In Search Of... Season 3 # 12, SHERLOCK HOLMES

The question is still debated to this day: "Who was Sherlock Holmes?"
In the decade prior to Holmes' appearance in print the London police had failed to combat the growing crime rate. Even corruption in the force flourished.  The first appearance of Sherlock Holmes can be read in a rare collection: "A Study in Scarlet" - Barton Christmas Annual. Conan Doyle received £ 29 for the copy write. An American actor wrote a play about him thereby enhancing Sherlock Holmes' reputation. Every Holmes' episode is different, but in all he plays the violin in which he was a master.

Arthur Conan Doyle was born in Edinburgh in 1859. He enrolled at the university as a student of medicine. Here he learned the methods of diagnoses which because the basis of Holmes' famous detection. When he was reading detective stories he had been annoyed that it was never explained how they got to the conclusions.  Holmes is always observant - even with friends. Doyle himself solved crimes and cleared the name of an innocent person having been sentenced. And he says: "A man cannot create a character unless a part of this character is in him".