Sherlock Holmes and the Law E-Book

Henrik Fibæk Jensen

• Herausgeber: Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 310

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

When a person has solved an enigmatic mystery by creating a connection between a series of seemengly unrelated and inexplicable events, we often say admiringly: "Well I must say you are a real Sherlock Holmes!"The name alone has become synonymous with brilliant acumen. The private detective Sherlock Holmes was created by the English author Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930), who from 1887 to 1927 wrote 4 novels and 56 short stories about him, collectively known as the Conan. Of these, "The Hound of the Baskervilles" is the most famous, and it has time and again been named the world's best crime novel, just as Holmes has been hailed as the world's greatest detective. "Sherlock Holmes and the Law" is about the relationship between crime and punishment. The whole of the Conan is reviewed with this issue in mind. When Holmes has uncovered a culprit, he as a general rule hands him over to the police. Sometimes, however, he makes an exception, in that he either punishes the guilty himself or lets him escape further prosecution. Ultimately, he puts his own sense of justice above English law, and he does so based on his inner moral compass. To find out about, describe and understand this compass is the task and goal of this book. In addition, "Sherlock Holmes and the Law" also contains a section on Arthur Conan Doyle's life, an overview of the Conan, a description of Holmes and Watson's personalities and friendship, an introduction to Holmes' working method and his relationship with the police. Henrik Fibæk Jensen (born 1954). A Danish writer. Master of Arts in Danish, history and philosophy from Aarhus University. He has written books about the authors Johannes Buchholtz, Jeppe Aakjær, Søren Kierkegaard and Hans Peter Kofoed-Hansen, the private detective Sherlock Holmes, the robber Jens Langkniv (a Danish Robin Hood-figure), and the serial killer John Christie. In addition magazine articles about Hans Scherfig, N.F.S. Grundtvig, Jack the Ripper, Emil Boesen and local history subjects from the Skive region in Jutland, Denmark.

Leseprobe

By the same author:

Jens Langkniv -En jysk Robin Hood? (1993)

Det egentlige liv -En bog om Johannes Buchholtz (1995)

Jeppe Aakjær - Spillemand og stridsmand (1999)

„De er en helt!“ - Venskabet mellem Johannes Buchholtz og Jeppe Aakjær (2000)

Jeppe Aakjær -En CD-rom præsentation (2004)

Kierkegaards saltomortalespring -En boggave fra Søren Kierkegaard til Regine Olsen (2019)

Seriemorderen John Christie fra Rillington Place (2021)

At hvile i Godhedens Favn - Hans Peter Kofoed-Hansens skønlitterære forfatterskab (2023)

Sherlock Holmes og Loven (2024, ogå udgivet på engelsk under titlen Sherlock Holmes and the Law)

The illustration on the cover of the book

The servant James Ryder has stolen a valuable gemstone also called The Blue Carbuncle, and now he lies begging on his knees before Sherlock Holmes, who has exposed him, while John Watson is watching in the background. The thief regrets bitterly (9.191-192): ””For Gods sake, have mercy!" he shrieked. "Think of my father! Of my mother! It would break their hearts. I never went wrong before. I never will again. I swear it. I swear it on a Bible. Oh, don't bring it into court! For Christs's sake, don't!"" Pleads Holmes the poor sinner and omits to call the police? Get the answer in this book.

(Illustration by Sidney Paget)

Very appropriate the book is set with ”Baskerville Old Face”

CONTENTS

Preface

1. Arthur Conan Doyle and the Conan – an overview

Arthur Conan Doyle - a biographical sketch

The Making of the Conan

The chronology in the Conan

Sherlock Holmes and Watson - two friends

Who is John Watson?

Who is Sherlock Holmes?

Sherlock Holmes' "little deductive problems"

Sherlock Holmes and the police

2. No violation of the law

”The Noble Bachelor”

”A Scandal in Bohemia"

”The Yellow Face”

”The Man with the Twisted Lips"

”The Crooked Man”

”A Case of Identity”

”The Missing Three-Quarter”

”The Sussex Vampire”

”The Problem of' Thor Bridge"

"The Blanched Soldier”

"The Creeping Man”

”The Lion's Mane”

Summary

3. Criminal cases that are only partially solved

”Gloria Scott”

”The Musgrave Ritual”

”Wisteria Lodge"

”The Five Orange Pips”

”The Engineer's Thumb”

”The Resident Patient”

”The Greek Interpreter”

”The Dancing Men”

"The Disappearence of Lady Frances Carfax'"

Summary

4. Criminas who are sentenced to society's punishment

”A Study in Scarlet”

”The Reigate Squire”

”The Sign of Four"

”The Valley of Fear"

”The Stockbroker's Clerk”

”The Hound of the Baskervilles”

”The Red-Headed League"

”The Cardboard Box"”

”The Final Problem”

”The Empty House”

”The Norwood Builder”

”The Golden Pince-

”The Solitary Cyclist”

”Black Peter”

”The Bruce-Parlington Plans”

”The Retired Colourman”

”The Dying Detective”

”The Six Napoleons”

”The Red Circle”

"The Illustrious Client"

"Shoscombe Old Place”

”The Three Garridebs”

”The Mazarin Stone”

”His Last Bow”

Summary

5. Criminals that Sherlock Holmes single-handedly punishes or acquits

”The Speckled Band”

”The Boscombe Valley Mystery”

”The Naval Treaty”

”The Beryl Coronet”

”The Blue Carbuncle”

”Silver Blaze”

”The Cooper Beeches”

”The Second Stain”

”The Three Students”

”The Veiled Lodger”

"The Devil's Foot”

”Abbey Grange”

”The Priory School”

”Charles Augustus Milverton”

”The Three Gables”

Summary

6. Sherlock Holmes' moral compass

Crossing the Rubicon

Sherlock Holmes and the Fifth Commandment of the Law of Moses

Charles Darwin and Sherlock Holmes

Just give me a rose

The two pills (202)

Three English gentlemen

Litterature

PREFACE

Exactly what is Sherlock Holmes' profession?

He himself describes his job with these words (1.18): ”Well, I have a trade of my own. I suppose I am the only one in the world. I'm a consulting detective [..]. Here in London we have lots of Government detectives and lots of private ones. When these fellows are at fault, they come to me, and I manage to put them on the right scent. They lay the evidence before me, and I am generally able, by the help of my knowledge of the history of crime, to set them straight." Watson, on his side, has this to say about Holmes' job (5.127): ”in your position of unoffcial adviser and helper to everybody who is absolutely puzzled, throughout three continents, you are brought in contact with all that is strange and bizarre”. These two statements says a lot about Holmes' profession as, respectively, "consulting detective" and an "unoffcial adviser and helper to everybody”. He is neither a policeman or a traditionel, police related detective, he is a consulting, unofficial detective, and exactly what that implies, is shown in the 60 stories, Arthur Conan Doyle wrote about him.

Holmes' whole life is centered around crimes, and when he nevertheless doesn't end as one of the managers of the lawsystem (policeman, Scotland Yard-agent, judge, prosecutor, defence attorney, legislator etc.), it is because, he wants to maintain his free floating status. His personality and his perception of the relationship between law and morality are so special, that he must necessarily invent his own profession. Holmes becomes his own employer, because it is the only way he can maintain his personal integrity, which in opposition to the system administrators sets him free in relation to English law.

Sherlock Holmes and the Law consists of six parts. In the first part I give an overview of the Conan, the friendship between Holmes and Watson, the personalities of the two friends, Holmes' working method as well as his relationship with the police/the authorities. In the second part I review the cases, where the law is not broken [category 1], in the third part the criminal cases, which Holmes solves only partially, and where he loses his clients and/or the criminals escapes [category 2], in the fourth part the criminal cases, that Holmes solves completely, and where the the criminals are being judged by society [category 3], and in the fifth part the criminal cases, which Holmes solves completely, and where he either punish the criminals himself or lets them avoid further prosecution [category 4]. In the sixth part I try to summarize Holmes' view on the relationship between crime and punishment, justice and english legislation.

Is the law always just, or can it be unjust? Can the circumstances even in connection with murder be of such a nature, that the killer has a moral right to take another person's life? Is it under certain conditions justifiable to take the law into one's own hands? Holmes' view on this cardinal question is most clearly expressed in the category 4-cases, where he makes an active choice acting as police authority, prosecutor, defence counsel, judge and penalty assessor. Here he seriously comes into character and acquits or convicts, here he singlehandedly makes decisions, which frankly does not belong on his table at all. And he does it based on the moral compass, according to which he directs his life and his work. Defining, describing and understanding this compass is the aim of this book.

1. Arthur Conan Doyle and the Conan – an overview

Around 1885, a young general practitioner sat in his clinic in Southsea near Portsmouth and was bored. He was not without patients, but unfortunately there were far between them. The quiet moments he spend writing short stories "aimed for a popular readership not the arty intelligentsia" (Fido, p. 64), which were published in various cheap magazines. One of the stories was about "a man who eats his own ears because he is hungry" (Boström, p. 17). Unfortunately, all these stories - around 25 pieces - were published anonymously so no one knew he was the author. The way forward to recognition had to be an independent publication under one's own name, he thought. Consequently, he began writing a novel about a detective and his assistant, whom he called respectively Sherrinford Holmes and Ormond Sacker. The doctor could hear for himself that the names did not sound quite right? But then he thought back to his boarding school days ...

Arthur Conan Doyle - a biographical sketch _______

Arthur Conan Doyle, as the doctor was called, was born on 22 May 1859 in Edinburgh as the seventh child out of a large group of children. His father, Charles, was an unambitious civil servant who, after being fired, ended up an epileptic alcoholic. The last 10 years of his life he was hospitalized. The father's unfortunate fate is reflected in Doyle's writing, where he describes the scourge of alcohol in several stories. His mother, Mary, meant a great deal to him, and even when he had become a world-famous writer, he valued her advice. Thus, it was she who encouraged him not to put Holmes on the shelf, when he had published 2 novels and 11 short stories about him, just as she also ensured that he agreed, albeit reluctantly, to be ennobled in 1902.

After a few years in primary school, in 1870 Doyle was admitted to the Jesuit boarding school Stonyhurst, where he attended until 1875. The Catholic Jesuits practiced a solid pedagogy, which Doyle did not necessarily care for, but it was especially their strict view of Christianity that he took distance from. Were alle non-Catholics really repratriated to Hell? From 1875 to 1876 he stayed at a boarding school in Austria, allegedly to learn German. It didn't amount to much with the Germanic, but instead he learned to play football on stilts.

From 1876 to 1881 he studied medicine at Edinburgh University. It was not his dream study, but it was the safe choice (Coren, p. 20): "Philosophy and literature were all very well but bread and butter and a full stomach were even better. That was the family's view and Conan Doyle, ever the realist in such matters, concurred.” On behalf of literature, one should be happy with his choice of study. Two of his charismatic teachers, Joseph Bell and John Rutherford, became his sources of inspiration, when he created respectively the characters Sherlock Holmes and Challenger. Bell was a true master at closely reading the outward appearance of his patients and from there inferring a lot about their past, occupation, illness, personality etc. With his own words (Smith, p. 82): "From close observation and deduction you can make a correct diagnosis of any and every case. However never neglect to ratify your deduction".

While Doyle was still a student, as a ship's doctor he undertook a seven month voyage with Hope to the Arctic regions in search of whales and seals. He actually managed to harpoon 4 whales! The sailors were impressed by his boxing skills, and he learned a lot of their straightforward way of telling stories. After he graduated, his second three-month trip as a ship's doctor went with Mayumba to West Africa, where he, among other things, shot a snake and swam in sharkinfested waters, as the steamer was gradually filled with exotic trade goods such as palmnuts and ivory. He felt repulsed by the primitive and superstitious Africans (D.53): "The natives were all absolute savages, offering up human sacrifices to sharks and crocodiles." After the two expeditions, it was clear to him, that his "wandering years" were over, that the time had now come to create a career on land. He was, however, aware at the same time that the trips to the icy North and the tropical South had matured him as a person (D.47): "I went on board the whaler a big, straggling youth, I came off it a powerful, well-grown man".

After returning from Africa, Doyle set up as a general practitioner for half a year in Portsmouth and then from the summer of 1882 in Plymouth. And it was here that he began to write about the detective, who would become one of the world's most famous fictional characters. As a boy Doyle had attended Stonyhurst at the same time as Patrick Holmes, Watson and Moriarty. Both the protocols, in which they inscribed their names, and the school desks, in which they carved them, still exist. In addition, Doyle knew a cricketer whose first name was Sherlock, and that one of his favorite authors was the American Oliver Wendell Holmes. And with this, the names of his two main characters as well as Holmes' greatest enemy were in place.

The random way in which policemen and detectives in popular crime novels of the time exposed criminals, who often behaved unusually clumsily, irritated Doyle. He wanted instead "to create a scientific detective who solved cases on his own merits and not through the folly of the criminal" (D.26). In Doyle's notebooks, he got these words along the way (Boström, p. 30): “Secluded – young man with a sleepy look – philosopher – collector of rare violins – an Amati – chemical laboratory. The rules of evidence”. Since the solution to the crime mystery would like to come as a surprise to the reader at the end of the story, Holmes could not be the narrator: "He could not tell his own exploits, so he must have a commonplace companion as a foil - an educated man of action who could both join in the exploits and narrate them". Watson was a fitting "drab, quiet name for this unostentatious man" (D.75).

Arthur Conan Doyle photographed in 1892. Precisely at this time he was a major supplier of Sherlock Holmes stories. The first two novels about him had each taken a month to write, and a Holmes short story for The Strand Magazine he could complete in a week.

After several rejections from various publishers, Doyle finally had his first novel about Sherlock Holmes published. A Study in Red (1887), as it was called, should, according to the publisher, "be the topic of conversation at every Christmas gathering in the whole country", just as it was for every ambitious policeman "an excellent tool for promotion" (Boström, pp. 34-35). The book was also a success, and after that Doyle had no problems getting his Holmes stories sold. Yes, he actually became one of the highest paid writers of his time.

In his memoirs, Doyle has told about his not entirely problem-free cohabitation with Holmes, which came to extend over a lifetime. First of all it was about coming up with a sustainable plot (D.106-107): "People have often asked me whether I knew the end of a Holmes story before I started it. Of course I do. One could not possibly steer a course if one did not know one's destination. The first thing is to get your idea. Having got that key idea one's next task is to conceale it and lay emphasis upon everything which can make for a different explanation. Holmes, however, can see all the fallacies of the alternatives, and arrives more or less dramatically at the true solution by steps which he can describe and justify." At first it was easy for Doyle to devise a plot and write a short story, but as the obvious possibilities were exhausted it became more difficult. It was a big problem "that every story really needed as clear-cut and original a plot as the longish book would do". Indeed, he refused to write a short story "without a worthy plot and without a problem which interested my own mind, for that is the first requisite before you can interest any one else" (D. 97).

Holmes and Watson were fixed characters who largely did not develop, and this made it difficult for Doyle to renew himself (D.108): "I do not wish to be ungrateful to Holmes, who has been a good friend to me in many ways. If I have sometimes been inclined to weary of him it is because his character admits of no light or shade. He is a calculating machine, and anything you add simply weakens the effect. Thus the variety of the stories must depend upon the romance and the compact handling of the plots". Watsom was also a predictable figure, "who in the course of seven volumes never shows one gleam of humour or makes one single joke." That Doyle, in contrast to Watson, possessed a sense of humour and self-irony is shown, among other things, in his memoirs, where he with great pleasure recalls some of the Holmes parodies that were made. Fellow writer James Barrie's tale of two collaborators was, in Doyle's opinion, "the best of all the numerous parodies" (D.102-105).

Just as Holmes was a turning point for Doyle as a writer, his marriage to Louisa Hawkins in 1885 was a turning point for him as a person. Before he met her, he had ended up in the "valley of darkness" as a lost bohemian without belief in a deeper meaning to the course of life, after his marriage to Louisa - "no man could have a more gentle and amiable life's companion" - he began again to believe in and actively search for a purpose in life's voyage, "for a voyage is bleak indeed if one has no conception to what port one is bound" (D.71-72).

Doyle worked for eight years as a general practitioner in Plymouth. As he gradually felt a deep need for a change, he first spent half a year furthering his education in Vienna, after which he set up as an ophthalmologist in London. In the months that he functioned as such, he did not have a single client! This disheartening experience led him to realize a long-held dream of becoming a full-time professional writer. When he made the final decision, he threw his handkerchief into the air in exaltered excitement (D.97): "I should at last be my own master. No longer would I have to conform to professional dress or try to please any one else. I would be free to live how I liked and where I liked. It was one of the great moments of exultation of my life. The date was August, 1891."

In addition to the Conan, Doyle published many books in several different genres during his long, busy career. He thus wrote countless crime novels, plays, poems, imaginative novels about the eccentric Professor Challenger, who discovers dinosaurs that have survived on a plateau in South America, tales about the experiences of the French brigadier Gerard during the Napoleonic wars, an enjoyable work about his own library, seven books on spiritualism, a work on the Boer War, in which he took part as a military doctor, and a six-volume work on the First World War, in which he as a kind of war correspondent visited the English soldiers in the trenches in France. He perceived the Western Front as "the most wonderful spot in the world", after all, it was "the outer breakwater which held back the German tide". Everywhere he met combative Tommys, whose faces beamed with "cheerful bravery," they were indeed "the children of light [who] were beating down into the earth the forces of darkness" (D.347, 349 & 390).

Doyle himself ranked his historical novels - Micah Clarke, Sir Nigel and The White Company - for which he did extensive preliminary studies, very highly. They constituted "the most complete, satisfying and ambitious thing I have ever done" (D.81), and he hoped they would secure for him a lasting place in English literary history. It didn't turn out that way. Holmes became Doyle's destiny, and without him he would probably have been more or less forgotten today. In the words of fellow author Dorothy L. Sayers (Smith, p. 27): "For all the world, and probably for all time, the fame of Conan Doyle must stand coupled with the name of Sherlock Holmes."

A characteristic of Doyle was that he was interested in almost everything, that was going on in the world around him. He always had a case going. Big and small in between. In three cases he engaged in authentic criminal cases, where he tried with Holmes-like methods and with varying success to help George Edalji, Oscar Slater and Roger Casement, who were accused of, respectively, mistreatment of horses, murder and treason. He fought to improve divorce laws in favor of women, although at the same time he was against giving them the right to vote. He attacked George Bernard Shaw for discrediting the captain of the Titanic, he fought to introduce a world language, he wanted to clarify whether there really was a monster in Loch Ness, he exposed the atrocities of Belgian colonists against the natives of the Congo, he wanted to improve the conditions of the animals in the London Zoo, he agitated for an Anglo/American empire which would dominate the whole world, he wanted to keep hardened habitual criminals locked up until the day they die, because they pose a danger to law-abiding citizens when/if they are released - "ruthlessness to some means kindness to others" (Coren, p. 188) – he would have built a canal between England and France, he would have introduced the American game of baseball to his native land, etc., etc.

Doyle was very interested in politics and tried unsuccessfully to be elected to the British Parliament for The Liberal Unionist Party in both 1900 and 1905. He did not regret standing - we should always seize the chances life offers us - but he understood that his two defeats were Providence's way of telling him that his life's work lay elsewhere (D.201): "I believe that Providence one way or another gets a man's full powers out of him. [..] Deep in my bones I felt that I was on earth for some big purpose, and it was only by trying that I could tell that the purpose was not political". But then what was it?

At one of his election meetings he struck up a conversation with an old soldier comrade who exclaimed: "It would be strange, Arthur, if your real career should prove to be political and not literary". To this Doyle replied: "It will be neither. It will be religious". They both laughed at his totally unexpected answer, but with the wisdom of hindsight, Doyle added in his memoirs: "It was a curious example of that unconscious power of prophecy which is latent within us" (D.202). Personal sorrows contributed to his spending his last days devoting himself to his religious "career".

Doyle's much-loved wife Louisa was diagnosed with tuberculosis in 1895, and the couple moved to Surrey because the clean country air was said to be better for her than the smog of London. Already in 1897 he fell in love with Jean Leckie, but throughout his wife's prolonged illness, which ended with her death in 1906, his relationship with Jean apparently remained platonic. In 1907 he married her and they moved to Sussex. The many deaths in the family - Louisa, Doyle's mother Mary, his son Kingsley and others - as well as the countless people who lost their lives in the First World War 1914-18 and during the Spanish Flu of 1918, contributed to Doyle's last 12 years of life promoting "the most important thing for two thousand years in the history of the world" (D.398): Spiritism.

The question of whether we live on in some form after our physical death had interested Doyle as a boarding school student, and as a young doctor and husband in Plymouth he had become a convinced spiritualist. "It is incredible but it is true", as the spiritualist Crookes put it (D.117). We actually live on after our death, and those left behind can communicate with the deceased at séances! If one has seen the light, one is, in Doyle's opinion, morally obliged to spread it (D. 399): "If God has sent a great new message of exceeding joy down to earth, then it is for us, to whom it has been clearly revealed, to pass it on at any cost of time, money and labor. It is not given to us for selfish enjoyment but for general consolation."

In the autumn of his life, Doyle therefore traveled the world attending séances and propagandizing for his heart's cause, which will "sweep the earth and revolutionize human views upon every topic" (D.399). Altogether, he spoke for approx. 300,000 people. In 1925 he started "The Psychic Bookshop" in London with an associated spiritualist museum. Finally, he wrote 7 books on spiritualism, which gained wide circulation.

Doyle saw no contradiction between Christianity and spiritualism (Coren, p. 183): "A European spiritualist should in a broad sense be a Christian". On the contrary, it is the certainty of a life after death that constitutes the prerequisite for faith in God (D.69): "If one loses the explanation that this life is a spiritual chastening for another and death ends it all, and this is our one experience, then it is impossible to sustain the goodness or the omnipotence of God". For Doyle, "the highest wisdom" lay in the conviction that "all things are ordered for the best" (D.299), and therefore in several places in his memoirs he praises "a merciful providence" (D.69) which has brought him saved through critical phases of his life. It is faith in this providence, God and eternal life that together give meaning to earthly life. Spiritism turns "the gray fog of dissolution into a rosy dawn", it reshapes one's whole life perspective: "We can only answer that all life has changed for us since the definitive knowledge has come. No longer are we shut in by death. We are out of the valley and up on the ridge, with vast clear vistas before us. Why should we fear a death which we know for certain is the doorway to unutterable happiness? Why should we fear our dear one's death if we can be so near to them afterwards?" (D. 407).

Since Doyle did not perceive death as the end of everything, but as an entrance to another and better life, he died peacefully on July 7, 1930. It is said that no one cried at his funeral, because everyone was convinced that they would meet again.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle appears as the very incarnation of the classic English gentleman of the Victorian era: An avid sportsman in countless sports - "it [sport] gives health and strength, but above all it gives a certain balance of mind without a man is not complete" (D.293) - a family man, a great writer and a committed citizen of conservative observance with an interest in all sorts of subjects (D.241). "I think a man should know all sides of life". Always he strove to fight injustice in whatever form it might take. He never wavered from the belief that the British had a special, historic mission. A passionate imperialist, he enthusiastically extolled "the glory of the empire, its magnificient future, and the wonderful possibilities of these great nations all growing up under the same flag with the same language and destinies" (D.310).

Arthur Conan Doyle photographed in 1913 on the eve of the First World War, which became "the physical climax of my life as it must be of the life of every living man or woman" (D.311).

In short: Doyle was anything but an illusionless atheist/nihilist: “Conan Doyle could never believe in nothing; it was not in his character”. His positive benchmarks were and remained throughout his life "country, flag, empire, family, honour, religion" (Cohen, p. 27).

The Making of the Conan_______ ______________________

The Conan consist of 4 novels and 56 short stories about the consulting private detective Sherlock Holmes and his friend the doctor John Hamish Watson. (I do not distinguish between novels and short stories and refer to them all as stories or cases). They were published in various magazines over a period of 40 years from November 1887 to March 1927. The short stories were later reprinted in 5 collections and the novels were republished as independent books. 56 of the stories are told by Watson, while the short stories The Mazarin Stone and His Last Bow are told by an omniscient narrator, and the short stories The Blanched Soldier and The Lion's Mane by Holmes. Each story deals with one specific case, but in addition Conan refers to numerous cases in which Holmes has been consulted. As a curiosity, it can be mentioned that Doyle's son Adrian Conan Doyle wrote about 12 of these cases in 1952 (the first 6 together with John Dickson Carr).

The Conan falls into 2 halves: 1) The first 2 novels and 24 short stories published from November 1887 to December 1893 and 2) The last 2 novels and 32 short stories published from August 1901 to March 1927. The 8-year break between the two halves was due to the fact, that after several years of intense cohabitation with his brilliant detective, Doyle had become deeply tired of him. In November 1891 he wrote to his mother (Weller, p. 129): "I am thinking of slaying Holmes [...] He takes my mind from better things." Doyle made good on his threat a few years later - "if I had not killed Sherlock Holmes I verily believe that he would have killed me" (Smith, p. 25) - when he let Holmes die in the short story The Final Problem, published in December 1893. What a hideous Christmas present for Sherlockians the world over! They were understandably shaken to their core. A woman wrote to Doyle and called ham "a beast", many cried, some walked the streets of London in mourning bandage, the Prince of Wales was shocked, and 20,000 people canceled their subscription to The Strand Magazine, which had published the Holmes stories. And all that because Doyle had the audacity to let Holmes drown in the Reichenbach waterfall in Switzerland in 1891 during his final confrontation with the arch villain Moriarty.

Fans and publishers worldwide begged Doyle for new Holmes stories, and in 1901-1902 he published The Hound of the Baskervilles, where the action is postponed to October 1889. In September 1903, Doyle finally gave in to the pressure and "revived" Holmes in The Empty House, where he after three years in exile returns to London in 1894. Holmes reveals to the shocked Watson that he never fell into the waterfall. And then Doyle otherwise continued to write Holmes stories, drop by drop, right up until 1927.

But even if readers and publishers on both sides of the Atlantic managed to "force" Doyle to revive Holmes, perhaps it was not quite as it once was? At least not according to a Cornish ferryman whom Doyle met (D.97-98): "I think, sir, when Holmes fell over that cliff, he may not have killed himself, but all the same he was never quite the same man afterwards". It is highly debatable whether the quality dropped in the second half of the Conan? Doyle himself believed that his last Holmes story was just as good as his first. In any case, one must give Tage la Cour the absolute right when he asserts with a seven-inch nail, that "he who has really learned to appreciate the master detective and his faithful Dr. Watson, would not do without one tale of all the Conanic writings” (Engelske kriminalhistorier, 1964, p. 292). Just like you don't want to miss a single Beatles song either. After all, a possibly relatively weak Holmes story is better than none at all, and by the way, Doyle, even at his worst, is considerably better than most crime writers, even at their best.

The chronology in the Conan_________________________

One thing is when Doyle published the 60 stories in the Conan - it appears among others things from the notes in Den nye komplette Sherlock Holmes udgave 1-9 - quite another thing is when the action in them takes place? The short stories Gloria Scott and The Musgrave Ritual deal with cases from the time before Watson and Holmes meet, while The Lion's Mane and His Last Bow deal with cases from the time, when Holmes had retired and partially lost contact with Watson. The remaining stories all take place between 1881 and 1903 (with a gap between 1891 and 1894 when Holmes was missing and presumed dead).

In some cases, Watson indicates the exact month and the exact year in which the story takes place, in other cases we have to make an educated guess: When was the story published - after all, Watson was not clairvoyant - are there other cases mentioned in the story that can give a relative dating, do Holmes and Watson live together, are there factual elements in the cases in the form of historical events etc. The novels take place between 1881 and 1888, the short stories from the first half take place between 1881 and 1891 (with case no. 19 and 20 as the two mentioned exceptions), and the short stories from the second half between 1894 and 1903 (with case no. 57 and 48 as the two mentioned exceptions). It was a direct demand from the editors, that the action in the first new stories efter Holmes' resurrection "must take place after Reichenbach, which Holmes must be shown to survive" (Fido, p. 82). They had to be contemporaneous.

Time

Events

Case number

Up til 1880

SH and JW has not yet met

20,19

1881-1888

SH og JW meets in the start of 1881 and move in together in Baker Street 221B

1, 2, 4, 7, 10, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 21, 23, 24, 27, 40, 42

1888-1891

JW marries Mary Morstan in 1888, moves from SH and starts a medical practice

3, 5, 6, 8, 9, 11, 18, 22, 25, 26

1891-1894

SH presumed dead. JWs wife dies

No cases

1894-1901

JW moves again in with SH in Baker Street 221B as his assistent

28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 43, 45, 46, 50, 52, 53, 55, 58, 59, 60

1902-1903

JW gets married at the end of 1902, moves from SH and starts up a new medical practice

47, 49, 51, 54, 56

1904-1917

SH retires and become a beekeeper in Sussex

48,57

Holmes' life can be divided into 7 periods. In the table above, for each of these are indicated 1) the time period, 2) significant events in Holmes' and Watson's lives, and 3) the numbers of the cases that take place in the respective time periods (cf. the bibliography with the numbering of Conan's 60 texts in The Complete Illustrated Sherlock Holmes). SH stands for Sherlock Holmes and JW for John Watson.

Watson is not always completely reliable when it comes to details. The most famous example in the Conan is the question of where he is actually wounded in the war in Afghanistan: Is it in the left shoulder (1.13) or in one leg (2.55)? His dates are not always correct either. "Those were the early days at the end of the eighties" (47.835), Watson writes at the beginning of the The Valley of Fear, after which he later in the novel asks us to ”journey back some twenty years in time" (47.887), where the background for the drama in the "eighties" allegedly takes place from February 1875 to June of the same year. If the last date is correct, the main action would take place no earlier than 1896. And that year cannot fit, since Moriarty appears in the story and he dies in 1893. In The Man With the Twisted Lips, set in June 1889, Watson has married and moved to Paddington, but in The Hound of the Baskervilles, set 3-4 months later, Holmes and Watson are still living together in Baker Street. These and many more inaccuracies have for over a hundred years Sherlockians pounced on and given imaginative explanations on.

We always imagine that a Holmes story starts with the consulting detective and the retired doctor enjoying themselves in the Baker Street flat, where after Mrs. Hudson knocks and introduces a client. But in reality, the action in many cases takes place during the years when Holmes and Watson do not live together. In the story The Veiled Woman from 1927, Watson writes that Holmes practiced his profession for 23 years, of which he collaborated with him for 17 (59.1097). (They were cohabitants for two periods: From 1881 to 1898 and from 1894 to 1902). But of course: During the periods when they are not living together, Watson occasionally continues to assist Holmes when his private life and practice otherwise allow. Whether or not they share an apartment is an important criterion, when trying to date the action in the stories. Immediately after a case is solved, Watson makes some notes about it, which he then uses to support his memory, when writing the stories that make up the Conan.

For me, an approximate dating of Holmes's cases is more than sufficient, as I "simply" want to investigate whether there is any development in Holmes' view of the relationship between his own morality and English law? Does he become more self-willed with age?

Sherlock Holmes and John Watson – two friends___________

Holmes never talks to Watson about his past, which reinforces "the somewhat inhuman effect which he produces on me, until sometimes I found myself regarding him as an isolated phenomenon, a brain without a heart, as deficient in human symphathy as he was pre-eminent in intelligence” (24.37). In The Greek Interpreter, Holmes makes an exception: He reveals that his parents were landowners, "who appears to have led much the same life, as is natural to their class". He himself believes that it is the legacy of one of his grandmothers, who was the sister of the painter Horace Vernet (1789-1863), that makes him an artist in his field: "Art in the blood is liable to take the strangest forms" (24.379). He has a 7 year older, super gifted brother Mycroft who works in the Ministries (24.379).