What We Learned From Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes

Sir Arthur Conan
Doyle

When Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote his first Sherlock Holmes mystery, policy work was a much different thing than it is today. There was no such thing as collecting blood evidence, no ballistics testing, no microscopic or deductive reasoning used to solve crimes.

Then along came Conan Doyle, with his background as a ship's surgeon, medical doctor, and ophthalmologist who changed every thing through the works of his fictional character, Sherlock Holmes.

In 1887 Sherlock Holmes first appeared, in Conan Doyle's A Study In Scarlet. It was the first time a magnifying glass had appeared in detective fiction. A year later, the first Jack the Ripper murder happened and standard investigative failed. Crime scenes were contaminated and much of the evidence wasn't even collected. The police were sorely in need of new methods for solving crime but it took a fictional character to show them the way.

Forensic science as we know it essentially started with Holmes: use of the magnifying glass; sifting and measuring; looking at the small details; smells; collection of evidence; getting down on the ground to see thing from a new angle; ballistic evidence - all of these methods were first seen in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's stories. Before Holmes, police almost entirely relied on confessions and eye witness accounts, including forced confessions.


According to forensic scientists, A Study In Scarlet is still relevant today. In a recent PBS program, "How Sherlock Changed The World," Holmes was a pioneering chemist and the Holmes books remain an manual for investigations.

In A Study In Scarlet, Holmes develops a test to determine if a substance is blood before that test had been developed in real life. That test was able to be used in real life for more than 50 years once it became used in real life. He also began toxicology testing and the study of poisons before they had become routine police work.

The most timeless of Holmes' fits was deductive reasoning, the process of using evidence to reach a logical conclusion. Holmes taught detectives how to infer from the evidence and to keep an open mind.

Holmes other great lesson was the concept that every contact leaves a trace (now also known as the "principle of exchange). He had the first crime lab and kept samples to compare later to trace evidence he collected in cases.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle did have a medical education and training to draw on for his books but no detective experience. How did a man with so little background come up with the ideas that would change police work? There's nothing particularly impressive about Conan Doyle's writing style, but there's no doubt he was one of the most influential authors ever.

A Study In Scarlet by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

A Study In Scarlet by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Originally Published in 1887
Source: bought this one for my Nook for book club

Summary:
A dead man is discovered in a bloodstained room in Brixton. The only clues are a wedding ring, a gold watch, a pocket edition of Boccaccio's Decameron, and a word scrawled in blood on the wall. With this investigation begins the partnership of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. Their search for the murderer uncovers a story of love and revenge-and heralds a franchise of detective mysteries starring the formidable Holmes. 


My Thoughts: 
It was suggested, some months ago, that my book club read some Sherlock Holmes. This is so far out of our norm and, since there were only four novellas and 56 short stories, I knew we'd need to do something a little different this time around. First up was picking what we'd read. I chose to go with two of the novellas, A Study In Scarlet, the first novella, and The Hound of The Baskervilles (which I read a couple of years ago - my review), the most famous of the novellas.

A Study In Scarlet introduces Dr. Watson to Sherlock Holmes, the two come together as total strangers who need each other for practical housing reasons. Watson quickly falls under Holmes' spell as he is, time and again, astounded by what Holmes can deduce accurately by simple observation and prior research. Holmes, we learn, is not, strictly speaking, the genius those of us who only know him from movies and television believe him to be. Instead he's a man whose genius lies in knowing what he needs to learn in order to do what he wants to do better. His studies all revolve around what will come to be known as forensic science.

"...his zeal for certain studies was remarkable, and within eccentric limits his knowledge was so extraordinarily ample and minute that his observations have fairly astounded me. Surely no man would work so hard or attain such precise information unless he had some definite end in view.  

His ignorance was a remarkable as his knowledge. Of contemporary literature, philosophy and politics he appeared to know next to nothing...My surprise reached a climax, however, when I found incidentally that he was ignorant of the Copernican Theory and of the composition of the Solar System. That any civilized human being in this nineteenth century should not be aware that the earth travelled round the sun appeared to be to me such an extraordinary fact that I could hardly believe it."

Holmes has not yet become a consultant for the police and has very little interest in most of their cases, they being below his intellect. But when a body is found dead without a trace, Holmes can't resist. And he's going, doing his thing, just about to solve the crime when all of sudden...bam! Conan Doyle takes readers into what appears to be an entirely different storyline. Suddenly we're in Utah, among the Mormans. Eventually, we'll get back to the original story but not until we've spent several years, and half the novella, learning the background of the murder suspect.

The back and forth was more than a little jarring and it felt like I was reading two different stories. Conan Doyle certainly had gotten a better grasp on how to tell his stories by the time he wrote The Hound of the Baskervilles.

What was most interesting to me, in doing research for our discussion of the novellas, was how much these stories changed police work. I'm not sure there have ever been fiction works that had a greater impact on real life. Knowing that made the book much more interesting for me that it might otherwise have been. Between the stories themselves, some research, a quiz and a prize, Sherlock Holmes turned out to be a fun book club choice.

Happy Birthday to Our Girls - and Nebraska!

 Happy Birthday To Our Girls, Miss H Miss S!

Miss H turns 21 today - we enjoyed lunch and shopping and having a drink with her. Can't believe our baby is now officially an adult by any legal measure.

Miss S is off in Texas for school and we're missing getting to celebrate with her. She may not be legally family yet but we think of her as one of ours already.

And what do these girls have in common (besides being the sisters each has always wanted)? Today is also the 149th celebration of Nebraska statehood.

Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day by Winifred Watson

Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day by Winifred Watson
Originally published 1938
Published by Persephone 2008
Narrated by Frances McDormand

Publisher's Summary:
A governess is sent by an employment afency to the wrong address, where she encounters a glamourous night-club singer, Miss LaFosse.


My Thoughts: 
Seriously? That's the summary? Okay, first of all, why are there spelling errors in it? Also, yes, it's an accurate summary, technically that is what happens in the book. But there's something of a spoiler in it, which is just wrong to begin with, and the story is so much more than that.

Miss Pettigrew is actually quite a bad governess. She's bolloxed her "career" so badly that her landlady has threatened to evict her if she doesn't get a job the day she is sent to Miss LaFosse's door. She is dowdy spinster with a moral compass so far up her butt (sorry, Mom!) she hasn't had any fun her entire life. She is self-aware enough to know that she is a screwup and knows that she will be in the bread line if she doesn't get the job with Miss LaFosse.

One of my all-time favorite books is Stella Gibson's Cold Comfort Farm which is, apparently, a parody of exactly this kind of book. So it would stand to reason, then, that I might think this book was a bit of silliness, right?

Wrong.

Almost eighty years after it was first published, I found it to be utterly charming. The circumstances of life may be different these days but Watson's characters could very well exist in today's world. Would it be believable that a woman might reach the age of forty and never have been kissed? Unlikely but not impossible. It is possible that a woman might find herself very much in Miss Pettigrew's situation. Is it likely that a person would walk into a woman's apartment and get completely swept up into that woman's life without that woman ever wondering why the person was even there? Doubtful these days. In rare lulls, I found it hard to believe that Miss LaFoss wouldn't think to ask Miss Pettigrew why she happened to come by that day.

But...it's a story and one that I was more than willing to suspend disbelief in order to enjoy. Because it was a delight to watch Miss Pettigrew bloom and find hidden reserves she didn't know she had, to see her lose her prejudices. The more I grew to care about her, though, the more the title of the book kept coming back to haunt me. After all, Miss Pettigrew is only going to get to live for a day. I didn't want her to have to go back to her life before Miss LaFoss.

Frances McDormand is a marvelous narrator, easily able to create different voices for the many characters in the novel. I'm certain she was chosen because she played Miss Pettigrew in the film adaptation but I hope it is not the last book she narrates. And now, to find the movie to watch