Arthur Conan Doyle wrote his first story about Sherlock Holmes in 1887. It was called A Study in Scarlet. Lots of readers liked Sherlock Holmes, so Arthur Conan Doyle wrote more stories. The stories were published in a monthly magazine called The Strand. Lot’s of people bought The Strand magazine every month to read a new story about Sherlock Holmes and his friend Doctor Watson.

Sherlock Holmes was a very clever detective. When he looked at a man or a woman, he did not just see a person with two arms and two legs. Sherlock Holmes made deductions¹ about the person. For example, in the story of The Red-headed League, Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson meet a man called Jabez Wilson. Sherlock Holmes asks Doctor Watson what he can deduce from looking at Jabez Wilson. Doctor Watson looks at the man’s bright red hair and shabby² clothes and says “He looks like an ordinary tradesman. What can you deduce?”

Sherlock Holmes quickly replies “It is obvious to me he has done a lot of manual labour. He takes snuff³. He is a Freemason⁴. He has visited China. And he has done a lot writing recently.”

Mr Jabez Wilson is very surprised. He says, “How did you know all that? It is true that I worked as a ship’s carpenter when I was young.”

“I looked at your hands,” said Sherlock Holmes, “your right hand is much bigger than your left hand. I can see you have worked a lot with your right hand.”

“Well, how did you know I take snuff and I am a Freemason?” asked Jabez Wilson.

“You have brown stains from snuff on your shirt and your tie clip has the mark of the Freemason’s group,” replied Sherlock Holmes.

“But how did you know that I have been writing a lot recently?” said Jabez Wilson.

Sherlock Holes said, “I looked at your jacket. The right sleeve is very shiny where it has rubbed against the table. And on the left sleeve I can see where you have rested your elbow on the table.”

Doctor Watson says, “But how did you know Mr Wilson has been to China?”

“Look at the tattoo on Mr Wilson’s wrist. You can only get tattoos like that in China. And if you look carefully, you can see that piece of metal on his watch chain is a Chinese coin.”

How did Arthur Conan Doyle think of this clever detective. He explained “I am a medical doctor like Doctor Watson. I learnt how to be a doctor at the Medical College in Edinburgh in Scotland. I had a teacher there called Doctor Joseph Bell. He was trying to teach us that doctors must learn to look at their patients and understand them. Doctor Joseph Bell was like Sherlock Holmes. He could look at a man and understand his profession, his history and his habits.”

Arthur Conan Doyle wrote 26 stories about Sherlock Holmes. But he became very tired of the work and so in 1893, he decided to kill Sherlock Holmes. In the story called The Final Problem, Sherlock Holmes dies in a fight near a waterfall in Switzerland.

But the readers of The Strand magazine were very angry. They wanted to read more stories about the famous detective. Twenty thousand people stopped buying The Strand magazine. They wrote many letters to Arthur Conan Doyle and asked him to bring back Sherlock Holmes. But Arthur Conan Doyle wanted to write different kinds of books. He didn’t want to write more stories about Sherlock Holmes.

Eight years later, the readers of The Strand magazine were excited to read a new Sherlock Holmes story, The Hound of the Baskervilles. Immediately thirty thousand new readers started buying The Strand magazine. Two years later, Arthur Conan Doyle started to write more stories about Sherlock Holmes.

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