Mrs. Dribb is the secondary antagonist of the 1985 film, Young Sherlock Holmes. She serves as a school nurse, seemingly to be a kind woman, but she is really a ruthless assassin for the fanatical cult the Rame Tep, led by her older brother Eh Tar, the original identity of Professor James Moriarty.
She was played by the late Susan Fleetwood.
History[]
Many years earlier, six British men began a plan to build a great new hotel in Egypt, but stumbled onto the tombs of five Egyptian princesses, which was located below the site of the hotel. The excavations angered the natives of a local village, and the men's lives were in danger. As Egypt was a British colony at the time he British Army was called in, and attacked the natives, burning the whole village to the ground.
Eh Tar, a boy of Anglo-Egyptian decent was in England with his grandfather and sister at the time; he learned that the village that was his home had been burned to the ground and both his parents had been killed. Angered, he and his younger sister swore vengeance through the Rame Tep, a fanatical cult that worshiped the Egyptian god of the dead, Osiris. The cult was feared and hated due to their alternations to traditional beliefs, and use of sadistic and violent rituals. Eh Tar recruited his younger sister, in his sinister plan, and she became his chief assassin, using the traditional Rame Tep blowpipe as her weapon of choice. The pipe blew a thorn, dipped in a poison brewed from root extracts, which caused the victims to experience nightmarish hallucinations, leading to them killing themselves to escape the nightmares.
To avoid suspicion, Eh Tar and his sister both took jobs at London's Brompton Academy; she became the school nurse Mrs. Dribb, while her brother became Professor Rathe. Over the years, her brother recruited more members to the Rame Tep, from the criminals and homeless, and had a secret temple built in London, to perform their dark rituals. Eventually, Eh Tar began there plan to kill the gentlemen, and replaced the five Egyptian princesses by killing five British women. The women were paralyzed, wrapped in bandages, and were killed by being covered in boiling oil. Mrs. Dribb, as chief assassin, committed the murders of the men. Shooting the men with the poisoned darts, their deaths were all passed over as suicides. One of the men killed was Professor Rupert Waxflatter, a close friend and mentor of the young Sherlock Holmes.
Realizing there was more to this Holmes, along with his friend John Watson and girlfriend Elizabeth Waxflatter (niece of Professor Waxflatter) began investigating. His suspicions were aroused when both Watson and Elizabeth heard the signature bell sound the assassin made in the school, it being Mrs. Dribb walking around. After interrupting a sacrifice, both Rathe and Mrs Dribb became aware that Holmes was still in the area. Rathe caught them in Waxflatter's old laboratory, and summoned Mrs. Dribb to watch Elizabeth.
Mrs. Dribb then went to kill the final man, a Chester Cragwitch, who both Holmes and Watson had snuck out to visit; she shot him with the dart just as Cragwitch was telling them the story of what happened. They first managed to snap him out of it, while Mrs Dribb escaped. Back in the laboratory, she caught Elizabeth, who had by now realised that Mrs. Dribb was the murderer, recognising the sound of the bell. Mrs. Dribb and Rathe kidnapped Elizabeth planning to make her the final princess.
During the ceremony, Mrs. Dribb personally helped mummify her for the sacrifice. However, the ritual was interrupted by Watson and Holmes, who created a distraction that caused the beams propping the temple roof up to collapse, bringing the temple down. In the confusion, a fire started (not helped by the fact that the temple was located in a paraffin factory and warehouse). Seeing Watson freeing Elizabeth, Mrs. Dribb tried to kill him with the blow pipe, but Holmes jumped down from the rafters and took her on. Struggling between the two, Mrs. Dribb tried to shoot Holmes. Finally getting the upper hand, she put the pipe in her mouth, only for Holmes to blow through the other end; the dart instead shot into her own mouth. Feeling the effects of her own poison, she lost control; in the confusion, she backed into the inferno that was by now consuming the temple, her robes caught fire and she burned to death.
