Sherlock Holmes is one of the greatest characters to ever be written down in books or grace the silver screen, played by a number of brilliant actors in both movies and on TV; including the latest iteration from Henry Cavill in Enola Holmes 2.
We know that Sherlock Holmes was not a real detective in Victorian-era London, but a creation by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle who made his first appearance in A Study in Scarlet. However, did Doyle have a real-life inspiration for his famous sleuth (and his equally as famous partner in crime Dr. Watson)?
We’ve searched for clues (with the help of the modern-day detective Google) to answer the intriguing mystery of how Doyle came up with Sherlock Holmes.
Is Sherlock Holmes based on a real person?
For anyone who has seen the movie Shanghai Knights, you know that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was inspired to create Sherlock Holmes after meeting the American cowboy Roy O’Bannon … just kidding. But as it turns out, Doyle’s inspiration for his most famous character did come from someone he knew personally.
According to History.com, Doyle based Sherlock Holmes on a professor he had while studying medicine at the University of Edinburgh, Dr. Joseph Bell. Like Doyle, Bell was from Scotland. He apparently had an incredible ability to determine a patient’s job and other personal details by observing their mannerisms and overall appearance, much to the amazement of his students, including Doyle.
Doyle got to spend more time knowing and learning from Dr. Bell, as he served as his clerk at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh.
Of course, Sherlock Holmes’ ability to deduce vital bits of information from the smallest of possible clues is arguably the greatest defining trait of the detective, aside from the deerstalker hat he is iconic for wearing. (Fun fact, the deerstalker hat was not actually referenced in any of Doyle’s works, though it was included as an illustration for one of the books in 1891.)
Sometime after Doyle became famous for Sherlock Holmes, he wrote Bell:
"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 him 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 outpatient ward."
Now, what of Holmes’ faithful companion Dr. Watson? It appears that he was based on another student of Bell’s that Doyle knew. A BBC article points to an old newspaper where a man named Cuthbert Smith shared that Dr. Watson was based on his father, William Smith. The article goes on to say that Doyle and William Smith were fascinated by Dr. Bell’s talents. When it came time to give Sherlock Holmes a partner, Doyle asked Smith if he could base the character on him (for the record, the article says he did the same with Dr. Bell).
So, there you have it, the legendary detective Sherlock Holmes, as well as Dr. Watson, were based on real individuals.
However, the titular subject of Enola Holmes 2, now playing on Netflix and starring Cavill and Milly Bobby Brown, was not inspired by a real person, nor was a creation by Doyle, as the younger Holmes is based on a young adult book series by Nancy Springer. Find out who else is in the Enola Holmes 2 cast.
