(fallen london stamps by reasons why the doctor hasn't been banished to the tomb-colonies seventy-seven times over:
- he's a Correspondent. who lives with another Correspondent. it is not a good idea to attract the ire of Correspondents
- he has saved quite a number of people from a trip to the boatman, free of charge
- he has some very charismatic friends who are quite good at smoothing over misunderstandings
- he will periodically just vanish from public existence in order to pursue his mad science, sometimes long enough for people to forget about him
- while Wren is very choosy about permamurder, she is not above using temporary murder (or other poison-based indispositions) to "distract" people from her friends
- it is Just Generally Known by now that the good doctor is a startling but ultimately harmless madman, and thus perfectly ordinary for London. just a fixture of the landscape, like all the other startling but harmless madmen wandering the streets. poor souls. don't mind them
I think the most scandal that has surrounded the doctor came from
- his original downward spiral following the death of his best friend, which was his "fall from grace" from an eccentric but generally respectable academic into someone mad, bad, and dangerous to know
- when Nathan turned his back on high society and moved in with him
the second happening was interpreted (and still is interpreted) by most onlookers as Nathan and the doctor falling in love, and Nathan brashly running away to elope with him. because of course! what other explanation could there be! (the actual explanation, of course, is "Nathan's parents suck, he was freed of the main thing obligating him to them, and when their suckage hit a critical point he chose to leave rather than spend the remainder of his life under their thumb" - but people will believe what they want to believe.)