"Could Sherlock Holmes Have Existed?." Twice a week we compile our most fascinating features and deliver them straight to you. Croatian Journal of Philosophy 10, no. Teller of Tales: The Life of Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes Never Said “Elementary, My Dear Watson”, The Large Number of Human Remains Found In Ben Franklin’s Basement, What Started the “Cops Eating Donuts” Stereotype, The Real Life Inspiration for Sherlock Holmes – Neatorama, Dr. Joseph Bell – The Real Sherlock Holmes – Sherlockian.com, Did Sherlock Holmes Really Exist – Straight Dope, The Real Life Sherlock Holmes: A Biography of Joseph Bell (The True Inspiration of Sherlock Holmes and the Pioneer of Forensic Science – Absolutecrime.com, The enduring popularity of Sherlock Holmes – Oxford University, Sherlock Holmes’ Dr Watson was ‘based on Dundee doctor’ – BBC News, The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Short Stories By Arthur Conan Doyle, Fiction imitates real life in a case of true inspiration – Irish Examiner, Memories and Adventures By Arthur Conan Doyle, Edinburgh’s Henry Littlejohn was also inspiration for Sherlock Holmes – Edinburgh News, The Strange Case of Oscar Slater – Wikipedia, The Case of Oscar Slater By Arthur Conan Doyle, The wide world of Sherlock Holmes – The Sherlock Holmes Society of London. Since his introduction to the world, he has appeared many times on screen and stage. And finally we have Doyle himself. FACT CHECK: We strive for accuracy and fairness. The famed Edinburgh native forensic scientist, public health inspector, and dissector of human bodies, Henry Littlejohn is also credited for giving Holmes some of his personality.
Many of the movies are not based on the Conan Doyle stories but only use the unforgettable character in new plots. The creator of the world’s best-known fictional crime fighter was a great admirer of the Baltimore born poet and short-story writer. In total, Doyle wrote four novels and 57 short stories over his career. Doyle would continue to write adventures for Sherlock Holmes until 1927 and would pass away from a heart attack in 1930. According to Doyle himself, as written in his autobiography, Bell’s “strong point was diagnosis, of not only disease, but of occupation and character.” In a famous example, also accounted in Doyle’s autobiography, a man stepped forward to Bell without giving any information about himself.
Bell once wrote a letter to Doyle stating, “You are yourself Sherlock Holmes and well you know it.” To illustrate, in December 1908, Marion Gilchrist was beaten to death during an armed robbery. Your email address will not be published. This is not the case. It investigates the development of the character, a biography of the fictional character and then evaluates the likely candidates for the original model for the most famous detective in history. Holmes was already an experienced detective by the time he met the doctor. Of course, something of a “chicken and the egg,” it is not entirely clear if Sherlock Holmes inspired Doyle’s own sleuthing or Doyle’s deductive abilities and passion for the subject helped inspired Holmes. Years later, Conan Doyle wrote to Bell: “It is most certainly to you that I owe Sherlock Holmes and though in the stories I have the advantage of being able to place him in all sorts of dramatic positions, I do not think that his analytical work is in the least an exaggeration of some effects which I have seen you produce in the outpatient ward.”. That Time Nevada Executed a Prisoner With a Shooting Machine, STUXNET and the Rise of the Digital Weapon, That Time Albert Einstein Invented a New Refrigerator. In 1912, in hopes of getting Slater a retrial and acquitted, Arthur Conan Doyle wrote his own synopsis “The Case of Oscar Slater,” in over a hundred pages painstakingly highlighting details and circumstances that proved Slater’s innocence, not the least of which was that the hammer found in Slater’s trunk, thought to be the murder weapon, was “an extremely light and fragile instrument, and utterly incapable in the eyes of commonsense of inflicting those terrific injuries which had shattered the old lady’s skull.”. He explained how he did it as follows. In 1901 he returned to writing stories about Holmes, after pressure from his writing public and lucrative offers from publishers. “A Study in Scarlet” didn’t attract much attention (and neither did its sequel, “The Sign of Four.”) but in the July 1891 issue of “The Strand Magazine”, Doyle published the first short story starring Holmes. Doyle freely admitted this. In the 1890s, he was consulted by the London Police in relation to the most famous case in British criminal history - Jack the Ripper. Sherlock Holmes lives on as one of the best-known literary characters in the English language. In addition to taking class with Bell, Conan Doyle served for a time as his clerk at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, where he got a further look at the older man’s diagnostic methods. Sherlock Holmes, one of the most famous and brilliant fictional detectives of all time, wasn't entirely fictional. Edwards, Owen Dudley, The Quest for Sherlock Holmes: A Biographical Study of Arthur Conan Doyle (Edinburgh: Mainstream, 1983), p 114, Murch, Alma Elizabeth, and Peter Owen. The investigator had many battles of wits with criminal masterminds and his greatest enemy was the evil genius Professor James Moriarty. He joined the police force at an early age and studied criminals so that he could catch them; this is something that Holmes also did, during his many visits to London’s Underworld. HISTORY reviews and updates its content regularly to ensure it is complete and accurate.
The Manchester-based detective was also like Holmes regularly consulted by the police when he became a ‘consultant.’ Then as was the case with the man who solved the Mystery of the Hounds of the Baskervilles, Caminada had a nemesis, who was a criminal mastermind. Yes, Sherlock Holmes is a fictional character. He has an air of authority and he is Scottish. Either way, thanks in part to Doyle, Oscar Slater was acquitted and freed in 1928. If you liked this article, you might also enjoy our new popular podcast, The BrainFood Show (iTunes, Spotify, Google Play Music, Feed), as well as: For those who are not familiar with Sherlock Homes you could have added the (nasty) bonus fact that Holmes seems to be a cocaine addict. Ten years later, when Doyle put pen to paper, this unique and wildly fascinating skill-set, to take trivialities and turn them into broader accurate conclusions, embodied itself in Sherlock Holmes.
This article will examine if the character was based on a historical crime fighter or real-life detective. Doyle knew him, because Littlejohn, taught him at medical school in Edinburgh. Then there were his frequent consultations with the police and his involvement in mysterious cases which no-doubt inspired the young writer. Helping pioneer the use of fingerprinting and photographic evidence in criminal investigations, Littlejohn was revolutionizing the way cases were cracked right when Doyle was conceiving Holmes in the 1880s and 1890s. It was also the first record of a magnifying glass being used as a tool of investigation. Watson later married and left Baker Street but returned to live with his old friend and partner after she died.[3]. Soon the British public had an insatiable demand for the stories of Conan-Doyle. It was a professor by the name of Joseph Bell that drew Doyle’s attention immediately. https://www.youtube.com/user/TodayIFoundOut?sub_confirmation=1 According to a November 2011 Irish Examiner article, Bell even came up with the name of a man he suspected, but, as of the writing of the article, that name has never been released. This became the infamous Jack the Ripper case.
His name has become synonymous with the detection of crime and the solving of mysteries. In 1887, Doyle published the novel “A Study in Scarlet.” It was the first work to star Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. In a fight with Moriarty, also known as the ‘Napoleon of Crime’, the two men plunged into the Reichenbach Falls, in Switzerland, and it appeared that Holmes had died. He is a very logical and rational thinker who used reason to solve impossible mysteries. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's most prominent creation was heavily based on a real person, Dr. Joseph Bell. During the First World War, his advice was sought out with regard to the activities of German spies in London. For example, in ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’ (1841), he solved a murder that took part in a locked and inaccessible room. The writer for his character clearly adopted his analytical method. During Doyle’s second year, Bell “singled” him out and made him his outpatient clerk, which meant he took basic notes of the patients who came in and presented them to Bell. [9] Bell believed that observation was essential for correct diagnosis. Littlejohn was prominently involved in the investigations of any accident, tragic death, or murder that took place in Edinburgh in that day. The stories of Dupin certainly influenced the writer and doctor. However, undoubtedly, Conan Doyle added much to the character. After a good eying over, Bell gave this conclusion about the man he’d never met before: Well, my man, you’ve served in the army… Not long discharged… A Highland regiment… A non-com officer… Stationed at Barbados…. It has been speculated that Holmes who never married had a cruel governess in his youth and this is why he never had a lasting relationship with a female. Sir Henry Duncan Littlejohn (1826-1914), was a Scottish medical doctor, a public health advocate, and a social reformer. In an interview later in life, according to the biography “Teller of Tales: The Life of Arthur Conan Doyle,” Doyle exclaimed, “Sherlock Holmes is the literary embodiment, if I may so express it, of my memory of a professor of medicine at Edinburgh University.” Further, in a letter to Bell, Doyle told him, “It is most certainly you I owe Sherlock Holmes.”. Doyle, Arthur Conan. It appears that the author mainly based Sherlock on Bell, but also used some of the characteristics of Littlejohn. The first Sherlock Holmes story was A Study in Scarlet (1887), and it proved a minor success. He was also a polymath and was very knowledgeable of several scientific subjects and was an accomplished violinist. In the end, the jury came back with a verdict of not guilty, but Doyle used this trial and the forensic science of Henry Littlejohn as inspiration for a part of the character of Sherlock Holmes. Conan Doyle eventually published a total of four novels and 56 short stories starring the London-based sleuth, whose keen observation skills were based in part on those of Joseph Bell. Using his amazing deductive abilities, Dr. Bell would make immediate conclusions about his patients that were often spot-on.
The Scottish medic was one of the pioneers of forensic science and modern investigation techniques. He wrote the last story about his most famous creation was in 1927. April 05, 2016 8:12 AM.
Robert Downey Jr. portrayal of Holmes was very well received in 2009 and a sequel in 2011. Holmes lived in London in 221 B Baker Street and eventually took in a lodger Dr. Watson a veteran of the British Indian Army and they became partners. The Making of Addiction: The 'Use and Abuse' of Opium in Nineteenth-Century Britain (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2007). He later applied his system of close observation to difficult criminal cases. The development of the detective novel (London, Peter Owen, 1968), p 116, O'Neill, Joseph, Crime City: Manchester's Victorian Underworld, Milo Books, 2008), p 14, 89), Ben-Yami, Hanoch. It’s not just a curioisity about the character, but there are several passages on the books which depict him using the drug, hinting a possible addiction. Certainly, the logic and rationality of the fictional detective are very similar to the approach advocated by Littlejohn. So much so, in fact, that when a series of murders of “ladies of the night” went down, the police called in Bell to help.
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