Interesting. I've done a bit of Google-crawling since posting and have discovered something about the lesbian crossdressing subculture which I knew nothing about before. I don't really have any further comments.

About Irene as an ideal, though - would you theorize this was Doyle's ideal woman, or just an interesting character he presented who might be Holmes' ideal woman? I think it is quite awesome that an intelligent, strong, self-sufficient, boldly "indecent" woman is presented as the ideal rather than the sweet homebody. I wonder how many more late Victorian heroines were like that? More than the heroines a few decades previously?