An elderly red-haired man in 1890


I'm currently reading the "Red-Headed League", a Sherlock Holmes short story, which I've enjoyed several times before, but this time the phrase "an elderly man with red hair" caught my eye.

And at the risk of sounding like a detective, which I'm not, I ask you to ponder that phrase, which must have made sense in 1890. Since I'm an elderly man now, in my sixties, I have a perspective that I didn't have the first time I read this story.

Without giving anything away about the story, the fact that the man had vivid red hair is very important to the plot. But since my hair started going gray in my forties, and was completely gray by my fifties, I've been pondering how someone could be described as "elderly" and have vivid red hair.

I just looked up the birthdate of the author, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, which was 1859. The story was published in 1891, so Doyle would have been about 32, and presumably at that age he didn't know when hair went gray (I didn't know that at 32!). So the character could have been one of those fortunate people who holds onto their hair color longer than most, but I can't imagine that anyone without gray hair would be described as "elderly". Yes, of course there are exceptions, but I'm inclined to think that in 1890 people were considered elderly at a younger age than we use now.

I don't suppose that they used the term "middle-aged" in 1890, so it's possible that elderly just mean mature, not a young man anymore. What do you think, Watson? 

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