Jokes on the subject appeared even in the comic papers.

To the proverb, ‘You must not say Boo to a goose’, one added, ‘or else she will explain you the Mystery’. The name of the gentleman who asked whether the Bow Mystery was not ’arrowing shall not be divulged. There was more point in ‘Dagonet’s’ remark that, if he had been one of the unhappy jurymen, he should have been driven to ‘suicide’. A professional paradox-monger pointed triumphantly to the somewhat similar situation in ‘The Murder in the Rue Morgue’, and said that Nature had been plagiarising again—like the monkey she was—and he recommended Poe’s publishers to apply for an injunction. More seriously, Poe’s solution was re-suggested by ‘Constant Reader’ as an original idea. He thought that a small organ-grinder’s monkey might have got down the chimney with its master’s razor, and, after attempting to shave the occupant of the bed, have returned the way it came. This idea created considerable sensation, but a correspondent with a long train of letters draggling after his name pointed out that a monkey small enough to get down so narrow a flue would not be strong enough to inflict so deep a wound. This was disputed by a third writer, and the contest raged so keenly about the power of monkeys’ muscles that it was almost taken for granted that a monkey was the guilty party. The bubble was pricked by the pen of ‘Common Sense’, who laconically remarked that no traces of soot or blood had been discovered on the floor, or on the nightshirt, or the counterpane. The Lancet’s leader on the Mystery was awaited with interest. It said: ‘We cannot join in the praises that have been showered upon the coroner’s summing up. It shows again the evils resulting from having coroners who are not medical men. He seems to have appreciated but inadequately the significance of the medical evidence. He should certainly have directed the jury to return a verdict of murder on that. What was it to do with him that he could see no way by which the wound could have been inflicted by an outside agency? It was for the police to find how that was done. Enough that it was impossible for the unhappy young man to have inflicted such a wound and then have strength and will power enough to hide the instrument and to remove perfectly every trace of his having left the bed for the purpose.’ It is impossible to enumerate all the theories propounded by the amateur detectives, while Scotland Yard religiously held its tongue. Ultimately the interest on the subject became confined to a few papers which had received the best letters. Those papers that couldn’t get interesting letters stopped the correspondence and sneered at the ‘sensationalism’ of those that could. Among the mass of fantasy there were not a few notable solutions, which failed brilliantly, like rockets posing as fixed stars. One was that in the obscurity of the fog the murderer had ascended to the window of the bedroom by means of a ladder from the pavement. He had then with a diamond cut one of the panes away, and effected an entry through the aperture. On leaving he fixed in the pane of glass again (or another which he had brought with him), and thus the room remained with its bolts and locks untouched. On its being pointed out that the panes were too small, a third correspondent showed that that didn’t matter, as it was only necessary to insert the hand and undo the fastening, when the entire window could be opened, the process being reversed by the murderer on leaving. This pretty edifice of glass was smashed by a glazier, who wrote to say that a pane could hardly be fixed in from only one side of a window frame, that it would fall out when touched, and that in any case the wet putty could not have escaped detection. A door panel sliced out and replaced was also put forward, and as many trap-doors and secret passages were ascribed to No. 11 Glover Street as if it were a medieval castle. Another of these clever theories was that the murderer was in the room the whole time the police were there—hidden in the wardrobe. Or he had got behind the door when Grodman broke it open, so that he was not noticed in the excitement of the discovery, and escaped with his weapon at the moment when Grodman and Mrs Drabdump were examining the window fastenings.

Scientific explanations also were to hand to explain how the assassin locked and bolted the door behind him. Powerful magnets outside the door had been used to turn the key and push the bolt within. Murderers armed with magnets loomed on the popular imagination like a new microbe.