Finally, the reader might have some moral qualms about the end of the tale. The criminal has died, and Sir Henry is so traumatized that he must take a year long vacation. A modern reader might find Stapleton's inexorable evil a bit off-putting, since we tend to think any criminal can be reformed. However, as mentioned previously, attitudes on crime in Doyle's day tended to see depravity as an inherent, unfixable problem. Therefore, a criminal must be caught in the act, as Holmes does. The idea of acting proactively - whether through social programs or personal psychology - was simply not something Holmes or Doyle would have explicitly considered.