In The Hound of the Baskervilles (Arthur Conan Doyle, 1902), Dr Mortimer brings Sherlock Holmes an old family legend and a recent death. According to the legend, a monstrous hound has haunted the Baskerville family since the seventeenth century. Sir Charles Baskerville has just been found dead at the edge of the moor, with his face twisted in terror, and next to the body Mortimer saw the footprints of an enormous dog. The new heir, Sir Henry, arrives from Canada. Watson travels with him to Dartmoor and meets the neighbors, among them a friendly naturalist who collects butterflies, Jack Stapleton, and the woman he presents as his sister. Holmes eventually discovers the truth: Stapleton is a Baskerville himself, next in line to the inheritance; the woman is his wife, whom he mistreats; and the hound is real, a huge dog he keeps hidden in the mire and paints with phosphorus so that it glows in the dark.
// The theoryFear that settles in places
From the 1970s criminology realized that the fear of crime was a problem in its own right, and that it did not match the real risk: the people who feared most were not always the most victimized. Wesley Skogan and Michael Maxfield showed that fear spreads through conversation and rumor—people fear what they hear about more than what they have experienced—and that it attaches itself to particular places that acquire a reputation. Kenneth Ferraro added that fear depends on how each person interprets the risk, not only on statistics. Its consequences are concrete: people avoid certain streets at certain hours, and those places, without anyone watching, become more dangerous. Fear empties the space, and the empty space makes the fear true.
An offender who borrows a fear
Stapleton does not need to create panic: it was there long before him. The legend of the hound has been told in the district for generations; the moor is a place everyone avoids at night; the servants and the neighbors repeat the story. His crime consists of giving the fear a body at the right moment. Sir Charles had a weak heart and believed the legend: Stapleton only had to set the dog on him. And the fear also works as a cover. When people die frightened on a cursed moor, nobody looks for a murderer. The district’s fear does his work twice: it kills the victim and it keeps the police away.
// The subjectThe friendly neighbor
What makes Stapleton disturbing is how ordinary he is. He is educated, polite, an expert on the natural history of the moor and the only neighbor who knows the safe paths through the Grimpen Mire. That knowledge of the terrain is what makes his plan possible: he can hide the dog where nobody goes, and he can move across a landscape that frightens everyone else. Like many offenders who exploit fear, he uses the same geography that paralyses others as a resource for himself. He also exploits fear at home: his wife, terrified of him, tries to warn Sir Henry without daring to say anything openly. The story ends where it began, in the mire: Stapleton flees into it at night, and no trace of him is ever found.
Jack Stapleton
Get the map of theories for free
Subscribe to the criminal archive —one case a week, no spam— and I'll send you The map of theories: the great currents of criminology on a single sheet.
// The crackA theory about victims, used to read an offender
The geography of fear was developed to understand the experience of residents, not the strategy of offenders. It studies why people feel unsafe and what that feeling does to communities. Stapleton is a different case: a deliberate manipulator of fear, closer to a con artist than to the anonymous crime that frightens a neighborhood. Reading him through this theory is useful because it shows something the theory implies but rarely studies: a community’s fear is a resource that someone can use. Extortion in neighborhoods controlled by gangs works the same way, and so do the rumors used to drive people out of a place.
The theory also has its own limit. It explains how fear empties places, not why it is so persistent even when the facts deny it. In the novel, fear survives the explanation: when Holmes shows that the hound is just a dog, the legend has already done its work. Real communities know that pattern: a neighborhood that acquires a reputation for danger can keep it long after crime has fallen.
Fear is not only a feeling
The fear of crime has real effects: people go out less, avoid public spaces, distrust their neighbors and support harsher policies than the facts justify. Research on the subject recommends taking it seriously without feeding it: improving the places people fear (lighting, maintenance, activity), informing with real data and strengthening the ties between neighbors, which are what make a place safer. The Grimpen Mire was dangerous because nobody went there. A moor full of people would have left the hound with nowhere to hide.
Three key ideas
- The geography of fear (Skogan and Maxfield; Ferraro) studies how the fear of crime spreads by rumor, attaches itself to places and empties them, often regardless of the real risk.
- Stapleton does not create the fear of the hound: he finds it settled on the moor and gives it a body with a dog painted with phosphorus. The fear kills Sir Charles and also keeps anyone from looking for a murderer.
- The crack: the theory was designed to understand residents, not offenders who manipulate fear; the novel shows that a community’s fear is a resource someone can exploit.
Sources · further reading
- Skogan, W. G. and Maxfield, M. G. (1981). Coping with Crime: Individual and Neighborhood Reactions. Sage.
- Ferraro, K. F. (1995). Fear of Crime: Interpreting Victimization Risk. SUNY Press.
- Hale, C. (1996). “Fear of Crime: A Review of the Literature”. International Review of Victimology, 4(2), 79-150.
- Doyle, A. C. (1902). The Hound of the Baskervilles. George Newnes.
Case-file questionsFrequently asked questions
Who is Jack Stapleton?
Jack Stapleton is a villain from Sherlock Holmes, analysed on KRIMINIS through the lens of criminology. The whole district knew that on the moor, at night, there was a hound from hell.
Why does Jack Stapleton become a villain?
Jack Stapleton, the killer of The Hound of the Baskervilles, and the geography of fear: a man who did not need to kill with his own hands because the moor was already full of fear. The criminology of fear of crime explains how that fear spreads, empties places and leaves victims alone.
Which criminological theory explains Jack Stapleton?
Jack Stapleton's case is analysed through Social contagion and geography of fear. The geography of fear studies how the fear of crime spreads across a territory and passes between neighbors, often regardless of the real risk, and how that fear empties streets and weakens informal control. Jack Stapleton, the villain of The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902), is a naturalist who exploits the legend of a supernatural hound that hunts the Baskervilles. With a huge dog painted with phosphorus he frightens Sir Charles to death and tries the same with his heir. He does not invent the fear: he finds it already settled on the moor and uses it as a weapon.
