Jogesh
Bell was a great-grandson of Benjamin Bell, a forensic surgeon. In his
instruction, Joseph Bell emphasized the importance of close observation in
making a diagnosis. To illustrate this, he would often pick a stranger and, by
observing him, deduce his occupation and recent activities. These skills caused
him to be considered a pioneer in forensic science (forensic pathology in particular) at a time
when science was not yet widely used in criminal investigations.
Bell
studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh
Medical School and
received an MD in 1859. Bell served as personal surgeon to Queen Victoria whenever she
visited Scotland. He also published several
medical textbooks. Bell was a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of
Edinburgh, a
Justice of the Peace, and a Deputy Lieutenant.
Joseph
Bell died on 4 October 1911. He was buried at the Dean Cemetery in Edinburgh alongside
his wife, Edith Katherine Erskine Murray, and their son Benjamin, and next to
his father's and brother's plots. The grave is midway along the north wall of
the northern section to the original cemetery.
Inspiration of Sherlock Holmes
Arthur Conan Doyle met Bell in 1877, and
served as his clerk at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. Doyle later went on to write
a series of popular stories featuring the fictional character Sherlock Holmes,
who Doyle stated was loosely based on Bell and his observant ways.[3] Bell was aware of this inspiration
and took some pride in it. According to Irving Wallace (in an essay originally
in his book The Fabulous Originals but later republished and
updated in his collection The Sunday Gentleman) Bell was involved
in several police investigations, mostly in Scotland, such as the Ardlamont Mystery of 1893, usually with
forensic expert Professor Henry Littlejohn.
Sherlock Holmes and Conan Doyle
Arthur Conan
Doyle the master spy story teller and historian
Sir
Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle KStJ, DL (22 May 1859 – 7 July 1930) was a British writer and
physician, most noted for his fictional stories about the detective Sherlock
Holmes, which
are generally considered milestones in the field of crime
fiction.
He is
also known for writing the fictional adventures of a second character he
invented, Professor
Challenger, and for
popularising the mystery of the Mary
Celeste.
He was a prolific writer whose other works include fantasy and science fiction
stories, plays, romances, poetry, non-fiction and historical novels.
Arthur
Ignatius Conan Doyle was born on 22 May 1859 at 11 Picardy Place, Edinburgh,
Scotland.[6][7] His father, Charles
Altamont Doyle,
was English, of Irish Catholic descent, and his mother, Mary (née Foley), was
Irish Catholic. His parents married in 1855.[8] In 1864 the family dispersed due to Charles's
growing alcoholism and the children were temporarily housed across Edinburgh.
In 1867, the family came together again and lived in squalid tenement
flats at
3 Sciennes Place.[9] Doyle's father died in 1893, in the Crichton
Royal, Dumfries, after many years of
psychiatric illness.[10][11]
Supported
by wealthy uncles, Doyle was sent to the Jesuit preparatory school Hodder Place, Stonyhurst, at the age of nine
(1868–70). He then went on to Stonyhurst
College until
1875. From 1875 to 1876, he was educated at the Jesuit school Stella Matutina in Feldkirch, Austria.[9] He would later reject the Catholic faith and
become an agnostic.[12] He also later became a spiritualist mystic
From 1876
to 1881 he studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh Medical School, including periods working
in Aston, Sheffield and Ruyton-XI-Towns, Shropshire.[14] While studying, Doyle began writing short
stories. His earliest extant fiction, "The Haunted Grange of Goresthorpe",
was unsuccessfully submitted to Blackwood's Magazine.[9] His first published piece, "The Mystery of
Sasassa Valley", a story set in South Africa, was printed in Chambers's Edinburgh Journal on 6 September 1879.[9][15] On 20 September 1879, he published his first
academic article, "Gelsemium as a Poison" in the British Medical Journal,[9][16][17] a study which the Daily Telegraph regarded as
potentially useful in a 21st-century alleged murder investigation.[18]
Doyle was
employed as a doctor on the Greenland whaler Hope of Peterhead in
1880[19] and, after his graduation from university in
1881 as M.B., C.M., as a ship's surgeon on the SS Mayumba during
a voyage to the West African coast.[9] He completed his M.D. degree (an advanced
degree in Scotland beyond the usual medical degrees) on the subject of tabes
dorsalis in
1885.[20]
In 1882
he joined former classmate George Turnavine Budd as his partner at a medical
practice in Plymouth, but their relationship proved difficult, and Doyle soon left to set up
an independent practice.[9][21] Arriving in Portsmouth in June 1882 with less
than £10 (£900 today[22]) to his name, he set up a medical practice at 1 Bush
Villas in Elm Grove, Southsea.[23] The practice was initially not very successful.
While waiting for patients, Doyle again began writing fiction.
In 1890
Doyle studied ophthalmology in Vienna, and moved to London, first
living in Montague Place and then in South Norwood. He set up a practice as
an ophthalmologist at No. 2 Upper Wimpole St, London
W1 (then known as 2 Devonshire Place).[24] (A Westminster Council plaque in place over the
front door can be seen today.)
Sherlock
Holmes
Portrait of Sherlock Holmes by Sidney Paget, 1904
Doyle
struggled to find a publisher for his work. His first work featuring Sherlock
Holmes and Dr. Watson, A
Study in Scarlet, was taken by Ward
Lock & Co on
20 November 1886, giving Doyle £25 for all rights to the story. The piece
appeared later that year in the Beeton's Christmas Annual and received good reviews in The
Scotsman and
the Glasgow Herald.[9]
Holmes
was partially modelled on his former university teacher Joseph
Bell. In
1892, in a letter to Bell, Doyle wrote, "It is most certainly to you that
I owe Sherlock Holmes ... round the centre of deduction and inference and
observation which I have heard you inculcate I have tried to build up a
man."[25] and, in his 1924 autobiography, he remarked,
"It is no wonder that after the study of such a character [viz., Bell] I
used and amplified his methods when in later life I tried to build up a
scientific detective who solved cases on his own merits and not through the
folly of the criminal.[26] Robert
Louis Stevenson was
able, even in faraway Samoa, to recognise the strong similarity between Joseph
Bell and
Sherlock Holmes: "My compliments on your very ingenious and very
interesting adventures of Sherlock Holmes. ... can this be my old friend
Joe Bell?"[27] Other authors sometimes suggest additional
influences—for instance, the famous Edgar
Allan Poe character C.
Auguste Dupin.[28] Dr. (John) Watson owes his surname, but not any
other obvious characteristic, to a Portsmouth medical colleague of Doyle's, Dr
James Watson.[29]
A sequel
to A Study in Scarlet was commissioned and The
Sign of the Four appeared in Lippincott's Magazine in February 1890, under agreement
with the Ward Lock company. Doyle felt grievously exploited by Ward Lock as an
author new to the publishing world and he left them.[9] Short stories featuring Sherlock Holmes were
published in the Strand
Magazine.
Doyle wrote the first five Holmes short stories from his office at 2 Upper
Wimpole Street (then known as Devonshire Place), which is now marked by a
memorial plaque.[30]
Sherlock Holmes statue in Edinburgh, erected opposite
the birthplace of Doyle which was demolished c.1970
Doyle's
attitude towards his most famous creation was ambivalent.[29] In November 1891 he wrote to his mother: "I
think of slaying Holmes,... and winding him up for good and all. He takes my
mind from better things." His mother responded, "You won't! You
can't! You mustn't!".[31] In
an attempt to deflect publishers' demands for more Holmes stories, he raised
his price to a level intended to discourage them, but found they were willing
to pay even the large sums he asked.[29] As a result, he became one of the best-paid
authors of his time.
In
December 1893, to dedicate more of his time to his historical novels, Doyle had
Holmes and Professor
Moriarty plunge
to their deaths together down the Reichenbach
Falls in
the story "The Final Problem". Public outcry, however, led him
to feature Holmes in 1901 in the novel The Hound of the Baskervilles.
In 1903,
Doyle published his first Holmes short story in ten years, The Adventure of the Empty House, in which it was explained
that only Moriarty had fallen; but since Holmes had other dangerous
enemies—especially Colonel
Sebastian Moran—he
had arranged to also be perceived as dead. Holmes was ultimately featured in a
total of 56 short stories—the last published in 1927—and four novels by Doyle,
and has since appeared in many novels and stories by other authors.
Jane Stanford compares some of Moriarty's characteristics to
those of the Fenian John
O'Connor Power.
'The Final Problem' was published the year the Second Home
Rule Bill passed
through the House of Commons. 'The Valley of Fear' was serialised in 1914, the
year Home Rule, the Government of Ireland Act (18 September) was placed on the
Statute Book.[32]
Other
works
Doyle's
first novels were The Mystery of Cloomber, not published until 1888, and the
unfinished Narrative of John Smith, published only in 2011.[33] He amassed a portfolio of short stories
including "The Captain of the Pole-Star" and "J. Habakuk Jephson's Statement", both inspired by Doyle's time at
sea, the latter of which popularised the mystery of the Mary
Celeste[34] and added fictional details such as the perfect
condition of the ship (which had actually taken on water by the time it was
discovered) and its boats remaining on board (the one boat was in fact missing)
that have come to dominate popular accounts of the incident.[9][34]
Between
1888 and 1906, Doyle wrote seven historical novels, which he and many critics
regarded as his best work.[29] He also authored nine other novels, and later in
his career (1912-1929) five stories, two of novella length, featuring the
irascible scientist Professor
Challenger. The
Challenger stories include what is probably his best-known work after the
Holmes oeuvre, The Lost World. He was a prolific author of short
stories, including two collections set in Napoleonic
times featuring
the French character Brigadier
Gerard.
Doyle's
stage works include Waterloo, the reminiscences of an English
veteran of the Napoleonic
Wars, the
character of Gregory Brewster being written for Henry
Irving; The
House of Temperley, the plot of which reflects his abiding interest of
boxing; The Speckled Band, after the short
story of
that name; and the 1893 collaboration with J.M.
Barrie on
the libretto of Jane
Annie.[35]
Sporting caree
While
living in Southsea, Doyle played football as a goalkeeper for
Portsmouth Association Football Club, an amateur side, under the pseudonym A.
C. Smith.[36] (This club, disbanded in 1896, has no connection
with the present-day Portsmouth
F.C., which
was founded in 1898.) Doyle was a keen cricketer, and between 1899 and 1907 he
played 10 first-class matches for the Marylebone
Cricket Club (MCC).
He also played for the amateur cricket team the Allahakbarries alongside authors J.
M. Barrie and A.
A. Milne.[37]
His
highest score, in 1902 against London County, was 43. He was an occasional bowler who took just
one first-class wicket (although one of the highest pedigree—it was W.
G. Grace).[38] Also a keen golfer, Doyle was elected captain of
the Crowborough Beacon Golf Club in Sussex for 1910. (He had moved
to Little Windlesham house in Crowborough with his second wife,
Jean Leckie, living there with his family from 1907 until his death in July
1930.[39])
In 1885
Doyle married Mary Louise (sometimes called "Louisa") Hawkins, the
youngest daughter of J. Hawkins, of Minsterworth, Gloucestershire, and sister of one of Doyle's
patients. She suffered from tuberculosis and died on 4 July 1906.[40] The following year he married Jean Elizabeth
Leckie, whom he had first met and fallen in love with in 1897. He had
maintained a platonic relationship with Jean while his first wife was still
alive, out of loyalty to her.[41] Jean died in London on 27 June 1940.[42]
Doyle
fathered five children. He had two with his first wife: Mary Louise (28 January
1889 – 12 June 1976) and Arthur Alleyne Kingsley, known as Kingsley (15
November 1892 – 28 October 1918). He also had three with his second wife: Denis
Percy Stewart (17 March 1909 – 9 March 1955), second husband of Georgian Princess Nina
Mdivani; Adrian
Malcolm (19
November 1910 – 3 June 1970); and Jean
Lena Annette (21
December 1912 – 18 November 1997).[43]
Following
the Boer War in South Africa at the turn of the 20th century and the
condemnation from some quarters over the United Kingdom's role, Doyle wrote a
short work titled The War in South Africa: Its Cause and Conduct,
which justified the UK's role in the Boer War and was widely translated. Doyle
had served as a volunteer doctor in the Langman Field Hospital at Bloemfontein between March and June
1900.[44] Doyle believed that this publication was
responsible for his being knighted as a Knight
Bachelor by King
Edward VII in
1902[4] and for his appointment as a Deputy-Lieutenant
of Surrey.[45] Also in 1900 he wrote a book, The
Great Boer War.
He twice
stood for Parliament as a Liberal
Unionist—in 1900
in Edinburgh Central and in 1906 in the Hawick Burghs—but although he received a respectable vote, he was
not elected.[46] In May 1903 he was appointed a Knight of Grace
of the Order of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem.[47]
Doyle was
a supporter of the campaign for the reform of the Congo
Free State, led by
the journalist E. D. Morel and diplomat Roger
Casement. During
1909 he wrote The Crime of the Congo, a long pamphlet in which he
denounced the horrors of that colony. He became acquainted with Morel and
Casement, and it is possible that, together with Bertram Fletcher Robinson, they inspired several characters in
the 1912 novel The Lost World.[48] Doyle broke with both Morel and Casement when
Morel became one of the leaders of the pacifist movement during
the First World War. When Casement was found guilty
of treason against the
Crown during
the Easter Rising, Doyle tried unsuccessfully to save him from facing
the death penalty, arguing that Casement had been driven mad and could not be
held responsible for his actions.[49]
Doyle was
also a fervent advocate of justice and personally investigated two closed
cases, which led to two men being exonerated of the crimes of which they were
accused. The first case, in 1906, involved a shy half-British, half-Indian
lawyer named George Edalji who had allegedly penned threatening letters and
mutilated animals in Great
Wyrley. Police
were set on Edalji's conviction, even though the mutilations continued after
their suspect was jailed.[50] Apart from helping George Edalji, Doyle's work
helped establish a way to correct other miscarriages of justice, as it was
partially as a result of this case that the Court
of Criminal Appeal was established in 1907.[51]
The story
of Doyle and Edalji was dramatised in an episode of the 1972 BBC television
series, The Edwardians. In Nicholas Meyer's pastiche The
West End Horror (1976), Holmes manages to help clear the name of a shy Parsi Indian character wronged
by the English justice system. Edalji was of Parsi heritage on his father's
side. The story was fictionalised in Julian
Barnes's 2005
novel Arthur and George, which was adapted into a three-part
drama by ITV in 2015.
The
second case, that of Oscar
Slater, a Yekke and gambling-den
operator convicted of bludgeoning an 82-year-old woman in Glasgow in 1908, excited Doyle's
curiosity because of inconsistencies in the prosecution case and a general
sense that Slater was not guilty. He ended up paying most of the costs for
Slater's successful appeal in 1928.[52]
Spiritualism, Freemasonry
One of the five photographs of Frances Griffiths with
the alleged
fairies, taken by Elsie Wright in
July 1917
Doyle had
a longstanding interest in mystical subjects. In 1887 he
joined the Society for Psychical Research and was also initiated as a Freemason (26 January 1887) at the
Phoenix Lodge No. 257 in Southsea. He resigned from the Lodge in 1889, but
returned to it in 1902, only to resign again in 1911.[53]
Following
the death of his wife Louisa in 1906, the death of his son Kingsley just before
the end of the First World War, and the deaths of his brother Innes, his two
brothers-in-law (one of whom was E.
W. Hornung, creator
of the literary character Raffles) and his two nephews shortly
after the war, Doyle sank into depression. He found solace supporting spiritualism and its attempts to find
proof of existence beyond the grave. In particular, according to some,[54] he favoured Christian
Spiritualism and
encouraged the Spiritualists' National Union to accept an eighth precept – that
of following the teachings and example of Jesus of
Nazareth. He was
a member of the renowned supernatural organisation The
Ghost Club.[55]
Doyle with his family in New York City, 1922
On 28
October 1918, Kingsley Doyle died from pneumonia, which he contracted during
his convalescence after being seriously wounded during the 1916 Battle
of the Somme.
Brigadier-General Innes Doyle died, also from pneumonia, in February 1919. Sir
Arthur became involved with Spiritualism to the extent that he wrote a novella
on the subject, The
Land of Mist,
featuring the character Professor Challenger. The Coming of the Fairies (1922)[56] appears to show that Conan Doyle was convinced
of the veracity of the five Cottingley
Fairies photographs
(which decades later were exposed as a hoax). He reproduced them in the book,
together with theories about the nature and existence of fairies and spirits.
In 1920,
Doyle debated the claims of Spiritualism with the notable
sceptic Joseph McCabe at Queen's Hall in London. McCabe later
published his evidence against the claims of Doyle and Spiritualism in a
booklet entitled Is Spiritualism Based on Fraud? which claimed
Doyle had been duped into believing Spiritualism by mediumship trickery.[57]
Doyle was
friends for a time with Harry
Houdini, the
American magician who himself became a prominent opponent of the Spiritualist
movement in the 1920s following the death of his beloved mother. Although
Houdini insisted that Spiritualist mediums employed trickery (and consistently
exposed them as frauds), Doyle became convinced that Houdini himself possessed
supernatural powers—a view expressed in Doyle's The Edge of the Unknown.
Houdini was apparently unable to convince Doyle that his feats were simply
illusions, leading to a bitter public falling out between the two.[58] A specific incident is recounted in memoirs by
Houdini's friend Bernard M.L. Ernst, in which Houdini performed an impressive
trick at his home in the presence of Conan Doyle. Houdini assured Conan Doyle
the trick was pure illusion and that he was attempting to prove a point about
Doyle not "endorsing phenomena" simply because he had no explanation.
According to Ernst, Conan Doyle refused to believe it was a trick.[59]
In 1922,
the psychical researcher Harry
Price accused
the spirit photographer William Hope of fraud. Doyle defended Hope, but further
evidence of trickery was obtained from other researchers.[60] Doyle threatened to have Price evicted from
the National Laboratory of Psychical Research and claimed if he
persisted to write "sewage" about spiritualists, he would meet the
same fate as Harry Houdini.[61] Price wrote "Arthur Conan Doyle and his
friends abused me for years for exposing Hope."[62] Because of the exposure of Hope and other
fraudulent spiritualists, Doyle led a mass resignation of eighty-four members
of the Society for Psychical Research, as they believed the Society was
opposed to spiritualism.[63]
Doyle and
spiritualist William
Thomas Stead were
duped into believing Julius
and Agnes Zancig had
genuine psychic powers, both claiming that the Zancigs used telepathy. In 1924 Julius and Agnes
Zancig confessed that that their mind
reading act
was a trick and published the secret code and all the details of the trick
method they had used, under the title Our Secrets!! in a
London newspaper.[64] In his book The History of Spiritualism (1926),
Doyle praised the psychic phenomena and spirit materializationsproduced by Eusapia
Palladino and Mina
Crandon, who
were both exposed as frauds.[65] In 1927, Doyle spoke in a filmed interview about
Sherlock Holmes and spiritualism.[66]
Richard Milner, an American historian of science, has
presented a case that Doyle may have been the perpetrator of the Piltdown
Man hoax
of 1912, creating the counterfeit hominid fossil that fooled the
scientific world for over 40 years. Milner says that Doyle had a motive—namely,
revenge on the scientific establishment for debunking one of his favourite
psychics—and that The Lost World contains several encrypted clues
regarding his involvement in the hoax.[67][68] Samuel
Rosenberg's 1974
book Naked is the Best Disguise purports to explain how,
throughout his writings, Doyle left open clues that related to hidden and
suppressed aspects of his mentality.[69]
Death
Doyle was
found clutching his chest in the hall of Windlesham Manor, his house in Crowborough, East Sussex, on 7 July 1930.
He died of a heart attack at the age of 71. His last words were directed toward
his wife: "You are wonderful."[70] At the time of his death, there was some
controversy concerning his burial place, as he was avowedly not a Christian,
considering himself a Spiritualist. He was first buried on 11 July 1930 in
Windlesham rose garden.
He was
later reinterred together with his wife in Minstead churchyard in the New
Forest,
Hampshire.[9]Carved wooden tablets to his memory and to the memory
of his wife are held privately and are inaccessible to the public. That
inscription reads, "Blade straight/Steel true/Arthur Conan Doyle/Born May
22nd 1859/Passed on 7th July 1930."
The
epitaph on his gravestone in the churchyard reads, in part: "Steel
true/Blade straight/Arthur Conan Doyle/Knight/Patriot, Physician, and man of
letters".[71]
Undershaw, the home near Hindhead, Haslemere, which Doyle had built and
lived in between October 1897 and September 1907,[72] was a hotel and restaurant from 1924 until 2004.
It was then bought by a developer and stood empty while conservationists and
Doyle fans fought to preserve it.[40] In 2012 the High Court ruled the redevelopment
permission be quashed because proper procedure had not been followed.[73]
A statue
honours Doyle at Crowborough Cross in Crowborough, where he lived for 23 years.[74] There is a statue of Sherlock Holmes in Picardy
Place, Edinburgh, close to the house where Doyle was born
Bell was
a great-grandson of Benjamin
Bell, a
forensic surgeon. In his instruction, Joseph Bell emphasized the importance of
close observation in making a diagnosis. To illustrate this, he would often
pick a stranger and, by observing him, deduce his occupation and recent
activities. These skills caused him to be considered a pioneer in forensic
science (forensic
pathology in
particular) at a time when science was not yet widely used in criminal
investigations.
Bell
studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh Medical School and received an MD in
1859. Bell served as personal surgeon to Queen Victoria whenever she visited Scotland. He also published several
medical textbooks. Bell was a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, a Justice of the Peace, and
a Deputy Lieutenant.
Joseph
Bell died on 4 October 1911. He was buried at the Dean
Cemetery in
Edinburgh alongside his wife, Edith Katherine Erskine Murray, and their son
Benjamin, and next to his father's and brother's plots. The grave is midway
along the north wall of the northern section to the original cemetery.
Image of
Sherlock Holmes : Joseph Bell -
Arthur Conan Doyle met Bell in 1877, and served as
his clerk at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. Doyle later went on to write a series
of popular stories featuring the fictional character Sherlock Holmes, who Doyle
stated was loosely based on Bell and his observant ways.[3] Bell was aware of this inspiration and took some
pride in it. According to Irving
Wallace (in
an essay originally in his book The Fabulous Originals but
later republished and updated in his collection The Sunday Gentleman)
Bell was involved in several police investigations, mostly in Scotland, such as
the Ardlamont Mystery of 1893, usually with forensic
expert Professor Henry Littlejohn.
1. Doyle was one of the earliest
motorists in Britain
He reportedly bought a car without ever
having driven one before. In 1911, he took part in the Prince Henry Tour, an
international road competition organised by Prince Henry of Prussia to pit
British cars against German ones. Doyle paired up with his second wife, Jean,
as one of the British driving teams.
2. Conan is not part of his
surname
It is, in fact, only one of his two
middle names. He is Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle. Shortly after he graduated
from high school he began using Conan as part of his surname
3. He wasn't knighted for his
fiction
In 1902, the writer was knighted by King
Edward VII. He was also appointed a Deputy-Lieutenant of Surrey.
However, he wasn't knighted for having created Sherlock Holmes. He was made a
knight for his work on a non-fiction pamphlet regarding the Boer War.
4. Doyle was on the same cricket
team as Peter Pan writer JM Barrie
They also worked together on a comic
opera, Jane Annie, which Barrie begged his friend to revise and finish for
him.
5. He could have discussed Dracula
and Treasure Island with their authors
Doyle was also friends with Bram Stoker,
and Robert Louis Stevenson was a fellow classmate at the University of
Edinburgh.
6. He helped to popularise skiing
He not only liked cricket and football,
but Doyle helped to popularise the winter sport. Following a move to Davros,
Switzerland in 1893 (the mountain air was prescribe to aid his wife’s health),
he mastered the basics with the help of the Brangger brothers, two locals who
had taken to practising the sport after dark to avoid being teased by the
townsfolk. Together, they were the first people to make the 8,000ft pass
through the Maienfelder Furka, which separated Davos from the neighbouring town
of Arosa. Doyle was also the first Englishman to document the thrill of skiing:
“You let yourself go,” he said. “Getting as near to flying as any earthbound
man can. In that glorious air it is a delightful experience.” Doyle correctly
predicted that in the future hundreds of Englishmen would come to Switzerland
for the “skiing season”.
Conan Doyle was the first to bring skiing from
Scandinavia to Switzerland
7. He was a goalie
Under the pseudonym AC Smith, the writer
played as a goalkeeper for amateur side Portsmouth Association Football Club, a
precursor of the modern Portsmouth FC.
8. Doyle ran for parliament...
twice!
Doyle ran for parliament (representing
the Unionist Party) once in Edinburgh (in 1900) and once in the Border Burghs
(in 1906). Although he received a respectable vote both times he was not
elected. In the 1900 general election, Doyle was defeated by CM Brown of the
Liberal Party, who received 3,028 votes against 2,459 cast for Doyle.
9. He was too fat to fight
The reason why he couldn’t become a
soldier in the Boer War was because he was overweight. Instead, he volunteered
as a ship's doctor and sailed to Africa.
10. Ophthalmology's loss was
literature's gain
Arthur Conan Doyle set up an
ophthalmology practice in London. Doyle wrote in his autobiography that not a
single patient ever crossed his door. Although, the silver lining was that he
could dedicate his time to writing.
11. He believed in fairies
Sherlock might have been a sceptic but
Arthur Conan Doyle believed in fairies. Well, he was convinced by the
Cottingley Fairy photographs, the famous 1917 hoax. He even spent a million
dollars promoting them and wrote a book, The Coming of the Fairies (1921), on
their authenticity.
One of the Cottingley Fairies photographs, taken by
Elsie Wright (15) and her cousin Frances Griffiths, which caused a storm in
1917
12. And also believed in a number
of mediums
But this came at the cost of his
friendship with Harry Houdini, who at the same time was trying to disprove the
claims of the Spiritualist movement.
13. Why he killed off his most
famous creation?
Sherlock Holmes was far from being
Doyle’s own favourite character and was killed off in 1893, only to be
resurrected 10 years later after public demand and monetary persuasion. He had
earlier told a friend: "I couldn't revive him if I would, at least not for
years, for I have had such an overdose of him that I feel towards him as I do
towards pâté de foie gras, of which I once ate too much, so that the name of it
gives me a sickly feeling to this day." However, there may have been other
reasons for the writer killing off his famous creation, as it happened in the
same year that Doyle’s alcoholic father died in an asylum.
14. He shares his birthday with
Wagner
As well as composer Richard Wagner,
Doyle also shares his birthday (22 May) with actor Laurence Olivier, singer
Morrissey, model Naomi Campbell and tennis player Novak Djokovic.
15. Doyle and George Bernard Shaw
had a spat about the Titanic
After the Titanic sank in 1912, Doyle
and George Bernard Shaw had a very public disagreement about the disaster. Doyle
was outraged by the dismissive and bitter comments made by the playwright
regarding the many acts of heroics that took place aboard the ship as it went
down.
16. There's a square in
Switzerland named after him
The town of Meiringen in Switzerland was
the location of The Adventure of the Final Problem, the novel in which the
author killed the detective off. In 1988, a statue of Sherlock Holmes was
placed in the village square, now named Conan Doyle Place.
A sign marking the Conan Doyle Square in the town of
Meiringen
17. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle didn't
just write mysteries, he actually solved a few
One of particular interest to him was
The Curious Case of Oscar Slater - for the murder of Marion Gilchrist, a
wealthy 82-year-old woman from Glasgow. Doyle applied the “Holmes method”, in
which he uncovered new evidence, recalled witnesses and questioned the
prosecution's evidence. His findings were published as a plea for Slater's
pardon. It caused a sensation and there were calls for a retrial, but all this
was promptly ignored by the Scottish authorities. The desperate and
incarcerated Slater later smuggled messages out of prison and Doyle's interest
in the case was reignited. He wrote to politicians and used his own money to
fund Slater's legal fees. One politician, Ramsay McDonald - Britain's first
Labour prime minister - informed the Scottish Secretary that the police and the
legal authorities had colluded to withhold evidence and influence witnesses.
Slater was subsequently released from prison with £6,000 compensation but never
shared it with Doyle.
18. Doyle died holding a flower
Doyle died on July 7, 1930. He collapsed
in his garden, clutching his heart with one hand and holding a flower in the
other. His last words were to his wife. He whispered to her: “You are
wonderful.”
19. A séance was organised for him
to make an appearance from beyond the grave
Following his death, a séance was
conducted at the Royal Albert Hall. Thousands attended, including his wife and
children. A row of chairs were arranged on the stage for the family, with one
left empty for Sir Arthur. Even though he did not appear, there were many
people in the audience who claimed they had felt his presence among them.
No comments:
Post a Comment