The Hound of the Baskervilles characters

Appears from the start

The consulting detective of Baker Street, at the height of his practice and much in demand. He opens the book by reconstructing the life of an unknown visitor from a walking stick left behind in the hall, chiefly to test whether his companion has learned anything from watching him work. He is scornful of superstition, insistent that a case be treated as a problem in evidence, and secretive about his own plans even with his closest friend. Pressure of other work keeps him in London while the case unfolds in Devon, so much of the investigation is conducted at a distance through written reports.

Also known as Dr. Watson

Appears from the start

A doctor and former army surgeon who shares rooms with Sherlock Holmes and writes up his cases. Practical, brave and conscientious, he is sensitive about being patronised for his slower reasoning. When Holmes cannot leave London he is sent to Devon as the detective's eyes and ears, charged with guarding a client and reporting everything he sees, and he narrates the greater part of the book through his letters and diary.

Appears from the start

A country doctor practising on Dartmoor, tall, thin and stooping, with a passion for comparative anatomy and the shapes of skulls, and a spaniel that follows him everywhere. He gave up a hospital career to marry and settle in the country. Medical attendant and personal friend to the late Sir Charles Baskerville, he brings Holmes both a family manuscript from the previous century and the facts of a recent death he is not satisfied with.

First appears in chapter 2

The late owner of Baskerville Hall, a man who had made a large fortune in South Africa and returned to restore the family estate and spend his money on the district. Nervous, generous and in poor health, he had come to half believe the old family legend and would not walk on the moor after dark. He was found dead at the far end of the yew alley of his own grounds one night, with no mark of violence on him.

First appears in chapter 2

An ancestor of the family in the time of the Great Rebellion, described in a manuscript preserved at the Hall: a violent and dissolute squire who carried off a farmer's daughter and hunted her across the moor when she escaped, and whose own death that night is the origin of the legend of a spectral hound pursuing the Baskervilles.

First appears in chapter 4

The heir to the Baskerville estate, a nephew of Sir Charles, small, alert and weathered from years of farming in Canada. Newly arrived in England to take up his inheritance, he is level-headed and stubborn, refuses to be frightened away from his own property, and is inclined to treat the family legend as nonsense even after strange things begin happening to him in his London hotel.

First appears in chapter 5

The driver of the cab that carried a bearded stranger who followed Sir Henry through London. Traced by Holmes through the official register, he gives a straightforward account of his fare and repeats, with some enjoyment, the name the passenger gave him.

First appears in chapter 6

The butler at Baskerville Hall, a tall, black-bearded, formal man whose family has served the Baskervilles for generations. He and his wife were the only people in the house when Sir Charles died, and he was left a substantial legacy in the will. He behaves oddly about the household at night and is plainly anxious to leave the Hall and set up in business elsewhere.

First appears in chapter 6

The housekeeper at Baskerville Hall and the butler's wife, a heavy, impassive woman who keeps the house running correctly while showing every sign of private distress. Watson hears her weeping at night more than once, and her husband denies that anything is wrong.

First appears in chapter 6

A convicted murderer who has escaped from the prison at Princetown and is believed to be hiding somewhere on the moor. Soldiers and warders are searching for him, the district has been warned, and every isolated household is locking its doors, since he is described as a man who would stop at nothing.

First appears in chapter 7

A naturalist living at Merripit House on the moor, a small, spare, precise man with a butterfly net who left an unsuccessful career as a schoolmaster in the north of England. He knows the moor and its dangerous bogs better than anyone, is friendly and helpful to the new arrivals, and offers to show Watson the country and the neolithic remains scattered over it.

First appears in chapter 7

The dark-haired, striking young woman living at Merripit House and introduced as the naturalist's sister, in appearance and manner entirely unlike him. Mistaking Watson for the new heir at their first meeting, she urgently begs him to leave Devon at once, and then, when her mistake is discovered, retracts the warning and asks him to forget it.

First appears in chapter 8

An elderly neighbour at Lafter Hall, a litigious man who spends his money bringing lawsuits against his neighbours and the parish over rights of way and similar questions, and who has quarrelled with his own daughter. His other hobby is astronomy, and he keeps a powerful telescope on his roof with which he watches the moor for the escaped convict.

First appears in chapter 11

A young woman living in Coombe Tracey, the daughter of the litigious Mr. Frankland, who married against her father's wishes and was deserted by her husband. Cut off by her family and earning a precarious living by typewriting, she had been helped quietly by Sir Charles Baskerville, and Watson traces her as the writer whose initials appear in a letter burned in Sir Charles's grate on the night he died.

First appears in chapter 13

The Scotland Yard inspector Holmes summons from London at the critical stage of the case, brisk, wiry and openly pleased to be working with him. He arrives by train with no idea of what he is being asked to do and follows Holmes onto the moor at night.