Jonas Oldacre

From The Arthur Conan Doyle Encyclopedia
(Redirected from Mr. Cornelius)
Jonas Oldacre exiting his hiding place (The Strand Magazine, november 1903)

Fictional character.


In the Sherlock Holmes stories

aka Mr. Cornelius.

  • Jonas Oldacre was a bachelor, fifty-two years of age, who livds in Deep Dene House, at the Sydenham end of the road of that name (NORW 64). He had the reputation of being a man of eccentric habits, secretive and retiring (NORW 65).
  • He was a strange, little, ferret-like man, with white eyelashes, and with keen grey eyes (NORW 114).
  • He faked his own murder to frame the young solicitor John Hector McFarlane — both to spite McFarlane's mother (an old flame who rejected him) and to swindle creditors under the alias "Mr. Cornelius" (NORW 536).