Dr Joseph Bell
Born 2nd December 1837
A “thin, wiry, dark” man, “with a high-nosed acute face, penetrating grey eyes, angular shoulders” and a “high discordant” voice, Dr Bell “would sit in his receiving with a face like a Red Indian, and diagnose the people as they came in, before they even opened their mouths. He would tell them their symptoms, and even give them details of their past life; and hardly ever would he make a mistake.”
Of the many anecdotes told by Dr Joseph Bell, here is one of the lesser-known (from the Lancet, issue of August 1st, 1956):
A woman with a small child was shown in. Joe Bell said good morning to her and she said good morning in reply.
“What sort of crossing di’ye have fra’ Burntisland?”
“It was guid.”
“And had ye a guid walk up Inverleith Row?”
“Yes.”
“And what did ye do with th’ other wain?”
“I left him with my sister in Leith.”
“And would ye still be working at the linoleum factory?”
“Yes I am.”
“You see, gentleman, when she said good morning to me I noted her Fife accent, and, as you know, the nearest town in Fife is Burntisland. You noticed the red clay on the edges of the soles of her shoes, and the only such clay within twenty miles of Edinburgh is in the Botanical Gardens. Inverleith Row borders the gardens and is her nearest way here from Leith. You observed that the coat she carried over her arm is too big for the child who is with her, and therefore she set out from home with two children. Finally she has a dermatitis on the fingers of the right hand which is peculiar to workers in the linoleum factory at Burntisland.”
Here is how Conan Doyle himself wrote about this period in his life, in his autobiography, Memories and Adventures:
I felt now that I was capable of something fresher and crisper and more workmanlike [than many of the detective stories that had been written up to that time]. Gaboriau had rather attracted me by the neat dovetailing of his plots, and Poe’s masterful detective, M. Dupin, had from boyhood been one of my heroes. But could I bring an addition of my won? I thought of my old teacher Joe Bell, of his eagle face, of his curious ways of his eerie trick of spotting details. If he were a detective he would surely reduce this fascinating business to something nearer an exact science. I would try it if I could get this effect. It was surely possible in real life, so why should I not make it plausible in fiction? It is all very well to say that a man is clever, but the reader wants to see examples of it - such examples as Bell gave us every day in the wards.
Again, in a letter to Dr. Bell dated May 4 1892, Conan Doyle wrote:
It is most certainly to you that I owe Sherlock Holmes, and though in the stories I have the advantage of being able to place [the detective] in all sorts of dramatic positions, I do not think that his analytical work is in the least an exaggeration of some effects which I have seen you produce in the out-patient ward. Round the centre of deduction and inference and observation which I heard you inculate I have tried to build up a man who pushed the things as far as it would go - further occasionally - and I am so glad that the result has satisfied you, who are the critic with the most right to be severe.
Bell wrote to Doyle saying:
“You are yourself Sherlock Holmes and well you know it.”