KAAN KESKIN 19.03.

2012

y The fantastic London-

based consulting detective , Holmes is famous for his astute logical reasoning, his ability to take an almost any disguise, and his use of forensic science skills to solve difficult cases.

y Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was

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born in May 1859. (22 May 1859 7 July 1930) His family life was difficult as his father was poorly paid and became an alcoholic. Conan Doyle studied medicine in Edinburgh. Doyle had worked as a clerk at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary Met Dr Joseph Bell.

y Doyle was not a Doctor for

long, and turned to writing instead. y Sherlock Holmes first appeared in publication in 1887, was featured in four novels and 56 short stories. y The first novel, A Study in Scarlet, appeared in Beeton's Christmas Annual in 1887.

y Joseph Bell (2 December 1837

4 October 1911) was a famous Scottish lecturer at the medical school of the University of Edinburgh in the 19th century. y Dr Joseph Bell had an amazing ability to make deductions about the history of his patients based on the power of observation. y Bell was noted for drawing large conclusions from the smallest observations.

y An estimate of Holmes's age in the story His Last

Bow places his birth in 1854; the story is set in August 1914 and he is described as being 60 years of age. Commonly, the date is cited as 6 January. y His parents were not mentioned in the stories and he merely states that his ancestors were country squires .

y His brother Mycroft, seven years his

senior, is a government official. y Mycroft has a unique civil service position as a kind of memory-man or walking database for all aspects of government policy. y Mycroft is described as even more gifted than Sherlock in matters of observation and deduction, but he lacks Sherlock's drive and energy, preferring to spend his time at ease in the Diogenes Club described as a club for the most un-clubbable men in London .

y Holmes states that he first developed his methods of

deduction while an undergraduate. Given details in two of the adventures, Holmes must have been at Cambridge rather than Oxford. y He spent the six years following university working as a consulting detective, before financial difficulties led him to take Watson as a roommate, at which point the narrative of the stories begins.

Holmes was described as having lodgings at 221 Baker Street London, from where he runs his consulting detective service.

y Holmes shares the majority

of his professional years with his good friend and chronicler Dr. John H. Watson, who lives with Holmes for some time before his marriage in 1887, and again after his wife's death; his residance is maintained by his landlady, Mrs. Hudson.

y Watson has two roles in Holmes's life. y First he gives practical assistance in the conduct of his

cases; he is the detective's right-hand man, acting variously as look-out, decoy, accomplice and messenger. y Second, he is Holmes's chronicler. Most of the Holmes stories are frame narratives, written from Watson's point of view as summaries of the detective's most interesting cases. y Holmes's friendship with Watson is his most significant relationship.

y In His Last Bow , Holmes has retired to a small farm

on the Sussex Downs in 1903-1904, as chronicled by Watson in his preface to the series of stories entitled His Last Bow . y He has taken up the hobby of beekeeping as his primary occupation. y The details of his death are not known.

y Watson describes Holmes:

His methods of thought he was the neatest and most methodical of mankind... He had a horror of destroying documents. y What appears to others as chaos, however, is to Holmes a wealth of useful information. y Holmes is described as having a cat-like love of personal cleanliness.

y Holmes occasionally uses addictive drugs, especially y

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when lacking stimulating cases. He believes the use of cocaine stimulates his brain when it is not in use. He is habitual user of cocaine. Holmes is also an occasional user of morphine. These drugs were legal in late 19th-century England. Both Watson and Holmes are serial tobacco users, including cigarettes, cigars and pipes. Holmes is expert at identifying tobacco-ash residues.

y Holmes's primary intellectual method is abductive

reasoning, which Holmes rather inaccurately calls deduction. y Sherlock Holmes's straight forward practical principles are generally of the form, If 'p', then 'q' is observed evidence and 'q' is what the evidence indicates . y Holmes displays a strong aptitude for acting and disguise.

y Holmes maintains strict adherence to scientific

methods and focuses on logic and the powers of observation and deduction. y Holmes also makes use of phrenology, which was widely popular in Victorian times but now regarded as pseudo-scientific. He infers from the large size of man's hat that the owner is intelligent and intellectually inclined, on the grounds that a man with so large a brain must have something in it .

y In A study in Scarlet , Holmes claims he does not

know that the Earth revolves around the sun, as such information is irrelevant to his work. Directly after having heard that fact from Watson, he says he will immediately try to forget it. y He says he believes that the mind has a finite capacity for information storage, and so learning useless things would merely reduce his ability to learn useful things.

y Sherlock Holmes remains a great inspiration for

forensic science, especially for the way his acute study of a crime scene yields small clues as to the precise sequence of events. y He makes great use of trace evidence such as shoe and tire impressions, as well as fingerprints, ballistics and handwriting analysis, now known as questioned document examination. Such evidence is used to test theories conceived by the police, for example, or by the investigator himself.

y Owing to the small scale of the trace evidence (such as

tobacco ash, hair of fingerprints), he often uses a magnifying glass at the scene, and an optical microscope back at his lodgings in Baker Street. y He uses analytical chemistry for blood residue analysis as well as toxicology examination and determination for poisons.

y Holmes was also very perceptive of the dress and

attitude of his clients and suspects noting style and state of wear of their clothes, any contamination (such as clay on boots), their state of mind and physical condition in order to infer their origin and recent history. y Skin marks such as tattoos could reveal much about their past history.