This article describes minor characters from the Sherlock Holmes stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and from non-canonical derived works. The list excludes the titular character as well as Dr. Watson, Professor Moriarty, Inspector Lestrade, Mycroft Holmes, Mrs. Hudson, Irene Adler, Colonel Moran, the Baker Street Irregulars, and characters not significant enough to mention.
Inspectors
Inspector Baynes
Inspector Baynes of the Surrey Constabulary appears in the two-part story "The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge", subtitled (i) "The Singular Experience of Mr John Scott Eccles", and (ii) "The Tiger of San Pedro". He is the only official policeman in the books to have ever matched Sherlock Holmes in his investigative skills. He is described as a very heavy man with a "puffy" face, but very intelligent eyes. In this story, the reader finds that, despite working along different lines, Holmes and Baynes both arrive at the correct conclusion and solve the case at the same time. In fact, Baynes had misled Holmes, as he used a method similar to one that Holmes often used when he arrested the wrong man and provided inaccurate information to the press, to lull the true criminal into a false sense of security. Holmes congratulated Baynes, and believed that he would go far.
In the 1988 Granada Television adaptation of The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge, Inspector Baynes is portrayed by Freddie Jones. A version of Inspector Baynes appears in the video game The Testament of Sherlock Holmes (2012), in which Baynes is employed by Scotland Yard. In the Japanese puppetry television series Sherlock Holmes (2014–2015), Baynes is a pupil of Beeton School as well as Holmes and has a strong sense of rivalry against him. Baynes speaks in a precocious manner and provokes Holmes to find the truth of the disappearance of two pupils, Garcia and Henderson. After that, he provokes Holmes again by posting a message using the stick figures of dancing men in the school. Yōsuke Asari voices him.
Inspector Bradstreet
Inspector Bradstreet is a detective who appears in three short stories: "The Man with the Twisted Lip", "The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle" and "The Adventure of the Engineer's Thumb". Doyle described him as "a tall, stout official... in a peaked cap and frogged jacket". Sidney Paget's illustrations for the Strand Magazine depict him with a full beard. Beyond this little is revealed about him in the canon.
Bradstreet originally served in Scotland Yard's E (Holborn) Division which associates him with the Bow Street Runners, a forerunner of Scotland Yard. He claims to have been in the force since 1862 ("The Man with the Twisted Lip") but in June 1889 Dr Watson writes he is in B (Chelsea) Division to oversee "The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle". According to Sherlockian author Jack Tracy, B Division was "one of the twenty-two administrative divisions of the Metropolitan Police Force. Its 5.17 square miles include parts of south Kensington and the south-western section of ".
In "The Adventure of the Engineer's Thumb", he accompanied Holmes to Eyford, a village in Berkshire. According to Jack Tracy's The Encyclopaedia Sherlockiana, he was "assigned most likely to the central headquarters staff." Bradstreet is not a martinet; in "The Man with the Twisted Lip" he could have prosecuted the false beggar, but chose to overlook this action to spare Neville St Clair the trauma of shaming his wife and children.
He is also featured in M. J. Trow's series The Adventures of Inspector Lestrade.
Herbert Rawlinson played Bradstreet in a radio adaptation of "The Man with the Twisted Lip" (1946) in The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. In the 1952–1969 series of Sherlock Holmes BBC radio adaptations, Bradstreet was played by Ronald Baddiley in the 1959 dramatisation of "The Man with the Twisted Lip". Bradstreet was portrayed by Victor Brooks in the 1965 television adaptation of the same story in the television series Sherlock Holmes. Bradstreet appears four times in Granada Television's The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: "The Blue Carbuncle", "The Man with the Twisted Lip", "The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans" (substituting for Inspector Lestrade, as Colin Jeavons was unavailable), and a cameo appearance in "The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone". Initially he was played by Brian Miller as a blustering, pompous plodder, then later as much more competent by Denis Lill. In the 1989–1998 radio series of BBC Radio Sherlock Holmes adaptations, Bradstreet was played by David Goudge in two episodes in 1991.