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Timeline of Sherlock Holmes and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - 1880 to 1884
 

Sherlock Holmes

 

Spring 1880 - Watson is attached to the Berkshires (66th Foot)

 

7th July 1880 - Watson is seriously wounded and saved by the heroism of Murray

 

5th August 1880 - Holmes set sail from America for home

 

31st August 1880 - Watson is moved to Peshawar

 

26th November 1880 - Watson returned to England aboard the Orantes

 

1880 - On the Distinction Between the Ashes of Various Tobacco

A mongraphy enumerating 140 varieties of cigar, cigarette and pipe tobacco, with coloured plates illustrating the difference inthe ash. This was probably Holmes's first and favourite 'child', He continually refers to it.

 

4th - 7th March 1881 - the setting date for A Study in Scarlet. Watson begins search for new lodgings, meeting Stamford, an old friend at the Criterion Bar. Stamford takes Watson to meet Sherlock Holmes. The next day Holmes and Watson visit 221B Baker Street.

 

March 1881

This article was written by Holmes sometime around March 1881 for an English magazine, but published anonymously. Reading the piece on the morning of 4th March, during breakfast, Watson described the title as ‘somewhat ambitious,’ Unaware of the authorship, he declared it to be ‘ineffable twaddle,’ adding that he had ‘never read such rubbish in my life,’ and that it was ‘evidently the theory of some armchair lounger who evolves all these neat little paradoxes in the seclusion of his own study.’ The occasion of the remark allowed Holmes to claim authorship of the article and to explain to Watson much of what the consulting detective did for a living. ‘The Book of Life’ was an explanation of the science of deduction and analysis, presenting the idea that through it, one could ‘infer the existence of the Atlantic through a single-drop of water.’

 

6th March 1881 - Capture of Jefferson Hope

 

4th April 1883 - Date setting for The Adventure of the Speckled Band

 

 

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

 

1880 - On his death a complete set of John Doyle’s caricatures went to the Print Room of the British Museum. Their value must be considerable today, since four drawings by John Doyle were bought for a thousand guineas in 1880, and twelve years later three more were acquired for the same sum. 

 

26th February 1880 - Conan Doyle sets sail onboard the Hope. He accepted a job as a surgeon on the whaling ship and spent seven months in the Arctic. In the latter part of 1880 he returned to Aston in Birmingham.

 

August 1881 - After his spell at Dr Ratcliffe Hoare’s Doyle returned to Edinburgh in early 1881 and took his degree in August 1881, as he said, “with fair but not notable distinction.” He then makes a second voyage as ship’s doctor, this time on a cargo steamer heading for West Africa, nearly dying of fever en route.

 

1882 - Doyle became the medical officer of the Mayumba then he returned to England. He tells his family that he has lost his Catholic faith.

The enigmatic Dr George Turnavine Budd, who Doyle had first met when the two were students in Edinburgh, invited him to become his partner in a medical practice at Plymouth. Their relationship was a turbulent one, and ended with Doyle moving. Conan Doyle set up his first independent practice in Southsea Hampshire.

He picked a house called 1 Bush Villa, Elm Grove, Southsea (later renamed Doyle House by the owners: destroyed in the Blitz in 1941) at a rental of £40 a year plus another £10 in taxes, hung up his carefully burnished brass plate and embarked on a practice that was neither very exacting nor very rewarding: he made £154 the first year, £250 the second, and never more than £300. When the income-tax paper arrived that first year, Conan Doyle filled it up to show he was not liable. The authorities returned the form with the words, “Most unsatisfactory” scrawled across it. Conan Doyle wrote, “I entirely agree” and sent the form back to the authorities. The practice was slow to grow, and to while away the hours he began to develop his interest in the writing of adventure stories.

 

1881 - After his spell at Dr Ratcliffe Hoare’s Doyle returned to Edinburgh in early 1881 and took his degree in August 1881, as he said, “with fair but not notable distinction.” He then makes a second voyage as ship’s doctor, this time on a cargo steamer heading for West Africa, nearly dying of fever en route.

 

1882 - Doyle becames the medical officer of the Mayumba. He tells his family that he has lost his Catholic faith. 

The enigmatic Dr George Turnavine Budd, who Doyle had first met when the two were students in Edinburgh, invited him to become his partner in a medical practice at Plymouth. Their relationship was a turbulent one, and ended with Doyle moving. Conan Doyle set up his first independent practice in Southsea Hampshire.

He picked a house called 1 Bush Villa, Elm Grove, Southsea (later renamed Doyle House by the owners: destroyed in the Blitz in 1941) at a rental of £40 a year plus another £10 in taxes, hung up his carefully burnished brass plate and embarked on a practice that was neither very exacting nor very rewarding: he made £154 the first year, £250 the second, and never more than £300. When the income-tax paper arrived that first year, Conan Doyle filled it up to show he was not liable. The authorities returned the form with the words, “Most unsatisfactory” scrawled across it. Conan Doyle wrote, “I entirely agree” and sent the form back to the authorities. The practice was slow to grow, and to while away the hours he began to develop his interest in the writing of adventure stories.

 

1883 - It is thought that Dr John Watson MD, got his name from Dr James Elmwood Watson MD of Edinburgh, who came to practice in Southsea.

 

1883 - The prestigious Cornhill Magazine publishes a short story by Arthur Conan Doyle, based on the Marie Celeste Mystery