they could've met in 2005. Lily could've been seven months old when Sherlock met her and have been born in 2004.
If Lily was born 2004=>17 turning 18 in 2022, 4-year main training program, counting 2022 as Year 1=Graduated last year with DC status in 2025
She couldn’t have been born any earlier, because that would mean that Sherlock somehow met (and was trusted to hold) Gwen’s baby niece a year or more before meeting Gwen herself, without any reference to being pre-existing friends with Lily’s parent rather than Gwen. Meeting baby Lily slightly before Gwen would definitely smooth out the timeline a bit, but it just doesn’t seem likely. 2005 has to be when Sherlock and Gwen met, and thus Lily has to be a 2004 baby.
That would make Lily currently 21 years old, turning 22 later this year. If we take the CAM episode air date (May 5th, 2025) literally as very close to when that conversation happened, then Gwen and Sherlock must’ve met in May or June. With Lily being seven months, that means she must’ve been a fall/winter baby for the previous year. There are some issues with this regarding the DC starting point, but since she has her aunt leading the force, it’s possible to handwave it a smidge. More discussion of that here.
Sherlock’s age range (present-day)
Sherlock just had his birthday in January, and my sole starting assumption for his age range is that he can’t have just turned 40. I just wouldn't get it not being commented upon as ~entering a new decade~ by any of the trio (more on my reasoning in the bigger section here).
So, let’s set Sherlock’s upper age limit as just having turned 39 years old.
To get to the youngest he could possibly be right now, let’s consider that he must’ve started at Dulwich between 9-12 years old
Why that range specifically?
In Gloria Scott (Part One), Victor Trevor mentions that he and his parents moved to London when he was "around 9" years old. So, if he and Sherlock were in the same classes at Dulwich (which seems like the simplest explanation for Victor comparing their horrible grades)
Victor’s family came to England considerably well-off already, so it could've been that Victor started at Dulwich right away at that age as well. But that also likely means that Sherlock couldn't have started there before then, for the two of them to meet at the same time and to be peers (since there's no mention of any lonely pre-Victor year(s) at the school).
So, minimum possible age of Sherlock starting at Dulwich is probably 9 years old, maybe 10. If he got that 1999 letter from Mr. Musgrave the year that he started (since it’s logically the latest he could’ve possibly joined the school), then the youngest current age he could be now is 36-37 years old.
Sherlock can’t have turned 13 in 1999, because that would make him 40 years old now and break my first assumption. Also, going to note that there’s also a comment from Watson in a publicly available mailbag that clarifies Sherlock was there for boarding school, not in the more general definition of a UK “college” being for students in their late teens. More on that here.
So, working backwards, our broadest range has Sherlock logically somewhere between 36-39 years old (born between 1987 to 1990)
Sherlock’s age at Dulwich, and the age range for his expulsion
In Gloria Scott (Part Two), Sherlock mentions to Lionel Trevor that Victor “looked after me in a couple of turbulent years back in the school days"
With the most literal definition of “couple of", that would mean he was there for two years. Helpfully, Sherlock is a January baby, so even if he was kicked out before fully completing his second year in the spring/Lent term (per the Dulwich academic calendar), he would’ve almost definitely been the same age at expulsion as he turned that year. Even without a complete academic year, it'd make sense for him (or really anyone) to count passing two birthdays as spending a couple of years there.
However, you could argue that the language could also apply for if he was there for two full years and didn’t complete his third, so he’s rounding down. So, let’s say that he was there between 2-3 years, max.
I would personally lean towards the lower end of that range, taking Sherlock’s “couple of years” comment on its face, considering mentions from Victor and Reginald emphasizing how he wasn’t there long (more on this in the expanded section). All of those make more sense to me if Sherlock was kicked out sometime in his second calendar year at Dulwich (so either before the end of his second academic year, or early into the start of his third), spending two birthdays there, rather than settling into a third year.
So, with a starting age range of 9-12 years, then add three years for the absolute oldest he could’ve been=>Expelled at 12-15 years old. If we stick to just adding two years, then it’s a range of 11-14 years old.
However, we can narrow this down further. In Gloria Scott, after Sherlock’s “couple of turbulent years” comment, Lionel replies “Ha, the turbulent teens. I remember them well.”
Now, the rest of that conversation makes it clear that he didn’t actually recognize Sherlock out the gate, so he wasn’t thinking in relation to Sherlock being expelled. But, if he was working from the age when his son started, added two, and then came up with “oh yeah, that’s the range in which he would’ve known this guy”, concluding it was their teenage years, then that means that Victor must’ve reached 13 minimum if we go [The boys’ starting age at Dulwich]+[Minimum of two years there]=[Sherlock’s age at expulsion]
So, that shaves off the lower end of our age range for when Sherlock started at Dulwich, anything where adding two years results in <13 years old at expulsion age. So, since he can’t have been 13 to start with, we must have Sherlock, as well as Victor, starting at 11-12 years old there.
My inclination is for the boys to have started at 12 years old, since that puts Sherlock’s expulsion when he was 14-15 years old. So, with my +2 years assumption, he was most likely 14 years old when he was expelled. Considering the range for his birth year, that would make him 39 years old. If you consider him any younger, than you also have to push down the age when he was expelled in light of the 2-3 years he was there.
Years at Dulwich, and how old was Sherlock when he met Gwen and Lily Lestrade post-expulsion?
1999 also had to be his starting year for Dulwich, though it isn't stated as such in the episode. Expanded reasoning here with commentary on the Mr. Musgrave letter, but to summarize: if the youngest Sherlock could be now is 36 years, born in 1990, and the youngest he could’ve been starting Dulwich is 9, then the math doesn’t square with him spending 2-3 years there and being implied to be a teen when expelled.
So, add 2-3 years to 1999 for the latest he could’ve been expelled, and that gives us a range from 2001 to 2002. Since I’m favoring him being there for two years, in my mind, 2001 is the most likely of the pair.
So, I personally think he would’ve been at Dulwich from 1999 (12 years old) until he was expelled in 2001 (at 14 years old)
With that set, let’s jump forward to when he must’ve met Gwen (and Lily) Lestrade in 2005. Consider the date range for his expulsion, that’s a gap of 3-4 years between the two events. Backtracking to the full range of possible ages he could’ve been when he was expelled (from 9-12 at starting Dulwich, to expelled at 11-15 encompassing our “he was there 2-3 years” range), that means that he was between 14-19 years old when he met Lestrade. He must have been a teenager; he couldn’t have been turning twenty in 2005 (re:my self-imposed "he can't be 40 now" rule).
If we go with my preferred “started at Dulwich at 12, expelled at 14, currently 39 years old” chain, then Sherlock would’ve been 18 years old when he met Gwen, and not long after/around that time, was trusted enough to hold her baby niece.
It’s interesting to me that this would put Sherlock only slightly over the age of majority when he started his closest relationship in the force, compared to if he’d been a minor at the time.
I wonder if this was intentional, or at least has the potential to be explored. If he was more of a free agent hanging around the edges of the Met beforehand (i.e, possibly a runaway/kicked out after more failed schools/living with Mycroft, etc. but still seeking out detective work), maybe he put off directly approaching Gwen until he was a legal adult? That way his guardians/older-brother-who's-probably-not-keen-on-the-makeshift-criminology-career/social workers for minors wouldn’t have to be involved. More discussion of that in the expanded section here.
Thanks for reading!🧡 Now I'm going to go find a cave somewhere to forget that math exists for a bit, if no one minds....
and it’s most likely categorically untrue but i just gotta say it
in milverton’s house sherlock refers to his cracksman/hacker associate aj raffles
this is a lovely little reference yes, but it’s a bit odd for sherlock to refer to their secret criminal associate by full name, right?? surely it would out aj raffles if that was their real name
which implies that aj raffles is a code name of some kind (hold this thought)
sherlock also describes aj raffles as “a friend. well. family really. a cousin.”
and who ELSE have we encountered that refers to themself and sherlock as (nonbiological) cousins??
which OTHER female characters have we encountered that have shown themselves to not be above bending the law to assist sherlock??
i posit to you, reader, that aj raffles might just be none other than our plucky young detective constable… lily lestrade
orrrrrr this might be bonkers nonsense
but as they drag me away and throw me into the thames for my madness remember that i was the one who told u first
(i also really hope this means we’ll get to meet this universe’s version of bunny manders and that she and lily are gfs ok bye)
Just finished the 6 napoleons (thoughts below please don’t spoil what is to come) I am actually losing my mind.
Firstly moriarty is AMAZING (a psycho bastard but isn’t that what makes him so entertaining?) also I love the Moran and Moriarty parallel with Watson and Sherlock.
But mainly the Mycroft crumbs are going to drive me up the walls.
The “Even Mycroft” in The Missing Three Quarter made me gasp so loud I frightened my cat.
The bit in (I think) The Hound of the Baskervilles where he says he’s not the brightest brain and he’s half tempted to contact the biggest??? Actually going to explode because WHAT DO YOU MEANNNN.
Mycroft crumbs are going to be the death of me I swear to god.
And then The Six Napoleons was just full of Mycroft crumbs
“I was meeting with…doesn’t matter”
“How’s your brother”
and the entire bit of Moriarty making Sherlock call him??
I was losing my mind.
(I’m still losing my mind actually that’s why I’m writing this).
AND THEN John finally realizes something is odd about this and is trying to ask who Mycroft but he’s convinced himself Mycroft is somehow the mysterious M??? And Lily won’t tell him???
I can feel the angst coming and I’m both very excited and very scared and would someone PLEASE just give me big brother Mycroft before I spontaneously combust???
Also as excited I am about Moriarty existing I now realize just how close we are to the fall and that’s actually a horrifying thought
I have many thoughts about the little tidbits about Sherlock’s past from the most recent episode.
So, first I have a make a couple of assumptions. They’re not too unreasonable though. First of all, I’m gonna assume that Sherlock is around the same age as John, so I’ll say he’s 37 (same as John). Then I’m gonna assume that Lily is around 20/21. She seems like a young adult and from the way that Sherlock comments about her, she’s probably been a DC for at least a couple years. Ok, that’ll be their approximate ages, 37 and 21.
What is 37-21? It’s 16.
That means they have an about 16 year age gap, so when Lily was 7 months old and they first met, Sherlock would have been about 16 years old. So, he most likely would have still lived with his parents.
That means that Lily’s parents and Sherlock’s parents knew each other. There’s also another piece of evidence suggesting this: Lily knowns about Mycroft.
Sherlock is not very forthcoming about his family, to the point where he literally insisted that Mycroft does’t exist. If Sherlock’s parents didn’t know Lily’s, how would she know about Mycroft? Sure, he could have turned up at some point after Sherlock moved out and Lily was there, but that’s a little unlikely considering that Sherlock and Mycroft are probably not on speaking terms (once again, Sherlock insisted that Mycroft doesn’t exist, so they don’t seem to have a good relationship). And it’s also unlikely considering we’ve already established that Lily and Sherlock met when he was 16, so at least Sherlock had met Lily before Sherlock moved out.
Ok, so we’ve established that Sherlock’s family knows Lily’s. How?
I have two possibilities:
One, Lily’s family is family friends with Sherlock’s. Very plausible.
Or two, the more fun option, they’re related. Cousins, most likely. Now, this is a bit less likely. But, I have a tiny bit of evidence for this. First of all, their vibe. They kinda have a sibling vibe, which could be because they’re cousins. Second of all, if Sherlock is related to Lily, he could also related to Lestrade. That would maybe explain how Sherlock got close to her. She’s the police commissioner, she has a very high up position and probably has been pretty high up for a while. And she’s very dedicated to her work, she wouldn’t go through so much trouble to check on Sherlock if she didn’t have a reason. And it can’t be his intelligence, she gets fed up with him so much over his defying her. He’s more a liability to her than anything. But, if he’s her nephew, she would make the time. Third of all, when Lily referred to Lestrade as “aunt Gwen”, Sherlock also called her that too. Probably just him making fun of her, but it’s something that I noticed.
Now, this whole theory falls apart when you consider that Sherlock comments on her nepotism, which would apply to him as well if he were related to Lestrade. But, maybe Lily is related to Lestrade on her father’s side (since they have the same last name) and she’s related to Sherlock on her mother’s side. That’s also totally possible.
So, they’re probably maybe related or their parents were close friends since they kinda have the “we grew up together” vibes.
Finally, slightly unrelated, but if Lily knows about Mycroft, Lestrade almost does and that’s funny to me for some reason.
Am I starting to really hone my deductive skills or what?!
Defining the Sherlock & Co. Timeline: Expanded Section: Part 3
Part 3/3: Sherlock's starting year and date range for Dulwich, possible years for expulsion, and how old he was when meeting the Lestrades
Getting actual dated years involved, woo! That's what a proper timeline is all about!
First point of reference: Although it isn't stated as such in the episode, based on how the age ranges are built up, 1999 also has to be [EDIT: one of the two options for] Sherlock's starting year for Dulwich.
There just isn't any room for 1998 or earlier to be his starting year, based on his possible birth years and the 2-3 years max that he could've been at Dulwich.
[EDIT: Correction! There actually is room for him to have started in 1998 if he's currently 39 years old now in 2026
If the youngest Sherlock could be now is 36 years* with a 1990 birth year, then cross-referencing that with the youngest he could've been starting Dulwich (9 years old, per the Victor Trevor reference) gives us 1990+9=1999. Making him any younger (<36 years) with birth years in 1991 or later causes problems with knowing that he was at Dulwich in 1999 (example: if Sherlock was born in 1991, just turned 35, add the bare-minimum-youngest-he-could-have-been 9 years, then he would've started at Dulwich in 2000. Thus, no 1999 letter from Mr. Musgrave. Just doesn't work.)
If you try to get around that by making him start at Dulwich younger, then you run up against the problem of him mentioning only spending "a couple" of years at Dulwich where, practically speaking, any starting age below 11 doesn't account for the implication that he and Victor were teenagers when he was expelled. Even stretching the "couple of years" reference to possibly include 3 years would make him only 12 for his expulsion if we say he started at 9 years old.
So, messing around with the 36-39 current age range and the 9-12 starting school age range just doesn't work.
You just can't have Sherlock start any earlier than 1999 [EDIT: or 1998!] (and you can't have him start in a later year because, hey, we have a dated letter saying he was already there).
The content of the letter could also easily fit with this. "I send you these puzzles not to trick or bemuse you but to inspire. Be everything you could possibly be. Warmest Regards, Mr. Musgrave" reads to me as something fitting to have towards the start of a mentor-mentee relationship.
It implies young Sherlock being insecure/wary that the puzzles and riddles pinned to his door or sent to him, probably the first he received, are mere tricks to catch the troubled prodigy on the wrong foot or a shallow bemusement to make a willing show pony out of him, with Musgrave Sr. picking up on those feelings and reassuring him this is a genuine means of connection.
(Well. At least coming across that way)
So, we have 1999 as our starting year. Just add 2-3 years for when he was expelled, and we have our range for that to happen sometime in 2001 to 2002.
Since I'm favoring Sherlock being there for two calendar years (possibly not finishing his second academic year by that spring), in my mind, 2001 is the most likely of the pair.
So, I personally think he would’ve been at Dulwich from 1999 (12 years old) until he was expelled in 2001 (at 14 years old)
Meeting the Lestrades: how old was Sherlock at the time?
With that set, let’s jump forward to when he must’ve met Gwen (and Lily) Lestrade in 2005. Considering the date range for his expulsion, that’s a gap of 3-4 years between the two events. Backtracking to the full range of possible ages he could’ve been when he was expelled (from 9-12 at starting Dulwich, to 11-15 encompassing our “he was there 2-3 years” range), that means that he was between 14-19 years old when he met Lestrade. He must have been a teenager; he couldn’t have been turning twenty in 2005.
If we go with my preferred “started at Dulwich at 12, expelled at 14, currently 39 years old” chain, then Sherlock would’ve been 18 years old when he met Gwen, and not long after/around that time, was trusted enough to hold her baby niece.
It’s interesting to me that this would put Sherlock only slightly over the age of majority when he started his closest relationship in the force, compared to if he’d been a minor at the time. I wonder if this was intentional.
If he was more of a semi-anonymous free agent hanging around the edges of the Met beforehand (i.e, possibly a runaway/kicked out after more failed schools, but still hung around London seeking out detective work), maybe he put off directly approaching Gwen/pitching himself as a resource until he was a legal adult? That way his parents/Mycroft/social workers for minors wouldn’t have to be involved.
(It can't have been an easy time at home considering any failed schools after Dulwich, and even if he moved out while still a minor to join older brother Mycroft living somewhere else, it's possible that that having him as his de facto guardian wasn't especially well-matched to the kind of freelance occasionally dangerous crime-solving career that Sherlock wanted to build up as a school dropout with no formal credentials?)
End of expanded sections: Back to main post with all sections in bulletpoints here
Footnotes below:
*"If the youngest Sherlock could be now is 36 years* with a 1990 birth year..."
36 years, and thus 33 years old at the start of the podcast, meaning that him and Watson would temporarily be the same age pre-May each year. Seems weird for the Watson we know to never give in to the temptation to say something about the coincidence like "hey mate, happy birthday, welcome to ~being 35~ it ain't bad so far, I did the courtesy of um, scoutin' the uncharted waters out for ya first, heh, there's a John Watson best friend special!". Let’s count on the man’s corniness and politely discount 1990 as a possible birth year for Sherlock relative to Watson’s 1989, even if it’s still technically in the range.
Defining the Sherlock & Co. Timeline: Expanded Section: Part 2
Part 2/3: Sherlock's age, time at Dulwich, and age range for his expulsion
Previous=>Part 1/3: Mariana's age, Lily's age range, and narrowing down the latter
Next=>Part 3/3 here: Using the conclusions from this section to consider Sherlock's birth year, the specific years of his entry to Dulwich and what year he was expelled, and how old he was when he met Gwen and Lily Lestrade
Sherlock’s age: Upper limit
Starting assumption: He has to be younger than 40 years old, maximum just turned 39 years old.
Sherlock's already had his birthday this year, and I'd strongly lean towards keeping him under 40 years old. I know that birthdays aren't as specifically significant year-by-year as you get older, celebration-wise, but 40 feels like a pretty significant milestone?
I just wouldn't get it not being commented upon as ~entering a new decade~ by any of the trio (even if he's vague with Watson for some reason, Mariana at least would know his birth year from all the paperwork she does for the business. DOBs are asked for on freakin' everything).
In my mind, him being in the nondescript mid-to-late 30s range makes more sense for that lack of comment (not sharing Watson's tendency to say everything about everything), since while milestones may be personally significant there isn't really any "hey, you reached the big X!" culturally but still fits with him bringing up "growing" versus "aging" in TWIS.
So, let's set that as our upper age limit for him: 39 years old.
When did Sherlock start at Dulwich College?: Lower age limit
I went back to the transcripts for The Gloria Scott in the course of finding any references I could map out for this behemoth, and I noticed something interesting: Victor Trevor mentions that he and his parents moved to London when he was around 9 years old.
So, if he and Sherlock were in the same classes at Dulwich (which seems like the simplest explanation for Victor comparing their horrible grades, that would be a bit weird if they were in different cohorts/age levels. Sherlock doesn't mention being held back even when that would've been relevant to the conversation), then Victor's age is relevant here.
The family came to England considerably well-off already, so it could've been that Victor started at Dulwich right away at that age as well. But that also likely means that Sherlock couldn't have started there before then, for the two of them to meet at the same time and to be peers (since there's no mention of any lonely pre-Victor year(s) at the school).
(Sherlock also can’t have turned 13 in 1999, because that would make him 40 years old now and break my first assumption)
So, minimum possible age of Sherlock starting at Dulwich is probably 9 years old, maybe 10. If he got that 1999 letter from Mr. Musgrave the year that he started (logically the latest year he could've joined the school/youngest he could be combo, more on that below), then the youngest he could be now is 36-37 years old.
So, our working age range for Sherlock is 36-39 years old.
(When I was doing these kinds of age calculations for Sherlock last year, I was working with the assumption that Sherlock had to have attended "college" between ages 16 to 18 based on comments online. I didn't know that Dulwich was all ages (7-19) then, but more concretely: I recently went back to the mailbag where Watson discussed that, and I noticed something.
From Mailbag #4 (transcript courtesy of eardefenders): "Uh, by the way, um, few of our American listeners have mentioned that you and Victor went to college together. College in the UK is sixteen to eighteen, generally speaking. Um, but , sorry Sherlock, posh lads will sometimes call boarding school a ‘college’. Uhh, I d-I don’t know why. They also call their private boarding schools ‘public schools’. So, yeah, I know. Weird lot."
So, it’s been out there this whole time Sherlock was explicitly there for boarding school, not in the sense of it being under the general definition of UK "college" with what Americans might consider a junior high equivalent mixed with actually living there. That "ages sixteen to eighteen" bit is totally irrelevant here, Watson explicitly gives the definition and says that wasn't the case for Sherlock with that "but". So, we’re all good on a much younger age range here!)
So, if Sherlock started at Dulwich with Victor sometime between ages 9 to 12 (let's allow for the Trevor family to maybe have some years to settle in England before they sent their son off to boarding school), and he was there for a maximum of something like three years, then he would've been expelled somewhere between ages 12 to 15.
(Much younger than I, and I'm going to guess, most people were envisioning for his time there. A lot of the fanart I've seen before had them look to be in their late teens)
I would personally lean towards the latter end of that 12-15 years old range since that would put him in his late teens when he met Lestrade, and closer to being legally independent since it seems significant to me that there's no major schools mentioned after Dulwich.
Again. Could've just left it at that. But, I dug into narrowing it down further, and I think I have it: how old he must've been when starting Dulwich, what his starting year was, and how old he was when he was expelled.
Solidifying Sherlock’s age at Dulwich, and the age range/years for his expulsion
In Gloria Scott (Part Two), Sherlock mentions to Lionel Trevor that Victor “looked after me in a couple of turbulent years back in the school days”
With the most literal definition of “couple of”, that would mean he was there for two years. Helpfully, Sherlock is an early January baby, so even if he was kicked out before completing his second year in the spring (per the Dulwich academic calendar), he would’ve almost definitely been the same age at expulsion as he turned that year.
However, you could argue that the language could apply for if he was there for two full years and didn’t complete his third, so he’s rounding down. So, let’s say that he was there between 2-3 years, max.
(More math madness and transcript references galore below the cut)
I would personally lean towards the lower end of that range, taking Sherlock’s “couple of years” comment on its face, considering these ones from Victor and Reginald emphasizing how he wasn’t there long:
(From Gloria Scott, Part Two)
(From The Musgrave Ritual, Part Four)
Then cross-reference that with what we have from The Gloria Scott...
All of those make more sense to me if Sherlock was kicked out sometime in his second calendar year at Dulwich (so either before the end of his second academic year, or early into the start of his third), spending two birthdays there, rather than settling into even the beginning of a third calendar year. That's still just a feeling though, so I'll still be making space for a 3-year range for the sake of being thorough (not that anyone would accuse me of not being that)
So, with a starting age range of 9-12 years for Sherlock, then add three years for the absolute, max, end-of-the line oldest he could’ve been=>Expelled at 12-15 years old. If we stick to just adding two years, which seems more supported with the "brief" emphasis, then it’s a range of 11-14 years old.
However, we can narrow this down further. See above: in The Gloria Scott, after Sherlock’s “couple of turbulent years” comment, Lionel replies “Ha, the turbulent teens. I remember them well.”
Now, interestingly, the rest of that conversation makes it clear that he didn’t recognize Sherlock out the gate, so he wasn’t thinking in relation to Sherlock being friends with Victor/expelled. But, if he was working from the age when his son started, added two, and then came up with “oh yeah, that’s the range in which he would’ve known this guy”, concluding it was their teenage years, then that means that Victor must’ve reached 13 minimum if we go [The boys’ starting age at Dulwich]+[Minimum of two years there]=[Sherlock’s age at expulsion]
So, that shaves off the lower end of our age range for when Sherlock started at Dulwich, anything where adding two years results in <13 years old at expulsion age. So, since he can’t have been 13 to start with, we must have Sherlock, as well as Victor, starting at 11-12 years old there.
My preference is to have the boys start attending Dulwich when they were 12 years old, since that puts Sherlock’s expulsion when he was 14-15 years old. With my inclination for it being +2 years, that would make Sherlock likely 14 years old when he was expelled.
While there's the line from Lionel (and the lack of correction/having him be wrong would just be confusing) as supporting evidence for Sherlock and Victor being teenagers two years into Dulwich, I also think that him being on the older side of the range makes more sense with the fact they resorted to expelling him for exposing the principal (and general terrible grades, any other kind of unstated behavioral disruption, if he was blamed for Reginald's abuse, etc.)...
Versus if he was younger than that...even within a strict school setting, if an institution writ large expects to take in and account for shifts in behavior/personality/academic performance in students from 7 to 19 years old, I think you would still likely hold off on that kind of extreme punishment for a 10-12 year old child? Even someone just newly 13.
That just seems too young to be held fully responsible for the kind of thing Sherlock did (considering the details we know at this time), and to overcome the "even if his grades are horrible his parents are still paying us each year, so...."-type inertia with the hassle of kicking someone out.
But, if he was already 14-15 years old at the time of The Adventure of The Adulterous Principal, then I can see that as him being old enough to be considered responsible for his own behavior and written off by the remainder of the administration.
Next=>Part 3/3 here: Using the conclusions from this section to consider Sherlock's birth year, the specific years of his entry to Dulwich and what year he was expelled, and how old he was when he met Gwen and Lily Lestrade
