The Giant Rat of Sumatra is a fictional giant
rat, first mentioned by
Arthur Conan Doyle in "
The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire".[1] As part of the tale, the protagonist,
Sherlock Holmes, declares that there is a "story" connected with this rat, presumably a detective case he has handled. The name of the rat and its implied unpublished history were later used in works by many other writers.[1][2][3]
Matilda Briggs was not the name of a young woman, Watson, ... It was a ship which is associated with the giant rat of
Sumatra, a story for which the world is not yet prepared.
How the ship, the mammal, and the
Indonesian island are associated is not specified. Rats commonly colonize ships, and so there is an obvious line of speculation.
Another train of thought follows the reasoning that Matilda Briggs actually was the name of a young woman as well as a fictional ship – for the famous "mystery ship", the
Mary Celeste, which was found abandoned at sea in 1872, had sailed under the command of Captain
Benjamin Briggs, whose daughter, Sophia Matilda Briggs, was a passenger on the doomed
merchantbrigantine.[5] Doyle was certainly familiar with the Briggs family, for in the January 1884 issue of the Cornhill Magazine, when he was but a 25-year-old ship's surgeon, he had published a short story about the mysteriously abandoned Mary Celeste titled "
J. Habakuk Jephson's Statement". As it was a work of fiction, Doyle did not adhere strictly to the facts; he renamed the ship Marie Celeste, the captain's name was given as "J.W. Tibbs", and the fatal voyage was said to have taken place in 1873 – but his story proved so popular and influential that many people to this day still refer to the vessel as the Marie Celeste, rather than the Mary Celeste.
In a lecture delivered in 1994 and published online in 2014, Holmesian Alan Saunders argued that a giant Sumatran rat species was being used by the villain Culverton Smith as the carrier of the disease known as Tapanuli Fever, a feature of Doyle's "
The Adventure of the Dying Detective". (
Tapanuli is an administrative district of North West Sumatra; the highly lethal infectious disease is also known as
Melioidosis; it is caused by the
bacteriumBurkholderia pseudomallei.) Saunders identified the rat as the
Large Sumatran Bamboo Rat (Rhizomys sumatrensis);[5] this species can reach lengths of nearly 50 cm with a 20 cm tail, and weigh up to 4 kilos (8.8 lbs); it is in real life a carrier of the disease-causing
mold, Talaromyces marneffei, which can also be lethal.[7][8]
A new species in the
Woolly Rat (Mallomys) genus was discovered in 2007 in the
Foja Mountains of Papua; it weighs 1.4 kilograms (3.1 lb) and has been compared to Holmes's animal.[9]
In 2015, the discovery of
fossils of "seven new species of giant rat", including the "largest rat ever" on the island of East Timor was announced. The biggest of these Coryphomys rats was described as weighing "5 kilos (11 pounds), the size of a small
dog," and was referred to as the "Giant Rat" in news stories.[10]
In Sherlockiana
A number of authors of
Sherlockiana have endeavoured to supply the missing adventure of the giant rat of Sumatra, either in
non-canonical Holmesian fiction, or as references to the tale in other fictional settings:
In "The Giant Rat of Sumatra," an episode of the
radio seriesThe New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes written by
Edith Meiser, and first broadcast on 1 March 1942,
Professor Moriarty arranges for the titular rodent, infected with
bubonic plague, to be transported to England on board the Matilda Briggs. This episode is apparently lost, but is described in some detail by
Jim Harmon in his book The Great Radio Heroes.
In The Spider Woman (1944),
Nigel Bruce's Watson briefly reflects on the Giant Rat of Sumatra when looking through a scrapbook of old cases.
The Tale of the Giant Rat of Sumatra, a 1974 comedy album by the
Firesign Theatre (LP Columbia KC32730) is a pun-filled
pastiche featuring the protagonists Hemlock Stones, the 'Great Defective', and his biographer and companion, Dr. John Flotsom, O. D. Part of the narrative takes place aboard the Matilda Briggs and the name of this ship induces the group to perform the song "Frigate Matilda" (to the tune of "
Waltzing Matilda"), which has become something of a cult standard.
The 1975 novel Sherlock Holmes's War of the Worlds is a sequel to
H. G. Wells' science fiction novel The War of the Worlds, written by
Manly Wade Wellman and his son Wade Wellman as a pastiche
crossover which combines H. G. Wells' extraterrestrial invasion story with Doyle's Sherlock Holmes and
Professor Challenger stories. During the course of the narrative, Holmes mentions that Professor Challenger helped solve the case of the giant rat, although the actual name of the case is not stated.
In The Talons of Weng-Chiang, a 1977 Doctor Who TV serial set in Victorian London, the hero (dressed in deerstalker and accompanied by a medical doctor with a housekeeper known as
Mrs. Hudson) confronts a giant rat in the sewers of London.
The Holmes-Dracula File is a 1978 novel by
Fred Saberhagen in which Holmes and
Dracula (who turns out to be related to Holmes) uncover a plot to destroy London with plague-bearing rats, the Giant Rat being a living plague vector.
"The Giant Rat of Sumatra" is the title of a 1996 short story by
Paula Volsky, included in Eternal Lovecraft: The Persistence of H. P. Lovecraft in Popular Culture. (
ISBN978-0-9655901-7-4)
The Giant Rat of Sumatra is a 1997 title in the
Hardy Boys juvenile mystery series, written by
Franklin W. Dixon. Frank and Joe Hardy investigate the sabotage of a new musical play based on the Sherlock Holmes story.
The Giant Rat of Sumatra (1998) is the second novel in the Baker Street Mysteries juvenile series written by Jake and Luke Thoene.
The Shadow of the Rat is a 1999 novel by
David Stuart Davies that deals with the rat, a breed from Sumatra, as part of a biological warfare plot against
London, England using the
bubonic plague; the Matilda Briggs is the ship that brings the rats to London. The story line echoes the plot of Edith Meiser's radio play mentioned above.
The 2000 - 2001 television drama series Murder Rooms (featuring the adventures of a young
Arthur Conan Doyle and his mentor) includes an episode wherein a circus manager mentions having featured the 'Giant Rat of Sumatra' in his freak show. He confesses that the animal was actually a
terrier dog with no fur.
Sherlock Holmes and the Giant Rat of Sumatra is a 2002 novel by
Alan Vanneman.[12] A cousin of Dr. Watson's late wife travels to Baker Street from Singapore to consult Sherlock Holmes regarding her husband's mysterious suicide; the 'Matilda Briggs' does not appear in this book. (
Carroll & Graf,
ISBN0-7867-0956-1)
In Sherlock Holmes and the Giant Rat of Sumatra, a 2010 novel by
Paul D. Gilbert, Holmes investigates the mysterious reappearance of the long-overdue clipper 'Matilda Briggs.'[13]
In 2014, the first episode of the third series of BBC's Sherlock, "
The Empty Hearse", features a "giant rat of Sumatra Road", the code name for a villainous politician, Lord
Moran, who is acting as a
mole for North Korea and plans to detonate a bomb at an abandoned
London Underground station called Sumatra Road.[14]
Other references
The giant Sumatran rat is mentioned in the 1972 novel Watership Down in one of the rabbits' allegorical tales.
In "A Father's Tale", a 1974 novelet by
Sterling E. Lanier, the narrator, Brigadier Ffellowes, recounts his father's story of an encounter in the
East Indies with a mysterious man calling himself "Verner", and a race of large, intelligent rats.
Braindead, a 1992 film by
Peter Jackson, features a Sumatran Rat-monkey, a hybrid that "according to legend" resulted from the rape of tree monkeys by plague rats on
Skull Island.
The Giant Rat of Sumatra: or Pirates Galore is a 2005 children's novel by
Sid Fleischman. It is not a Sherlock Holmes story; the Giant Rat of the title is a pirate ship anchored off the coast of California in 1846.[15]
In his 2011 bestseller, The Psychopath Test,
Jon Ronson tells the story of a book project where prominent academics across the globe are being sent a mysterious self-referential book, Being or Nothingness, commonly referred to as "The Giant Rat of Sumatra".
The final issue of the
Marvel ComicBefore The Fantastic Four: Reed Richards features the title character promising to tell his son
Franklin about how he met "The Giant Rat of Sumatra".
In The Adventures of Tintin movie, when Captain Haddock first gets woken up by Tintin and Snowy, he yells, “A giant rat of Sumatra!”
The Giant Rat of Sumatra is a fictional giant
rat, first mentioned by
Arthur Conan Doyle in "
The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire".[1] As part of the tale, the protagonist,
Sherlock Holmes, declares that there is a "story" connected with this rat, presumably a detective case he has handled. The name of the rat and its implied unpublished history were later used in works by many other writers.[1][2][3]
Matilda Briggs was not the name of a young woman, Watson, ... It was a ship which is associated with the giant rat of
Sumatra, a story for which the world is not yet prepared.
How the ship, the mammal, and the
Indonesian island are associated is not specified. Rats commonly colonize ships, and so there is an obvious line of speculation.
Another train of thought follows the reasoning that Matilda Briggs actually was the name of a young woman as well as a fictional ship – for the famous "mystery ship", the
Mary Celeste, which was found abandoned at sea in 1872, had sailed under the command of Captain
Benjamin Briggs, whose daughter, Sophia Matilda Briggs, was a passenger on the doomed
merchantbrigantine.[5] Doyle was certainly familiar with the Briggs family, for in the January 1884 issue of the Cornhill Magazine, when he was but a 25-year-old ship's surgeon, he had published a short story about the mysteriously abandoned Mary Celeste titled "
J. Habakuk Jephson's Statement". As it was a work of fiction, Doyle did not adhere strictly to the facts; he renamed the ship Marie Celeste, the captain's name was given as "J.W. Tibbs", and the fatal voyage was said to have taken place in 1873 – but his story proved so popular and influential that many people to this day still refer to the vessel as the Marie Celeste, rather than the Mary Celeste.
In a lecture delivered in 1994 and published online in 2014, Holmesian Alan Saunders argued that a giant Sumatran rat species was being used by the villain Culverton Smith as the carrier of the disease known as Tapanuli Fever, a feature of Doyle's "
The Adventure of the Dying Detective". (
Tapanuli is an administrative district of North West Sumatra; the highly lethal infectious disease is also known as
Melioidosis; it is caused by the
bacteriumBurkholderia pseudomallei.) Saunders identified the rat as the
Large Sumatran Bamboo Rat (Rhizomys sumatrensis);[5] this species can reach lengths of nearly 50 cm with a 20 cm tail, and weigh up to 4 kilos (8.8 lbs); it is in real life a carrier of the disease-causing
mold, Talaromyces marneffei, which can also be lethal.[7][8]
A new species in the
Woolly Rat (Mallomys) genus was discovered in 2007 in the
Foja Mountains of Papua; it weighs 1.4 kilograms (3.1 lb) and has been compared to Holmes's animal.[9]
In 2015, the discovery of
fossils of "seven new species of giant rat", including the "largest rat ever" on the island of East Timor was announced. The biggest of these Coryphomys rats was described as weighing "5 kilos (11 pounds), the size of a small
dog," and was referred to as the "Giant Rat" in news stories.[10]
In Sherlockiana
A number of authors of
Sherlockiana have endeavoured to supply the missing adventure of the giant rat of Sumatra, either in
non-canonical Holmesian fiction, or as references to the tale in other fictional settings:
In "The Giant Rat of Sumatra," an episode of the
radio seriesThe New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes written by
Edith Meiser, and first broadcast on 1 March 1942,
Professor Moriarty arranges for the titular rodent, infected with
bubonic plague, to be transported to England on board the Matilda Briggs. This episode is apparently lost, but is described in some detail by
Jim Harmon in his book The Great Radio Heroes.
In The Spider Woman (1944),
Nigel Bruce's Watson briefly reflects on the Giant Rat of Sumatra when looking through a scrapbook of old cases.
The Tale of the Giant Rat of Sumatra, a 1974 comedy album by the
Firesign Theatre (LP Columbia KC32730) is a pun-filled
pastiche featuring the protagonists Hemlock Stones, the 'Great Defective', and his biographer and companion, Dr. John Flotsom, O. D. Part of the narrative takes place aboard the Matilda Briggs and the name of this ship induces the group to perform the song "Frigate Matilda" (to the tune of "
Waltzing Matilda"), which has become something of a cult standard.
The 1975 novel Sherlock Holmes's War of the Worlds is a sequel to
H. G. Wells' science fiction novel The War of the Worlds, written by
Manly Wade Wellman and his son Wade Wellman as a pastiche
crossover which combines H. G. Wells' extraterrestrial invasion story with Doyle's Sherlock Holmes and
Professor Challenger stories. During the course of the narrative, Holmes mentions that Professor Challenger helped solve the case of the giant rat, although the actual name of the case is not stated.
In The Talons of Weng-Chiang, a 1977 Doctor Who TV serial set in Victorian London, the hero (dressed in deerstalker and accompanied by a medical doctor with a housekeeper known as
Mrs. Hudson) confronts a giant rat in the sewers of London.
The Holmes-Dracula File is a 1978 novel by
Fred Saberhagen in which Holmes and
Dracula (who turns out to be related to Holmes) uncover a plot to destroy London with plague-bearing rats, the Giant Rat being a living plague vector.
"The Giant Rat of Sumatra" is the title of a 1996 short story by
Paula Volsky, included in Eternal Lovecraft: The Persistence of H. P. Lovecraft in Popular Culture. (
ISBN978-0-9655901-7-4)
The Giant Rat of Sumatra is a 1997 title in the
Hardy Boys juvenile mystery series, written by
Franklin W. Dixon. Frank and Joe Hardy investigate the sabotage of a new musical play based on the Sherlock Holmes story.
The Giant Rat of Sumatra (1998) is the second novel in the Baker Street Mysteries juvenile series written by Jake and Luke Thoene.
The Shadow of the Rat is a 1999 novel by
David Stuart Davies that deals with the rat, a breed from Sumatra, as part of a biological warfare plot against
London, England using the
bubonic plague; the Matilda Briggs is the ship that brings the rats to London. The story line echoes the plot of Edith Meiser's radio play mentioned above.
The 2000 - 2001 television drama series Murder Rooms (featuring the adventures of a young
Arthur Conan Doyle and his mentor) includes an episode wherein a circus manager mentions having featured the 'Giant Rat of Sumatra' in his freak show. He confesses that the animal was actually a
terrier dog with no fur.
Sherlock Holmes and the Giant Rat of Sumatra is a 2002 novel by
Alan Vanneman.[12] A cousin of Dr. Watson's late wife travels to Baker Street from Singapore to consult Sherlock Holmes regarding her husband's mysterious suicide; the 'Matilda Briggs' does not appear in this book. (
Carroll & Graf,
ISBN0-7867-0956-1)
In Sherlock Holmes and the Giant Rat of Sumatra, a 2010 novel by
Paul D. Gilbert, Holmes investigates the mysterious reappearance of the long-overdue clipper 'Matilda Briggs.'[13]
In 2014, the first episode of the third series of BBC's Sherlock, "
The Empty Hearse", features a "giant rat of Sumatra Road", the code name for a villainous politician, Lord
Moran, who is acting as a
mole for North Korea and plans to detonate a bomb at an abandoned
London Underground station called Sumatra Road.[14]
Other references
The giant Sumatran rat is mentioned in the 1972 novel Watership Down in one of the rabbits' allegorical tales.
In "A Father's Tale", a 1974 novelet by
Sterling E. Lanier, the narrator, Brigadier Ffellowes, recounts his father's story of an encounter in the
East Indies with a mysterious man calling himself "Verner", and a race of large, intelligent rats.
Braindead, a 1992 film by
Peter Jackson, features a Sumatran Rat-monkey, a hybrid that "according to legend" resulted from the rape of tree monkeys by plague rats on
Skull Island.
The Giant Rat of Sumatra: or Pirates Galore is a 2005 children's novel by
Sid Fleischman. It is not a Sherlock Holmes story; the Giant Rat of the title is a pirate ship anchored off the coast of California in 1846.[15]
In his 2011 bestseller, The Psychopath Test,
Jon Ronson tells the story of a book project where prominent academics across the globe are being sent a mysterious self-referential book, Being or Nothingness, commonly referred to as "The Giant Rat of Sumatra".
The final issue of the
Marvel ComicBefore The Fantastic Four: Reed Richards features the title character promising to tell his son
Franklin about how he met "The Giant Rat of Sumatra".
In The Adventures of Tintin movie, when Captain Haddock first gets woken up by Tintin and Snowy, he yells, “A giant rat of Sumatra!”