The Real Sherlock Holmes
The Real Sherlock Holmes
In world literature, there are few characters that have endured the test of time and stayed in public memory as Sherlock Holmes. A private detective – or consulting detective, as he prefers to call himself – who uses his intellect and scientific knowledge to solve complex mysteries in Victorian era England, has stayed relevant even more a century after his first appearance in the novel – ‘A Study in Scarlet’.
The character was created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, a physician who had served in the Second Boer War. He based the narrator of the stories Dr John Watson on himself, just that the fictional doctor served in the Indo-Afghan war instead. Doyle wrote the ‘A Study in Scarlet’ in his clinic in-between attending to the few clients that he had.
Though Doyle can be credited for popularising the genius detective trope, he wasn’t the one who created it. Doyle was greatly inspired by Edgar Allan Poe. Poe’s story – ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’ is considered to be the first detective fiction story. The story is narrated by a nameless narrator who writes about his friend C. Auguste Dupin, as he solves a mysterious double murder that the police are not able to. Dupin was created before the term ‘detective’ had been coined, but through him Poe laid the groundwork for all the detective fiction that was to come and continues still to this day. Doyle too was clearly inspired, so much that he even mention's Dupin in ‘A Study…’. Dupin appeared further in two stories – ‘The Mystery of Marie Roget’ and ‘The Purloined Letter’, the latter even was adapted by Doyle into the famous Holmes story – ‘A Scandal in Bohemia’.
Apart from literature Doyle also took inspiration from real life. Dr Joseph Bell, a Scottish surgeon and lecturer at the medical school of the University of Edinburgh, was a major inspiration for Holmes. Doyle was Bell's student and later served as his clerk at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary.
While working with him Doyle was impressed by Bell's deductive abilities. Apparently he could look at his clients gait and tell if he was a soldier or a sailor, listening to his dialect tell exactly from where they were from or deduce their occupation from the callouses on their hands. Furthermore, Bell is believed to be involved in police investigations himself, including the Ardlamont mystery of 1893. He also was involved in the famous Jack the Ripper murders.
Sherlock Holmes still remains popular with new writers writing new pastiches on him, there have been multiple movie and television adaptations and even a few video games, each bringing a new spin on the character. But under the numerous interpretations there is still an old magazine that Arthur Conan Doyle read, and a smart old doctor attending to his patients.
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