Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
1870 - Conan Doyle entered Stonyhurst and remained there for five years, excelling at cricket and he also showed early signs of literary talent
1873 - Conan Doyle becomes an accomplished cricketer
1873 - Innes Doyle is born, the eighth child of Charles and Mary Doyle
1874 - At fifteen, Conan Doyle had a joy of all sports in particular cricket. He wrote home: ‘When I reside at Edinburgh, I would like to enter some cricket club there. It is a jolly game, and does more to make a fellow strong and healthy than all the doctors in the world.’ In later life he was to play first-class cricket, represented his county at football, reached the third round of the Amateur Billiards Championship, and was a member of the British motor racing team in the Prince Henry Tour in 1911.
Having been at Stonyhurst for five years he became an avid reader of poetry especially Macaulay’s Lays of Ancient Rome.
At this time he visited his uncle Richard Doyle in London. He saw Henry Irving in Hamlet while he was there.
1874 - Birth of Frederic Dorr Steele
More information on Frederic Dorr Steele
1875 - It was at Stonyhurst that Conan Doyle began seriously to examine his religious beliefs and, by the time he left the school in 1875, he had firmly rejected Christianity and had become an agnostic. The turmoil and questioning which must have taken place in his own mind is dealt with in some detail in his semi-autobiographical novel The Stark Munro Letters.
Doyle passed his matriculation examination with honours and spent a year at the Jesuit school at Feldkirch in Austria, improving his German.
1875 - William Gillette made his professional debut on September 13 1875, at Boston’s old Globe Theatre in a play called Faint Heart, and first appeared on the London stage at the Adelphi Theatre as Lewis Dumont in Secret Service.
1875 - Ida Doyle is born, ninth child of ChHarles and Mary Doyle
1876 - After leaving Stonyhurst, Conan Doyle spent a further year with the Jesuits in Feldkirch, Austria, before returning to Edinburgh to study medicine at the University from 1876 to 1881. Besides providing him with a medical degree, Edinburgh University also brought Conan Doyle into contact with two characters who were to be important models for future fictional creations: Professor Rutherford, whose Assyrian beard, prodigious voice, enormous chest and singular manner became translated into the character of Professor George Edward Challenger of The Lost World; and Dr Joseph Bell, whose amazing deductions of the history of his various patients were to provide the ideas behind the deductive skills of Sherlock Holmes.
Whilst at Edinburgh, Conan Doyle took various jobs to assist his mother with the upkeep of the family, jobs which, as a medical assistant, took him to Sheffield, Ruyton-of-the-eleven-towns - Shropshire, and Aston - Birmingham (where he was assistant to Dr. Reginald Ratcliffe Hoare at Clifton House, Aston Rd North) and further afield to the Arctic where he served as ship’s doctor aboard a Greenland whaler
1877 - Bryan Mary the tenth Doyle child is born
1878 - Between 1878 and 1883, Conan Doyle had written and sold a few short stories and had completed two novels, The Narrative of John Smith, lost in the post and never recovered, and The Firm of Girdlestone, which was then still making the dreary round of the publishers. One of these stories was published anonymously and was acclaimed by the critics as the work of Robert Louis Stevenson.
October 1878 - It was in Aston, Birmingham whilst being a doctors assistant, that Conan Doyle wrote his first short story. He sold it to Chamber’s Journal for £3 3s and it was published in the October issue.
1878 - Conan Doyle takes a part-time job assisting a Dr Richardson in Sheffield - The first of several jobs while a student.
1879 - Charles Doyle goes into a nursing home. Conan Doyle starts publishing stories but unfortunately they are done so anonymously.
1879 - The London Society published The American Tale, Conan Doyle's second story