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Intelligence-gathering

Since the late 16th and early 17th centuries, the accumulation of evidence against “suspects” was largely a matter driven by concerns of national security, especially in non-Catholic Reformist countries, worried by the threat of Catholic subversion—for instance, when there were plots in England to assassinate Queen Elizabeth I (the Babington Plot, 1585) and blow up Parliament and King James I

Jack the Ripper

In 1888, London was shocked by the brutal serial murders of at least five East End prostitutes. Although forensic evidence was collected and examined, the techniques available to Scotland Yard at this time were basic, and forensic investigation was not an established procedure, so they focused on identifying and interviewing a large number of suspects. Police surgeon Dr. Thomas Bond used his knowledge of the victim autopsies to create one of the

By the aid of phrenology, we have obtained a tolerably clear view… of the mind.

George Combe

Constitution of Man (1828)

(the Gunpowder Plot, 1605). This perceived danger led to a culture of “observation” and the incipient invasion of personal privacy. The system also relied on the interception of messages, and blackmailing and torturing possible suspects or their associates. Other countries, including Spain, France, Russia, the Habsburg Empire, and other European states, developed “secret police” forces whose sole purpose was information-gathering.

By the beginning of the 19th century, police forces across Europe had become extremely adept at compiling damning dossiers on

earliest “criminal profiles” of the murderer. Scotland Yard was reluctant to share details of its investigations with the press, since it was afraid of revealing its methods to the murderer himself. Faced with a lack of information, journalists resorted to sensationalized, speculative reports, and criticized the methods of the police force. This critical press, coupled with the unsolved murders, had a negative impact on the reputation of Scotland Yard. The murders remain unsolved to this day, but there are many theories as to the killer’s identity.

thousands of individuals deemed suspicious for one reason or another. Franz Kafka’s novel The Trial (1925) is just one example of many that exemplify the sense of paranoia created by the state’s intrusion on personal liberty and privacy. On the other hand, the collection and collation of information from a wide variety of sources has undoubtedly prevented a huge number of criminal acts. Holmes sits somewhere in the middle of this conundrum: while preferring to rely on his personal observations, he equally does not eschew using intelligence and information from international police forces to help in his investigations.

The practice of phrenology

The classification of human “types” based on class, social background, and physical characteristics— founded on supposedly scientific methods dating back to the ancient Greek scientist Galen—began with the development of phrenology (p.188) in Germany in the early 19th century. Franz Josef Gall claimed that the size and shape of the skull revealed the intelligence, personality, and moral faculties of the subject, and would

CRIMINOLOGY AND FORENSIC SCIENCE 313

A phrenologist is seen here trying to assess a boy’s future by measuring the bumps on his head. Although not based on fact, this practice became popular in the early 19th century.

therefore be useful in categorizing criminal types. Gall also produced “brain maps,” which divided the brain into 27 “organs” ranging from areas responsible for the sense of taste and smell to those provoking criminal urges.

These brain maps proved hugely popular, and by 1820 the Edinburgh Phrenological Society was set up by one of Gall’s disciples, George Combe, and his physician brother Andrew. Although the society was disbanded in 1870, the museum remained open until 1886. Conan Doyle would have been aware of the Society’s work and would probably have visited while he was studying medicine in Edinburgh. He incorporated these “criminal traits” in many of his male villains, describing them as being huge, bearded, and swarthy with a low brow—for example in “The Adventure of the Six Napoleons” (pp.188–89), “The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle” (pp.82–3), and “The Adventure of the Speckled Band” (pp.84–9).

This dubious pseudoscience persisted for well over a century, and was used to provide simplistic evaluations of racial hegemony. The Nazis were enthusiastic phrenologists, and SS commander Heinrich Himmler (1900–1945) amassed a collection of skulls that he used to demonstrate his arguments concerning racial superiority and criminality.

Anthropometry

The basic tenets of phrenology were taken several steps further by the French criminologist Alphonse Bertillon (1853–1914), who developed the “science” of anthropometry. Bertillon carefully measured anatomical details (length of the neck, arms, legs, feet, and so on), of known or suspected criminals, subjecting them to humiliating physical analysis. His victims were also photographed—mainly at the time to analyze rather than to record their facial features, although this later formed the basis of the “mugshot” archives central to criminal archives today.

Handwriting analysis

Bertillon also developed another specialty—handwriting analysis. Started by French priest Jean-Hippolyte Michon, the “science” of graphology (p.127) was based on the theory that a person’s handwriting is unique and reflects a range of underlying psychological characteristics. However, handwriting can be imitated and forged, faked or misidentified, so handwriting analysis is not reliable and has since been discredited. ❯❯

314 THE WORLD OF SHERLOCK HOLMES

In an infamous case of 1894, Alfred Dreyfus, a French artillery officer of Jewish descent, was incorrectly convicted of treason. Bertillon’s identification of his handwriting was used as critical evidence in his conviction. Dreyfus was not exonerated until 1906.

Holmes is an expert at analyzing handwriting, as seen in “The Reigate Squire” (pp.126–31), in which he identifies the murderers from a handwritten note. At the time of its publication (1893), graphology was little known in Britain, and for many readers this would have been the first they had heard of it.

Fingerprints and datasets

One accurate early method of crime scene investigation (CSI) was the recognition of the unique genetic quality of fingerprints. In 1892, Argentinian police officer Juan Vucetich proved the guilt of a murderer from the bloody hand stains she had left at the scene of a murder that irrefutably confirmed her presence at the crime scene. The idea was taken up by various police agencies, such as in Calcutta, India, where the first fingerprint-recording bureau was set up in 1897 by Sir Edward Richard Henry. Although fingerprint recording for identification was rejected at first by London’s Metropolitan Police in 1886, the system was adopted by the New York Civil Service Commission in 1901 and, within a decade, had become recognized internationally as an essential tool in criminal identification and detection.

At the time that Conan Doyle began writing the Holmes stories, the accumulation of datasets such

The use of photography to record known criminals dates back to the 1840s. In 1871, a law was passed in the UK requiring that anyone arrested for a crime must be photographed.

as criminal records, mugshots, and fingerprints was still in its infancy, although he included them in his works—for instance, the use of fingerprinting to help solve the mystery in “The Adventure of the Norwood Builder” (pp.168–69). The problem of how this information would be managed and disseminated, however, was a challenge for the future.

Blood typing

The classifying of blood samples into types A, B, and O was first codified by Austrian biologist Karl Landsteiner (1868–1943) in 1900, but research in the area began in the 1870s. Identification of the fourth blood type, AB, was published in 1902. Conan Doyle would have been aware of these advances in forensic analysis, which served as narrative inspiration. For example, in the first Holmes tale, A Study in Scarlet (pp.36–45), Holmes declares to Watson that he has successfully invented “the Sherlock Holmes’ test”—an “infallible test for blood stains,” old or new, which can result

Why, man, it is the most practical medico-legal discovery for years.

Sherlock Holmes

A Study in Scarlet

CRIMINOLOGY AND FORENSIC SCIENCE 315

Dr. Hawley Harvey Crippen

in identification of the criminal. The significance of this test is immense, as he tells a bewildered Watson. “Had this test been invented, there are hundreds of men now walking the earth who would long ago have paid the penalty of their crimes.”

Forensic pathology

The science of forensic pathology (determining the cause of death by studying a corpse) was clearly of interest to Conan Doyle. It was a rapidly developing science. The practitioners at the turn of the 19th century were usually referred to as “medical examiners” or “police surgeons.” During Conan Doyle’s (and Holmes’s) career there were a number of high-profile cases in Britain that involved the work of forensic pathologists, such as Sir Bernard Spilsbury (1877–1947), whose work and analysis brought many notorious murderers to the gallows, including Dr. Hawley Harvey Crippen.

The notorious case of wife-murderer Dr. Crippen combined a number of factors worthy of Holmes’s ingenuity. Dr. Crippen, an American homeopath, lived in London with his wife, Cora, but in 1908 began an affair with Ethel Le Neve. In January 1910, Cora disappeared, and in July Crippen and his lover fled, boarding a boat to Canada. Scotland Yard’s Inspector Dew ordered a further look at Crippen’s home, and human remains were found under the basement floor. Pathologist Bernard Spilsbury found traces of the toxic drug hyoscine in the

A taste for crime

From the beginning of the 19th century, there was a newsprint-buying public baying for sensational details of crimes. Conan Doyle not only fed this appetite, but also built on sociological theories such as those propounded by Gall, Beccaria, Lombroso, and others concerning the causes of crime. Conan Doyle was, after all, a doctor, and well aware of scholarly medical publications. He wrote the Holmes

remains, and identified some scar tissue as being consistent with an operation that Cora had undergone. Crippen and Ethel were arrested on arrival in Canada. Crippen was tried, found guilty, and hanged, while Ethel was acquitted. Forensic pathology played a key role in Crippen’s conviction. However, further DNA tests made a century on have confirmed that the remains were not Cora Crippen’s, and were of a male. His identity, whether Crippen killed him, and what happened to Cora, remain a mystery.

tales during a fascinating and rapidly developing period in criminology, which bridged the gap between the speculative and the scientifically based forensic pathology. As well as having a highly logical, analytical mind, Conan Doyle’s awareness of many theories and discoveries allowed him to keep ahead of the public’s knowledge, enabling him to constantly astound his audience with Holmes’s ingenuity. ■

Britain’s foremost forensic

scientist and pioneering pathologist Sir Bernard Spilsbury performed thousands of autopsies on both murder victims and criminals.

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CRIME WRITING AND DETECTIVE FICTION

V

illains have always existed in literature, appearing in the works of Homer and the Bible to Chaucer, Shakespeare, and beyond. Yet until relatively recently, it was either natural justice or fate that determined the villain’s eventual downfall—detectives, like Holmes, simply did not exist.

The origins of crime fiction

In the late 18th century, most European novels fell into two groups: social comedies and Gothic romances. It was from the latter genre that crime fiction eventually emerged. Early proponents of the form included the Marquis de Sade (1740–1814), who portrayed vicious criminals in the 1780s and 1790s with considerable relish, while Matthew Lewis wrote populist Gothic mysteries, such as The Monk (1796). Some novels, such as Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’s Les Liaisons Dangereuses (1782), even crossed the boundaries between these two categories. But while criminal activity features in all of these stories, there are no detectives to solve the crimes.

However, in the first half of the 19th century, crime writing began to move in a different direction. The US poet, critic, and novelist

It is, I admit, mere imagination, but how often is imagination the mother of truth?

Sherlock Holmes

The Valley of Fear

CRIME WRITING AND DETECTIVE FICTION 317

Jean-Pierre Fossard, regarded as one of the great Parisian criminals, was captured by Eugène François Vidocq on December 31, 1813, while he was in charge of the Sûreté Nationale.

Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) and his French contemporaries Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850), Victor Hugo (1802–1885), Alexandre Dumas (1802–1870), and Émile Gaboriau (1832–1873) defined the concept of the dogged detective and criminologist within their stories, establishing the crime writing style for which Conan Doyle would later become famous.

By the mid- to late 19th century, naturalist writers—who believed that both genes and social factors determined personality—were examining the criminal condition. Notable works include the French author Émile Zola’s novel about the eponymous domestic murderess Thérèse Raquin (1867) and Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment (1866), which explored the mind of a psychopath.

Twenty years later, Conan Doyle invented Holmes, who arguably has had the greatest long-term impact and influence.

Eugène François Vidocq

Holmes’s predecessors

In some ways, the roots of crime fiction started with the real-life career of one notorious Frenchman, Eugène François Vidocq. A direct inspiration for many French writers, from Balzac to Gaboriau, Vidocq was a petty criminal and spy who later channeled his skills in a lawful way when he established the secret Sûreté Nationale in Paris. In fact, Balzac became Vidocq’s close friend, using him as a model for

Born in Arras, France, to a middle-class family, Eugène François Vidocq (1775–1857) turned to crime as a teenager. He fought as a French soldier in several battles, where he killed at least two opponents. After a spell in prison for crimes that included forgery and assault, he became involved in spying.

Vidocq then transformed himself. Towards the end of 1811, he decided to use his experience of the criminal world to help the French authorities, establishing Sûreté Nationale, within the Prefecture of Police in Paris.

the detectives in his novels, such as Le Père Goriot (1835), Illusions perdues (1837), and La Cousine Bette (1846). Balzac’s most famous detective was Jacques Collin, often known by his alias Vautrin. Dumas also worked elements of Vidocq’s activities into Les Mohicans de Paris (1854) in the form of the fictional Monsieur Jackal. And in Les Misérables (1862), Hugo based aspects of characters—like both the ❯❯