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Sherlock Holmes, the world's first consulting detective, was born
January 6, 1854 the descendant of country squires. He spent two years
at university before taking rooms in Montague street around the corner
from the British Museum. While at university he spent the long vacation
with a friend, Victor Trevor, at Trevor's family home where Trevor Sr.,
suggested Holmes make a profession out of his ability to observe. (GLOR)
It was at St. Barts' Hospital sometime during 1882 that a mutual
acquaintance introduced Holmes to Dr. John H. Watson, who was later to
become Holmes' biographer and closest friend. The two would share rooms
in Baker Street throughout most of Holmes' long career, save for those
times that Watson was married. (STUD)
Holmes investigated close to a thousand cases by 1891 when he was
supposedly dispatched by Professor Moriarty (the most dangerous and
formidable criminal mind Holmes would ever encounter) down the falls
of Reichenbach. (FINA)
Resurrected in 1894, after a hiatus during which Holmes traveled
throughout Europe and Asia under various pseudonyms, Holmes returns to
London and again takes up residence in Baker Street. (EMPT) He solves
many hundreds of cases until he retires to Sussex sometime during 1903-04.
His retirement is our great loss. We wish him well as he raises bees
along the Sussex Coast and we try to remember that it is always "1895"
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Born in Hampshire, he's a few years older than his great friend
Sherlock Holmes.
He had studied medicine at the University of London Medical School
and then proceeded through a course at Netley to later become an
assistant army surgeon attached to the 5th Northumberland fusiliers.
During the 2nd Afghan War he was attached to the Berkshires with
whom he served at the Battle of Maiwand. Watson was wounded in
the shoulder . . . errr . . . the leg . . . uhh, let's just say Watson
was wounded. He certainly would have been captured as well if not
for his faithful orderly, Murray, who threw him onto a packhorse and
led it back to the British lines.
During his recovery he was struck down with disease and his health
became bad enough for him to be returned to England.
Needing to economize, Watson mentions to an acquaintaince that he,
Watson, desired to share expenses with another. Stamford introduced
watson to Mr. Sherlock Holmes. They entered into partnership sharing
lodgings at 221B Baker Street.
This hailed the beginning of a friendship that would last forever.
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Born in Edinburgh, Scotland on May 22nd, 1859, Arthur Conan
Doyle was the son of watercolor artist Charles Altmont Doyle
and Mary Foley Doyle, and the nephew of Dickie Doyle, famous
for his political cartoons in "Punch". Arthur was schooled at
Stonyhurst, a Jesuit preparatory school, and at Feldkirch in
Austria, and received his Doctor of Medicine degree from
Edinburgh University. It was here that two events occurred
which would shape his life. He met Dr. Joseph Bell, who
astounded students with his ability to deduce details of patients'
lives from minute clues in their appearance; and here that he
wrote "The Mystery of Sasassa Valley", his first published work
(he was paid three guineas by Chamber's Journal for it). After
graduation, while trying to build up his medical practice in
Southsea, Doyle occupied his abundant free time and
augmented his income by writing more short stories. Happily for
us all, he conceived the idea of a series of tales with a central
character, modelled on Dr. Bell and his skill at logic and
deduction. Sherlock Holmes was born.
From the publication of "A Study in Scarlet" in Beeton's
Christmas Annual of 1887, Holmes and Watson were a runaway
hit. Doyle wrote four full-length novels and fifty-six short stories
around these characters, as well as historical novels ("The
White Company, Micah Clarke"), science fiction (the Professor
Challenger tales), humorous sketches ("Brigadier Gerard") and
travel stories. Doyle often felt that Holmes overshadowed his
other writings, and even killed the detective off in "The Final
Problem". The world was shocked; many Britons wore mourning
for Sherlock Holmes. The public demand (and a huge offer from
his publishers) made Doyle revive Holmes. Not one of the
Sherlock Holmes stories has ever been out of print since first
published over one hundred years ago, an rare accomplishment.
As a writer, Doyle was ahead of his time in many ways. To the
usual whizz-bang dazzle of science fiction, he added concern for
the ethical use of technology (as Gene Roddenberry did with
"Star Trek"). Sherlock Holmes described fingerprinting and the
use of plaster casts for footprints and tire tracks before they were
common police procedure. Doyle even anticipated Tom Clancy's
"Hunt for Red October" in "Danger!", a tale of German submarines
published just before the First World War. When "Danger!" was
published, the public ridiculed Doyle's idea of a German submarine
blockade, but when the war came, the blockade happened, and a
captured U-Boat officer told the press that Doyle's novel was used
as a textbook in the German U-Boat school. There was a public
outcry, and Doyle was almost tried for treason; fortunately, clearer
heads prevailed.
Arthur Conan Doyle was the last Renaissance Man; a doctor (in
addition to his general practice and later specialization in
opthalmology, he served as ship's surgeon on a whaler and in a
South African field hospital during the Boer War), a sportsman who
excelled at games from boxing to billiards, a member of the Royal
Automobile Club's racing team which won the Price Henry Race in
1911, an inventor, a lecturer, a dramatist, poet and author, an
investigator of real-life crimes (he freed George Edalji from jail by
exposing a racially motivated frame-up), a leader of men who
organized volunteers during the war, a hard-headed business man,
a spiritualist (which put him at odds with his good friend Harry
Houdini, who exposed false mediums), and a loving husband and
father. He was knighted in 1902 for exposing the scandalous and
inhuman treatment of natives and prisoners in the Boer War with
his book "The War in South Africa: Its Cause and Conduct".
At the age of 71, his health began to fail. On July 7th, 1930,
Conan Doyle sat with his family in the rose garden of his house at
Windlesham, looked out over the South Downs, and went to the
afterlife in which he so fervently believed. On his headstone is
carved a simple testimonial to the kind of man that he was
-- "Steel True, Blade Straight".
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