Tracing Sherlock Holmes – Dr Joseph Bell

“It is to you that I owe Sherlock Holmes,” Sir Arthur Conan Doyle once wrote to his former lecturer at the University of Edinburgh.

 

A recent journey to Edinburgh, Scotland, brought us, among other places, to the grave of the Edinburgh local notable Dr Joe Bell (1837–1911). Reason enough to say a few words here about the man who served Sir Arthur Conan Doyle as the model for his fictional character Sherlock Holmes.

 

In fact, Joe Bell was a surgeon. Yet, as the US series “Dr House” also demonstrated in the twenty-first century, medical diagnostics and detective work go hand in hand. Bell’s outstanding powers of observation and deduction deeply astonished his student Conan Doyle:

Joseph Bell’s grave; detective in Berlin, detective agency in Berlin, private investigator in Berlin

Bell: “Well, my man, you’ve served in the army.”

 

Man: “Aye, Sir.”

 

“Not long discharged?”

 

“No, Sir.”

 

“A Highland regiment?”

 

“Aye, Sir.”

 

“A non-commissioned officer.”

 

“Aye, Sir.”

 

“Stationed at Barbados.”

 

“Aye, Sir.”

 

“You see, gentlemen,” he would explain, “the man was a respectful man but did not remove his hat. They do not in the army, but he would have learned civilian ways had he been long discharged. He has an air of authority and he is obviously Scottish. As to Barbados, his complaint is elephantiasis, which is West Indian and not British.” To his audience of Watsons it all seemed very miraculous until it was explained, and then it became simple enough. It is no wonder that after the study of such a character I used and simplified his methods when in later life I tried to build up a scientific detective who solved cases on his own merits.

(Compare this with the analysis of a person in the story “The Greek Interpreter” by Sherlock and Mycroft Holmes in the Diogenes Club.)

 

There are numerous such stories about Joe Bell. Among other things, it is said that he captured Jack the Ripper together with his colleague Dr Littlejohn. It is also told that Bell’s hair turned from deep black to bright white overnight after the death of his beloved wife. When the later British Nobel Prize laureate Rudyard Kipling read the first Holmes novel “A Study in Scarlet”, he turned to Conan Doyle in admiration and asked: “Isn’t he my old friend, Dr Joe?”

 

Dr Joe Bell was an outstanding physician, logician and criminalist – and an excellent role model. Not only for Sherlock Holmes.

 

Incidentally: in Aidan Johnstone’s “Livingstones Mahnung”, Dr Joseph Bell makes a brief appearance.

For those interested, here is a YouTube link to a documentary about Joe Bell

The highly recommended Bell biography by Liebow:

http://www.amazon.de/Dr-Joe-Bell-Sherlock-Holmes/dp/0879721987

 

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