History

Small is inspired by the main villain (also called Jonathan Small) in Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes novel Sign of Four, which was first published in 1890. In this novel, after his eventual capture by Holmes, Small tells the story of how he used his wooden leg as a weapon with deadly effect. Prosthetic body parts and their users were regularly associated with violence in nineteenth-century literature. See chapter 3 of Ryan Sweet’s free 2022 book Prosthetic Body Parts in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture.

Backstory

Had his leg bitten off by a crocodile in the Ganges while serving as a soldier.
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