Scotland Yard

The official force behind Lestrade, Gregson and the other inspectors Holmes works with.

Scotland Yard is the headquarters of London's Metropolitan Police, and it has featured in fiction since the Victorian era, including the stories of Sherlock Holmes. Its best-known man in those stories is Inspector Lestrade, a determined but conventional Scotland Yard detective who consults Holmes on many cases and is the most prominent police character in the series.

Quick Facts

Location: London

Lore & Background

Lestrade first appears in A Study in Scarlet (1887), where he mentions his twenty years' experience in the force. Holmes observes that Lestrade and another detective, Tobias Gregson, have an ongoing rivalry, and calls the two "the pick of a bad lot": quick and energetic, but conventional. Gregson, whom Holmes declares "the smartest of the Scotland Yarders", returns in "The Greek Interpreter", "Wisteria Lodge" and "The Red Circle". Inspector Bradstreet, who originally served in Scotland Yard's E (Holborn) Division, appears in three short stories.

Reader's Guide

Yard men are on hand at the end of several cases: Lestrade hides with Holmes and Watson near Stapleton's house in The Hound of the Baskervilles, and Inspector Jones of Scotland Yard waits with them in the bank vault in "The Red-Headed League". In the 2020 film Enola Holmes, Mycroft has Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard search for Enola.