Dust off your deerstalkers and polish your magnifying glasses! Today (22nd May) is Sherlock Holmes Day, where the world celebrates the birthday of this super-sleuth’s creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

The creation of Sherlock Holmes

It’s hard to separate the identities of creator and character, but Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes both have their roots in Edinburgh. Conan Doyle was born in the city and, after some time away for schooling, returned in 1876 to study medicine at Edinburgh University. His studies would prove instrumental in the creation of Sherlock Holmes, who is said to be based on his university professor, Doctor Joseph Bell. Conan Doyle considered Bell a brilliant diagnostician and was impressed by his ability to perceive details about a patient’s private life by their habits and appearance, such as by noticing mud on their boots, marks on their clothing, or patterns of speech.¹ Of his methods, Dr Joseph Bell once wrote, ‘the student must be taught first to observe carefully…. the carpenter’s callosities are not those of the mason’.² These brilliant skills of deduction form the core of the greatness of Sherlock Holmes and his success in solving crimes.

In print

It wasn’t until six years after Conan Doyle graduated from Edinburgh University that Sherlock Holmes first appeared in print. In 1887, the story A Study in Scarlet appeared in Beeton’s Christmas Annual.³ It had taken Conan Doyle just one month to write and he was paid £25.⁴ Doctor Joseph Bell’s influence on Conan Doyle is seen for the first time in chapter 2 which is nicely named ‘The Science of Deduction’, and sees Sherlock explain to Dr Watson how he was able to tell from his appearance that he had recently returned from serving in Afghanistan:

I knew you were from Afghanistan….The train of reasoning ran, ‘Here is a gentleman of a medical type, but with the air of a military man. Clearly an army doctor, then. He has just come from the tropics, for his face is dark, and that is not the natural tint of his skin, for his wrists are fair. He has undergone hardship and sickness, as his haggard face says clearly. His left arm has been injured. He holds it in a stiff and unnatural manner. Where in the tropics could an English army doctor have seen such hardship and got his arm wounded? Clearly in Afghanistan’.⁵

State Library Victoria holds a unique copy of the first printed book edition of A Study in Scarlet. Our copy was owned by Sir John Monash, an Australian military commander of the First World War who Conan Doyle had met while visiting Australian troops in France in 1918. It includes a letter written to Monash in 1929 and signed by Arthur Conan Doyle, which has been pasted into the inside cover, alongside a handwritten note from Monash that reads ‘This first edition has been in my possession since 1899 or before’.⁶

In total Sherlock Holmes appeared in fifty-six short stories and four novels,⁷ and was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s most prolific literary output. The world that Conan Doyle created around Holmes has permeated into popular culture to the degree that when we think about Victorian London, it is the world of Sherlock Holmes that we are often imagining. We see foggy streets illuminated by streetlamps, and the reassuring figure of Sherlock Holmes striding along the footpath, his eyes cast down in search of clues for his next case. He is a work of fiction, and yet to fans he feels very real. But the relationship between creator and character wasn’t always happy, and Conan Doyle grew frustrated as the public’s desire for more Sherlock Holmes overshadowed his other work, including his passion for spiritualism.

Conan Doyle in Victoria

In 1920, Conan Doyle ventured to Australia on a tour delivering lectures not on his famous detective, but on spiritualism. His interest in spiritualism had begun in the 1890s, but it wasn’t until his experiences during the First World War in 1916, followed by the death of his eldest son Kingsley in 1918, that his interest turned into a passion.⁸ His belief that those living could converse with loved ones in the afterlife seems at odds with the scientific rationalism of Sherlock Holmes.

Melbourne’s The Argus newspaper was particularly scathing of Conan Doyle’s lectures, calling spiritualism ‘a force which we believe to be purely evil’, and referring to it as an ‘epidemic’ that most appealed to those ‘whose mental calibre is below the average’ (The Argus, 25 September 1920).

Conan Doyle’s time in Melbourne was marred by this war with The Argus. In his book about his travels, The Wanderings of a Spiritualist, he wrote that The Argus’ refusal to allow him to respond to their ‘tirade’ against him was ‘a real breach of the ethics of journalism…. Never in any British town have I found such reactionary intolerance as in this great city‘.⁹ He also called out their double standards for allowing advertisements in their newspaper promoting liquor and gambling but refusing to allow him to advertise his lectures.

His displeasure was aimed predominantly at the newspapers and religious organisations who so vehemently opposed spiritualism. Of the rest of the population, Conan Doyle wrote, ‘the Australians are really a very good-natured people’.¹⁰

He was also very complimentary of some of Melbourne’s sights. When he arrived in Melbourne in October 1920 he stayed for his first few nights at the luxurious Menzies Hotel, the same hotel where another famous writer of detective stories, Agatha Christie, was to stay in 1922 on her travels to Australia.

Conan Doyle was extremely impressed with Melbourne’s Botanic Gardens which he called ‘absolutely the most beautiful place I have ever seen. I do not know what genius laid them out, but the effect is a succession of the most lovely vistas’,¹¹ and would spend most of his free time wandering the leafy paths. He also spent Melbourne Cup Day at St Kilda, enjoying a quiet day at the beach with his wife and children, who had accompanied him on his trip.

During his stay he also found time to witness a match of the Victorian Football League, played between Richmond and Collingwood. Of the match, Conan Doyle wrote:

I consider that the Victorian system has some points which make it the best of all — certainly from the spectacular point of view. There is no off-side, and you get a free kick if you catch the ball. Otherwise, you can run as in ordinary Rugby, though there is a law about bouncing the ball as you run, which might, as it seemed to me, be cut out without harming the game.¹²

One of the highlights of the trip for the sports-mad Conan Doyle, was when he was made an honorary member of the Melbourne Cricket Club. While accepting his award, Conan Doyle met the Australian bowler Hugh Trumble, who gifted Conan Doyle’s son Denis a cricket ball, which became a much-loved treasure for the boy.

A lasting impression

Conan Doyle delivered his lectures to audiences of 1200 people a night at the Playhouse in Melbourne, and continued his lectures in cities such as Adelaide, Sydney and Brisbane, and also regional centres such as Geelong and Bendigo. The £700 profit that was made from his lectures was donated to the spiritualist cause in Australia, with money dedicated to funding future lectures on spiritualism as well as £100 given to assist in the continued publication of The Harbinger of Light, a spiritualist journal in Australia.

Did Conan Doyle consider his trip a success for the spiritualist cause? Yes and no. In his book Wanderings of a Spiritualist, Conan Doyle relates a tale that he believed ‘should have converted the city [Melbourne] as surely as if an angel had walked down Collins Street’.¹³ It goes like this:

In 1883, two brothers went out on the boat Iolanthe into Port Phillip Bay and never returned. A few days later, their parents, who were ardent spiritualists, employed the help of a medium, George Spriggs, to discover what had happened. According to the tale, Mr Spriggs made ‘contact’ and was told by one of the brothers that their boat had capsized and one of them had their arm bitten off by a large fish ‘not like any shark I have seen’,¹⁴ but the brothers were now at peace. A few weeks later, a large strange shark, unlike the usual species seen by fishermen, was caught off the coast from Frankston. When the shark was split open, the fishermen found the bones of a human arm, as well as a watch and some other belongings of one of the missing brothers.

To Conan Doyle this story was undeniable proof of the validity of the spiritualist cause, but was it actually true? Well, that sounds like a case for Sherlock Holmes to me!

---

References

1. Sims, M, 2017, Arthur & Sherlock: Conan Doyle and the creation of Holmes, Bloomsbury, London, p 3
2. as above, p 5
3. Library Council of Victoria, 1987, Holmes away from home: an exhibition at the State Library of Victoria to celebrate 100 years of Sherlock Holmes in print and featuring the visit to Australia by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Melbourne
4. Killing Sherlock: Lucy Worsley on the case of Conan Doyle, 2023, video recording, BBC, London
5. Conan Doyle, A, 2001, A Study in Scarlet, Electric Book Co., London, p 29
6. Conan Doyle, 1901, A Study in Scarlet, Ward, Lock & Co Limited, Melbourne
7. Pan Macmillan, Stuart Davies, S, 2024, A guide to Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes books in order, viewed 13 December 2024, https://www.panmacmillan.com/blogs/classics/sherlock-holmes-books-in-order
8. Fox, M, 2018, Conan Doyle for the defense: the true story of a sensational British murder, a quest for justice, and the world’s most famous detective writer, Random House, New York, p 213
9. Conan Doyle, A, 1921, The Wanderings of a Spiritualist, Hodder and Stoughton, London, p 89
10. as above, p 122
11. as above, p 147
12. as above, p 92
13. as above, p 118
14. as above, p 119

Tags: detective stories — literature — Sherlock Holmes — spiritualism