1.4: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes

Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\):Sir Arthur Conan Doyle – US Library of Congress – Bains New Service 1920-1925 – Public Domain

Although your author does not believe that when Sir Arthur Conan Doyle first published the exploits of his fictional character Sherlock Holmes in A Study in Scarlet on the pages of The Strand Magazine in 1887, that he intended to change criminal investigations forever, but he most certainly did just that. Prior to the first use of a magnifying glass by Sherlock Holmes to reveal trace evidence in a crime scene, or his constant complaints regarding the inability of law enforcement to preserve the scene, which persists to this day, to his beakers and test tubes in his home laboratory at 221B Baker Street, police investigators relied upon eyewitnesses and rounding up the usual suspects to solve crimes. Even the way Sherlock Holmes approached a crime scene was novel and unique, as described by Dr. Watson at the death scene at 3, Lauriston Gardens:

“I had imagined that Sherlock Holmes would at once have hurried into the house and plunged into a study of the mystery. Nothing appeared to be further from his intention. With an air of nonchalance which, under the circumstances, seemed to me to border upon affectation, he lounged up and down the pavement, and gazed vacantly at the ground, the sky, the opposite houses and the line of railings. Having finished his scrutiny, he proceeded slowly down the path, or rather down the fringe of grass which flanked the path, keeping his eyes riveted upon the ground. Twice he stopped, and once I saw him smile, and heard him utter an exclamation of satisfaction. There were many marks of footsteps upon the wet clayey soil, but since the police had been coming and going over it, I was unable to see how my companion could hope to learn anything from it. Still, I had had such extraordinary evidence of the quickness of his perceptive faculties, that I had no doubt that he could see a great deal which was hidden from me.” – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet, 1887

Sir Arthur endowed Sherlock Holmes with a form of reasoning that later became known as Holmesian deduction, which was the ability to solve crimes using detailed observations and hypothesizing to solve crimes. In reality, the fictional detective utilized inductive reasoning, which is a method of logical hypothesis drawn from observations and then extracts general conclusions gathered from information revealed during the investigation.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, a physician who based the character Sherlock Holmes on John Bell, his Scottish professor who greatly influenced Sir Arthur by his diagnostic abilities, wrote nine books, four novels and a collection of short stories, between 1887 and 1927. The stories were well received at a time when forensic science was coming of age. The books certainly influenced French criminalists like Alphonse Bertillon and Edmond Locard, by their own admission, and, although there is no definitive proof, Hans Gross, the Austrian jurist, magistrate, and professor who was known as the Father of Criminal Investigations.

Edmond Locard gave praise to Sir Arthur when in 1929 he wrote in a paper published in the Revue

Internationale de Criminalistique titled The Analysis of Dust Traces,

"I hold that a police expert, or an examining magistrate, would not find it a waste of his time to read Doyle's novels. For, in the adventures of Sherlock Holmes, the detective is repeatedly asked to diagnose the origin of a speck of mud, which is nothing but moist dust. The presence of a spot on a shoe or pair of trousers immediately made known to Holmes the particular quarter of London from which his visitor had come, or the road he had traveled in the suburbs. A spot of clay and chalk originated in Horsham, a peculiar reddish bit of mud could be found nowhere but at the entrance to the post office in Wigmore street."

In the same paper, Edmond Locard credits Sir Arthur with the concepts of trace evidence detection and recovery that he employed at his laboratory in Lyon, France.

Your author recommends the reader conduct research into the case of George Ediji, who was convicted of animal mutilations, and George Slater, who was wrongfully convicted of murder. Sir Arthur was instrumental in the establishment of the British Court of Criminal Appeals.