Professor Moriarty - Moriarty's Family and First Name

Moriarty's Family and First Name

The stories give a number of contradictory indications about the Professor's family. In his first appearance in "The Final Problem", Moriarty is only referred to as Professor Moriarty – no first name is mentioned. Watson does, however, refer to the name of another family member when he writes of "the recent letters in which Colonel James Moriarty defends the memory of his brother." Later, in "The Adventure of the Empty House" Holmes refers once to Moriarty as "Professor James Moriarty". This is the only time Moriarty is given a first name, and oddly, it is the same as that of his brother. In The Valley of Fear (written after the preceding two stories, but set earlier), Holmes says of Professor Moriarty: "He is unmarried. His younger brother is a station master in the west of England.

In Kim Newman's derivative work Professor Moriarty: The Hound of the D'ubervilles, Newman takes the confusion and runs with it to humorous effect, stating that Professor James Moriarty has two brothers, Colonel James Moriarty and Station Master James Moriarty. As a result, all conversations and even the narration become amusing and confusing, until the very end where the sad story behind the triple names is told.