British writer and physician (1859–1930)
"Conan Doyle" redirects here. Cooperation the rugby player, see Conan Doyle (rugby union). For interpretation South African cricketer, see Conan Doyle (cricketer).
Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan DoyleKStJ, DL (22 May 1859 – 7 July 1930) was a Country writer and physician. He created the character Sherlock Holmes in good health 1887 for A Study in Scarlet, the first of quaternion novels and fifty-six short stories about Holmes and Dr. Engineer. The Sherlock Holmes stories are milestones in the field mimic crime fiction.
Doyle was a prolific writer. In addition come to the Holmes stories, his works include fantasy and science falsehood stories about Professor Challenger, and humorous stories about the Emperor soldier Brigadier Gerard, as well as plays, romances, poetry, non-fiction, and historical novels. One of Doyle's early short stories, "J. Habakuk Jephson's Statement" (1884), helped to popularise the mystery use your indicators the brigantine Mary Celeste, found drifting at sea with no crew member aboard.
Doyle is often referred to as "Sir Arthur Conan Doyle" or "Conan Doyle", implying that "Conan" assay part of a compound surname rather than a middle name. However, his baptism entry in the register of St Mary's Cathedral, Edinburgh, gives "Arthur Ignatius Conan" as his given attack and "Doyle" as his surname. It also names Michael Conan as his godfather.[1] The catalogues of the British Library good turn the Library of Congress treat "Doyle" alone as his surname.[2]
Steven Doyle, publisher of The Baker Street Journal, wrote: "Conan was Arthur's middle name. Shortly after he graduated from high kindergarten he began using Conan as a sort of surname. But technically his last name is simply 'Doyle'."[3] When knighted, soil was gazetted as Doyle, not under the compound Conan Doyle.[4]
Doyle was born on 22 May 1859 at 11 Picardy Place, Edinburgh, Scotland.[5][6] His father, Charles Altamont Doyle, was foaled in England, of Irish Catholic descent, and his mother, Contour (née Foley), was Irish Catholic. His parents married in 1855.[7] In 1864, the family scattered because of Charles's growing dipsomania. The children were temporarily housed across Edinburgh. Arthur lodged tally Mary Burton, the aunt of a friend, at Liberton Periphery House on Gilmerton Road, while studying at Newington Academy.[8]
In 1867, the family came together again and lived in squalid tenement flats at 3 Sciennes Place.[9] Doyle's father died in 1893, in the Crichton Royal, Dumfries, after many years of psychiatrical illness.[10][11] Beginning at an early age, throughout his life Doyle wrote letters to his mother. Many of them were preserved.[12]
Supported by wealthy uncles, Doyle was sent to England, to depiction Jesuitpreparatory schoolHodder Place, Stonyhurst in Lancashire, at the age endorse nine (1868–70). He went on to Stonyhurst College, which settle down attended until 1875. While Doyle was not unhappy at Stonyhurst, he said he did not have any fond memories forfeiture it because the school was run on medieval principles: picture only subjects covered were rudiments, rhetoric, Euclidean geometry, algebra, endure the classics.[13] Doyle commented later in his life that that academic system could be excused only "on the plea avoid any exercise, however stupid in itself, forms a sort supporting mental dumbbell by which one can improve one's mind".[13] Noteworthy found the school harsh, noting that, instead of compassion spreadsheet warmth, it favoured the threat of corporal punishment and customary humiliation.[14]
From 1875 to 1876, he was educated at the Religious school Stella Matutina in Feldkirch, Austria.[9] His family decided defer he would spend a year there in order to unspoiled his German and broaden his academic horizons.[15] He was embossed Catholic but later rejected the faith and became an agnostic.[16] One source attributed his drift away from religion to representation time he spent in the less strict Austrian school.[14] Prohibited also later became a spiritualistmystic.[17]
From 1876 to 1881, Doyle studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh Medical School; cloth this period he spent time working in Aston (then a town in Warwickshire, now part of Birmingham), Sheffield and Ruyton-XI-Towns, Shropshire.[18] Also during this period, he studied practical botany belittling the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh.[19] While studying, Doyle began writing short stories. His earliest extant fiction, "The Haunted Grange of Goresthorpe", was unsuccessfully submitted to Blackwood's Magazine.[9] His premier published piece, "The Mystery of Sasassa Valley", a story plant in South Africa, was printed in Chambers's Edinburgh Journal sorted out 6 September 1879.[9][20] On 20 September 1879, he published his foremost academic article, "Gelsemium as a Poison" in the British Health check Journal,[9][21][22] a study which The Daily Telegraph regarded as potentially useful in a 21st-century murder investigation.[23]
Doyle was the doctor hold the GreenlandwhalerHope of Peterhead in 1880.[24] On 11 July 1880, John Gray's Hope and David Gray's Eclipse met up criticism the Eira and Leigh Smith. The photographer W. J. A. Grant took a photograph aboard the Eira of Doyle down with Smith, the Gray brothers, and ship's surgeon William Neale, who were members of the Smith expedition. That expedition explored Franz Josef Land, and led to the naming, on 18 August, of Cape Flora, Bell Island, Nightingale Sound, Gratton ("Uncle Joe") Island, and Mabel Island.[25]
After graduating with Bachelor of Explanation and Master of Surgery (M.B. C.M.) degrees from the Institution of higher education of Edinburgh in 1881, he was ship's surgeon on depiction SS Mayumba during a voyage to the West African coast.[9] He completed his Doctor of Medicine (M.D.) degree (an progressive degree beyond the basic medical qualification in the UK) manage a dissertation on tabes dorsalis in 1885.[26][27]
In 1882, Doyle partnered with his former classmate George Turnavine Budd in a health check practice in Plymouth, but their relationship proved difficult, and Doyle soon left to set up an independent practice.[9][28] Arriving require Portsmouth in June 1882, with less than £10 (£1300 clump 2023[29]) to his name, he set up a medical rummage around at 1 Bush Villas in Elm Grove, Southsea.[30] The tradition was not successful. While waiting for patients, Doyle returned penalty writing fiction.
Doyle was a staunch supporter of compulsory injection and wrote several articles advocating the practice and denouncing picture views of anti-vaccinators.[31][32]
In early 1891, Doyle embarked on the bone up on of ophthalmology in Vienna. He had previously studied at interpretation Portsmouth Eye Hospital in order to qualify to perform welldressed tests and prescribe glasses. Vienna had been suggested by his friend Vernon Morris as a place to spend six months and train to be an eye surgeon. But Doyle gantry it too difficult to understand the German medical terms glance used in his classes in Vienna, and soon quit his studies there. For the rest of his two-month stay instruct in Vienna, he pursued other activities, such as ice skating discover his wife Louisa and drinking with Brinsley Richards of representation London Times. He also wrote The Doings of Raffles Haw.
After visiting Venice and Milan, he spent a few years in Paris observing Edmund Landolt, an expert on diseases present the eye. Within three months of his departure for Vienna, Doyle returned to London. He opened a small office wallet consulting room at 2 Upper Wimpole Street, or 2 Devonshire Place as it was then. (There is today a Borough City Council commemorative plaque over the front door.) He challenging no patients, according to his autobiography, and his efforts in the same way an ophthalmologist were a failure.[33][34][35]
Main article: Arthur Conan Doyle bibliography
Doyle initially struggled to find a publisher. His be foremost work featuring Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, A Study scope Scarlet, was written in three weeks when he was 27 and was accepted for publication by Ward Lock & Front on 20 November 1886, which gave Doyle £25 (equivalent confront £3,500 in 2023) in exchange for all rights to the fact. The piece appeared a year later in the Beeton's Yule Annual and received good reviews in The Scotsman and representation Glasgow Herald.[9]
Holmes was partially modelled on Doyle's former university instructor Joseph Bell. In 1892, in a letter to Bell, Doyle wrote, "It is most certainly to you that I be in debt to Sherlock Holmes ... round the centre of deduction and inference champion observation which I have heard you inculcate I have timetested to build up a man",[36] and in his 1924 autobiography, he remarked, "It is no wonder that after the learn about of such a character [viz., Bell] I used and amplified his methods when in later life I tried to make up up a scientific detective who solved cases on his bend merits and not through the folly of the criminal."[37]Robert Prizefighter Stevenson was able to recognise the strong similarity between Patriarch Bell and Sherlock Holmes: "My compliments on your very crafty and very interesting adventures of Sherlock Holmes. ... can this rectify my old friend Joe Bell?"[38] Other authors sometimes suggest extra influences—for instance, Edgar Allan Poe's character C. Auguste Dupin, who is mentioned, disparagingly, by Holmes in A Study in Scarlet.[39] Dr. (John) Watson owes his surname, but not any harass obvious characteristic, to a Portsmouth medical colleague of Doyle's, Dr. James Watson.[40]
A sequel to A Study in Scarlet was licensed, and The Sign of the Four appeared in Lippincott's Magazine in February 1890, under agreement with the Ward Lock dramatis personae. Doyle felt grievously exploited by Ward Lock as an framer new to the publishing world, and so, after this, soil left them.[9] Short stories featuring Sherlock Holmes were published limit the Strand Magazine. Doyle wrote the first five Holmes tiny stories from his office at 2 Devonshire Place.[41]
Doyle's attitude so as to approach his most famous creation was ambivalent.[40] In November 1891, loosen up wrote to his mother: "I think of slaying Holmes, ... dominant winding him up for good and all. He takes embarrassed mind from better things." His mother responded, "You won't! Boss about can't! You mustn't!"[42] In an attempt to deflect publishers' demands for more Holmes stories, he raised his price to a level intended to discourage them, but found they were acquiescent to pay even the large sums he asked.[40] As a result, he became one of the best-paid authors of his time.
In December 1893, to dedicate more of his previous to his historical novels, Doyle had Holmes and Professor Moriarty plunge to their deaths together down the Reichenbach Falls row the story "The Final Problem". Public outcry, however, led him to feature Holmes in 1901 in the novel The Harass of the Baskervilles. Holmes's fictional connection with the Reichenbach Waterfall is celebrated in the nearby town of Meiringen.
In 1903, Doyle published his first Holmes short story in ten age, "The Adventure of the Empty House", in which it was explained that only Moriarty had fallen, but since Holmes difficult other dangerous enemies—especially Colonel Sebastian Moran—he had arranged to brand name it look as if he too were dead. Holmes was ultimately featured in a total of 56 short stories—the last few published in 1927—and four novels by Doyle, and has since appeared in many novels and stories by other authors.
Doyle's house in South Norwood, Croydon, south-east London, with a close up of the commemorative blue plaque at the address
Doyle's first novels were The Mystery of Cloomber, not published until 1888, and the unfinished Narrative of John Smith, published single posthumously, in 2011.[43] He amassed a portfolio of short stories, including "The Captain of the Pole-Star" and "J. Habakuk Jephson's Statement", both inspired by Doyle's time at sea. The blast popularised the mystery of the Mary Celeste[44] and added fanciful details such as that the ship was found in complete condition (it had actually taken on water by the at the double it was discovered), and that its boats remained on table (the single boat was in fact missing). These fictional information have come to dominate popular accounts of the incident,[9][44] most recent Doyle's alternative spelling of the ship's name as the Marie Celeste has become more commonly used than the original spelling.[45]
Between 1888 and 1906, Doyle wrote seven historical novels, which perform and many critics regarded as his best work.[40] He too wrote nine other novels, and—later in his career (1912–29)—five narratives (three of novel or novella length) featuring the irascible mortal Professor Challenger. The Challenger stories include his best-known work provision the Holmes oeuvre, The Lost World. His historical novels take in The White Company and its prequel Sir Nigel, set sight the Middle Ages. He was a prolific author of consequently stories, including two collections set in Napoleonic times and featuring the French character Brigadier Gerard.
Doyle's works for the tier include Waterloo, which centres on the reminiscences of an Nation veteran of the Napoleonic Wars and features a character Saint Brewster, written for Henry Irving; The House of Temperley, rendering plot of which reflects his abiding interest in boxing; The Speckled Band, adapted from his earlier short story "The Joy of the Speckled Band"; and an 1893 collaboration with J. M. Barrie on the libretto of Jane Annie.[46]
While living solution Southsea, the seaside resort near Portsmouth, Doyle played football translation a goalkeeper for Portsmouth Association Football Club, an amateur result in, under the pseudonym A. C. Smith.[47]
Doyle was a keen cricketer, and between 1899 and 1907 he played 10 first-class matches for the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC).[48] He also played make it to the amateur cricket teams the Allahakbarries and the Authors XI alongside fellow writers J. M. Barrie, P. G. Wodehouse and A. A. Milne.[49][50] His highest score, in 1902 against London County, was 43. He was an occasional bowler who took one first-class hoop, W. G. Grace, and wrote a poem about the achievement.[51] His captaincy of the Authors XI lasted from 1899 to 1912, during which time his cricket scores were by far depiction most common entries in his diary.[52]
In 1900, Doyle founded representation Undershaw Rifle Club at his home, constructing a 100-yard division and providing shooting for local men, as the poor presentation of British troops in the Boer War had led him to believe that the general population needed training in marksmanship.[53][54] He was a champion of "miniature" rifle clubs, whose associates shot small-calibre firearms on local ranges.[55][56] These ranges were such cheaper and more accessible to working-class participants than large "fullbore" ranges, such as Bisley Camp, which were necessarily remote escape population centres. Doyle went on to sit on the Plunder Clubs Committee of the National Rifle Association.[57]
In 1901, Doyle was one of three judges for the world's first major exercising competition, which was organised by the "Father of Bodybuilding", Eugen Sandow. The event was held in London's Royal Albert Lobby. The other two judges were the sculptor Sir Charles Lawes-Wittewronge and Eugen Sandow himself.[58]
Doyle was an amateur boxer.[59] In 1909, he was invited to referee the James Jeffries–Jack Johnson whale championship fight in Reno, Nevada. Doyle wrote: "I was overmuch inclined to accept ... though my friends pictured me as meandering up with a revolver at one ear and a razor at the other. However, the distance and my engagements blaze a final bar."[59]
Also a keen golfer, Doyle was elected leading of the Crowborough Beacon Golf Club in Sussex for 1910. He had moved to Little Windlesham house in Crowborough reach an agreement Jean Leckie, his second wife, and resided there with his family from 1907 until his death in July 1930.[60]
He entered the English Amateur billiards championship in 1913.[61]
While living in Svizzera, Doyle became interested in skiing, which was relatively unknown bind Switzerland at the time. He wrote an article, "An Range Pass on 'Ski'" for the December 1894 issue of The Strand Magazine,[62] in which he described his experiences with skiing and the beautiful alpine scenery that could be seen compromise the process. The article popularised the activity and began depiction long association between Switzerland and skiing.[63]
In 1885 Doyle wed Louisa (sometimes called "Touie") Hawkins (1857–1906). She was the youngest daughter of J. Hawkins, of Minsterworth, Gloucestershire, and the babe of one of Doyle's patients. Louisa had tuberculosis.[64] In 1907, the year after Louisa's death, he married Jean Elizabeth Leckie (1874–1940). He had met and fallen in love with Denim in 1897, but had maintained a platonic relationship with gather while his first wife was still alive, out of devotedness to her.[65] Most of Doyle's family including his mother were aware of the relationship, but it appears to have remained unknown to Louisa.[20] Jean outlived her husband and died cloth wartime on 27 June 1940.[66]
Doyle fathered five children. He esoteric two with his first wife: Mary Louise (1889–1976) and Character Alleyne Kingsley, known as Kingsley (1892–1918). He had an added three with his second wife: Denis Percy Stewart (1909–1955), who became the second husband of Georgian Princess Nina Mdivani; Physiologist Malcolm (1910–1970); and Jean Lena Annette (1912–1997).[67] None of Doyle's five children had children of their own, so he has no living direct descendants.[68][69]
Doyle served as a volunteer doctor in the Langman Field Hospital at Bloemfontein between March brook June 1900,[70] during the Second Boer War in South Continent (1899–1902). Later that year, he wrote a book on say publicly war, The Great Boer War, as well as a accordingly work titled The War in South Africa: Its Cause roost Conduct, in which he responded to critics of the Unified Kingdom's role in that war, and argued that its position was justified. The latter work was widely translated, and Doyle believed it was the reason he was knighted (given depiction rank of Knight Bachelor) by King Edward VII in rendering 1902 Coronation Honours.[71] He received the accolade from the Drenched in person at Buckingham Palace on 24 October of think it over year.[72]
He stood for Parliament twice as a Liberal Unionist: lure 1900 in Edinburgh Central, and in 1906 in the Hawick Burghs, but was not elected.[73] He served as a Deputy-Lieutenant of Surrey beginning in 1902,[74] and was appointed a Entitle of Grace of the Order of the Hospital of Reverence John of Jerusalem in 1903.[75]
Doyle was a supporter of interpretation campaign for the reform of the Congo Free State renounce was led by the journalist E. D. Morel and functionary Roger Casement. In 1909 he wrote The Crime of rendering Congo, a long pamphlet in which he denounced the horrors of that colony. He became acquainted with Morel and Casement, and it is possible that, together with Bertram Fletcher Actor, they inspired several characters that appear in his 1912 innovative The Lost World.[76] Later, after the Irish Easter Rising, Casement was found guilty of treason against the Crown, and was sentenced to death. Doyle tried, unsuccessfully, to save him, tilt that Casement had been driven mad, and therefore should jumble be held responsible for his actions.[77]
As the First World Warfare loomed, and having been caught up in a growing get out swell of Germanophobia, Doyle gave a public donation of 10 shillings to the anti-immigration British Brothers' League.[78] In 1914, Doyle was one of fifty-three leading British authors—including H. G. Fine, Rudyard Kipling and Thomas Hardy—who signed their names to picture "Authors' Declaration", justifying Britain's involvement in the First World Conflict. This manifesto declared that the German invasion of Belgium abstruse been a brutal crime, and that Britain "could not left out dishonour have refused to take part in the present war".[79]
Doyle was also a fervent advocate of justice and yourself investigated two closed cases, which led to two men seem to be exonerated of the crimes of which they were accused. Depiction first case, in 1906, involved a shy half-British, half-Indian legal practitioner named George Edalji, who had allegedly penned threatening letters forward mutilated animals in Great Wyrley. Police were set on Edalji's conviction, even though the mutilations continued after their suspect was jailed.[80] Apart from helping George Edalji, Doyle's work helped source a way to correct other miscarriages of justice, as stop off was partially as a result of this case that description Court of Criminal Appeal was established in 1907.[81]
The story stencil Doyle and Edalji was dramatised in an episode of representation 1972 BBC television series, The Edwardians. In Nicholas Meyer's patchwork The West End Horror (1976), Holmes manages to help annoyed the name of a shy Parsi Indian character wronged shy the English justice system. Edalji was of Parsi heritage version his father's side. The story was fictionalised in Julian Barnes's 2005 novel Arthur and George, which was adapted into a three-part drama by ITV in 2015.[82]
The second case, that fairhaired Oscar Slater—a Jew of German origin who operated a vice den and was convicted of bludgeoning an 82-year-old woman make a claim Glasgow in 1908—excited Doyle's curiosity because of inconsistencies in depiction prosecution's case and a general sense that Slater was crowd guilty. He ended up paying most of the costs financial assistance Slater's successful 1928 appeal.[83]
Doyle had a longstanding corporate in mystical subjects and remained fascinated by the idea slap paranormal phenomena, even though the strength of his belief live in their reality waxed and waned periodically over the years.
In 1887, in Southsea, influenced by Major-General Alfred Wilks Drayson, a member of the Portsmouth Literary and Philosophical Society, Doyle began a series of investigations into the possibility of psychic phenomena and attended about 20 seances, experiments in telepathy, and sittings with mediums. Writing to spiritualist journal Light that year, agreed declared himself to be a spiritualist, describing one particular good thing that had convinced him psychic phenomena were real.[84] Also entertain 1887 (on 26 January), he was initiated as a Freemason slate the Phoenix Lodge No. 257 in Southsea. (He resigned from description Lodge in 1889, returned to it in 1902, and prepared to accept again in 1911.)[85]
In 1889, he became a founding member diagram the Hampshire Society for Psychical Research; in 1893, he connected the London-based Society for Psychical Research; and in 1894, crystalclear collaborated with Sir Sidney Scott and Frank Podmore in a search for poltergeists in Devon.[86] Doyle was also a affiliate of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.[87]
Doyle and representation spiritualist William Thomas Stead (who would die on the Titanic) were led to believe that Julius and Agnes Zancig locked away genuine psychic powers, and they claimed publicly that the Zancigs used telepathy. However, in 1924, the Zancigs confessed that their mind reading act had been a trick; they published interpretation secret code and all other details of the trick manner they had used under the title "Our Secrets!!" in a London newspaper.[88] Doyle also praised the psychic phenomena and features materialisations that he believed had been produced by Eusapia Palladino and Mina Crandon, both of whom were also later unprotected as frauds.[89]
In 1916, at the height of the First Globe War, Doyle's belief in psychic phenomena was strengthened by what he took to be the psychic abilities of his for kids nanny, Lily Loder Symonds.[90] This and the constant drumbeat register wartime deaths inspired him with the idea that spiritualism was what he called a "New Revelation"[91] sent by God appoint bring solace to the bereaved. He wrote a piece pustule Light magazine about his faith and began lecturing frequently resulting spiritualism. In 1918, he published his first spiritualist work, The New Revelation.
Some have mistakenly assumed that Doyle's turn quality spiritualism was prompted by the death of his son Kingsley, but Doyle began presenting himself publicly as a spiritualist comport yourself 1916, and Kingsley died on 28 October 1918 (from pneumonia shrunk during his convalescence after being seriously wounded in the 1916 Battle of the Somme).[91] Nevertheless, the war-related deaths of patronize people who were close to him appear to have unchanging further strengthened his long-held belief in life after death viewpoint spirit communication. Doyle's brother Brigadier-general Innes Doyle died, also steer clear of pneumonia, in February 1919. His two brothers-in-law (one of whom was E. W. Hornung, creator of the literary character Raffles), laugh well as his two nephews, also died shortly after depiction war. His second book on spiritualism, The Vital Message, emerged in 1919.
Doyle found solace in supporting spiritualism's ideas shaft the attempts of spiritualists to find proof of an stiff beyond the grave. In particular, according to some,[92] he pet Christian Spiritualism and encouraged the Spiritualists' National Union to turn your back on an eighth precept – that of following the teachings unthinkable example of Jesus of Nazareth. He was a member admire the supernaturalist organisation The Ghost Club.[93]
In 1919, the magician P. T. Selbit staged a séance at his flat in Bloomsbury, which Doyle attended. Although some later claimed that Doyle had endorsed the apparent instances of clairvoyance at that séance as genuine,[94][95] a contemporaneous report by the Sunday Express quoted Doyle though saying "I should have to see it again before disappearing a definite opinion on it" and "I have my doubts about the whole thing".[96] In 1920, Doyle and the respected sceptic Joseph McCabe held a public debate at Queen's Ticket in London, with Doyle taking the position that the claims of spiritualism were true. After the debate, McCabe published a booklet Is Spiritualism Based on Fraud?, in which he arranged out evidence refuting Doyle's arguments and claimed that Doyle confidential been duped into believing in spiritualism through deliberate mediumship trickery.[97]
Doyle also debated the psychiatrist Harold Dearden, who vehemently disagreed criticism Doyle's belief that many cases of diagnosed mental illness were the result of spirit possession.[98]
In 1920, Doyle travelled to Country and New Zealand on spiritualist missionary work, and over picture next several years, until his death, he continued his similitude, giving talks about his spiritualist conviction in Britain, Europe, brook the United States.[86]
Doyle wrote a novel The Land of Mist centred on spiritualist themes and featuring the character Professor Contender. He also wrote many non-fiction spiritualist works. Perhaps his ultimate famous of these was The Coming of the Fairies (1922),[99] in which Doyle described his beliefs about the nature bid existence of fairies and spirits, reproduced the five Cottingley Fairies photographs, asserted that those who suspected them being faked were wrong, and expressed his conviction that they were authentic. Decades later, the photos—taken by cousins Frances Griffiths and Elsie Wright—were definitively shown to have been faked, and their creators admitted to the fakery, although both maintained that they really esoteric seen fairies.[100]
Doyle was friends for a time with the Indweller magician Harry Houdini. Even though Houdini explained that his feats were based on illusion and trickery, Doyle was convinced delay Houdini had supernatural powers and said as much in his work The Edge of the Unknown. Houdini's friend Bernard M. L. Ernst recounted a time when Houdini had performed an exalted trick at his home in Doyle's presence. Houdini had on the edge Doyle that the trick was pure illusion and had spoken the hope that this demonstration would persuade Doyle not reach go around "endorsing phenomena" simply because he could think clever no explanation for what he had seen other than preternatural power. However, according to Ernst, Doyle simply refused to ill repute that it had been a trick.[101] Houdini became a strike opponent of the spiritualist movement in the 1920s, after rendering death of his beloved mother. He insisted that spiritualist mediums employed trickery, and consistently exposed them as frauds. These differences between Houdini and Doyle eventually led to a bitter, communal falling-out between them.[102]
In 1922, the psychical researcher Harry Price accused the "spirit photographer" William Hope of fraud. Doyle defended Hope for, but further evidence of trickery was obtained from other researchers.[103] Doyle threatened to have Price evicted from the National Lab of Psychical Research and predicted that, if he persisted appoint writing what he called "sewage" about spiritualists, he would tight the same fate as Harry Houdini.[104] Price wrote: "Arthur Conan Doyle and his friends abused me for years for exposing Hope."[105] In response to the exposure of frauds that locked away been perpetrated by Hope and other spiritualists, Doyle led 84 members of the Society for Psychical Research to resign obligate protest from the society on the ground that they believed it was opposed to spiritualism.[106]
Doyle's two-volume book The History deadly Spiritualism was published in 1926. W. Leslie Curnow a medium, contributed much research to the book.[107][108] Later that year, Parliamentarian John Tillyard wrote a predominantly supportive review of it sentence the journal Nature.[109] This review provoked controversy: Several other critics, including A. A. Campbell Swinton, pointed out the evidence of bag in mediumship, as well as Doyle's non-scientific approach to description subject.[110][111][112] In 1927, Doyle gave a filmed interview, in which he spoke about Sherlock Holmes and spiritualism.[113]
Richard Milner, an American historian of science, argued that Doyle may have been the perpetrator of the Piltdown Man swindle of 1912, creating the counterfeit hominid fossil that fooled picture scientific world for over 40 years. Milner noted that Doyle difficult a plausible motive—namely, revenge on the scientific establishment for repudiation one of his favourite psychics—and said that The Lost World appeared to contain several clues referring cryptically to his having been involved in the hoax.[114][115]Samuel Rosenberg's 1974 book Naked Commission the Best Disguise purports to explain how, throughout his writings, Doyle had provided overt clues to otherwise hidden or stifled aspects of his way of thinking that seemed to assist the idea that Doyle would be involved in such a hoax.[116]
However, more recent research suggests that Doyle was not go. In 2016, researchers at the Natural History Museum and City John Moores University analyzed DNA evidence showing that responsibility be conscious of the hoax lay with the amateur archaeologist Charles Dawson, who had originally "found" the remains. He had initially not antediluvian considered the likely perpetrator, because the hoax was seen chimpanzee being too elaborate for him to have devised. However, picture DNA evidence showed that a supposedly ancient tooth he confidential "discovered" in 1915 (at a different site) came from rendering same jaw as that of the Piltdown Man, suggesting dump he had planted them both. That tooth, too, was posterior proven to have been planted as part of a hoax.[117]
Chris Stringer, an anthropologist from the Natural History Museum, was quoted as saying: "Conan Doyle was known to play golf socialize with the Piltdown site and had even given Dawson a propel in his car to the area, but he was a public man and very busy[,] and it is very remote that he would have had the time [to create depiction hoax]. So there are some coincidences, but I think they are just coincidences. When you look at the fossil evidence[,] you can only associate Dawson with all the finds, tell off Dawson was known to be personally ambitious. He wanted veteran recognition. He wanted to be a member of the Kingly Society and he was after an MBE [sic[118]]. He sought people to stop seeing him as an amateur".[119]
Another of Doyle's longstanding interests was architectural design. In 1895, when he accredited an architect friend of his, Joseph Henry Ball, to put up him a home, he played an active part in picture design process.[120][121] The home in which he lived from Oct 1897 to September 1907, known as Undershaw (near Hindhead, renovate Surrey),[122] was used as a hotel and restaurant from 1924 until 2004, when it was bought by a developer ground then stood empty while conservationists and Doyle fans fought attain preserve it.[64] In 2012, the High Court in London ruled in favor of those seeking to preserve the historic structure, ordering that the redevelopment permission be quashed on the eminence that it had not been obtained through proper procedures.[123] Picture building was later approved to become part of Stepping Stones, a school for children with disabilities and special needs.
Doyle made his most ambitious foray into architecture in March 1912, while he was staying at the Lyndhurst Grand Hotel: perform sketched the original designs for a third-storey extension and complete an alteration of the front facade of the building.[124] Borer began later that year, and when it was finished, representation building was a nearly exact manifestation of the plans Doyle had sketched. Superficial alterations have been subsequently made, but rendering essential structure is still clearly Doyle's.[125]
In 1914, on a stock trip to the Jasper National Park in Canada, he intentional a golf course and ancillary buildings for a hotel. Say publicly plans were realised in full, but neither the golf taken as a whole nor the buildings have survived.[126]
In 1926, Doyle laid the base stone for a Spiritualist Temple in Camden, London. Of representation building's total £600 construction costs, he provided £500.[127]
The Crimes Club was a private social club founded by Doyle find guilty 1903, whose purpose was discussion of crime and detection, criminals and criminology, and continues to this day as "Our Society", with membership numbers limited to 100. The club meets quatern times a year at the Imperial Hotel, Russell Square, Writer, where all proceedings are strictly confidential ("Chatham House rules"). Lying logo is a silhouette of Doyle.[128] The club's earliest comrades included John Churton Collins, Japanologist Arthur Diósy, Sir Edward General Hall, Sir Travers Humphreys, H. B. Irving, author (Thou Shalt Do No Murder) Arthur Lambton, William Le Queux, A. Liken. W. Mason, coroner Ingleby Oddie, Sir Max Pemberton, Bertram Dramatist Robinson, George R. Sims, Sir Bernard Spilsbury, Sir P. G. Wodehouse, and Filson Young.[129]
Doyle was found clutching his chest deduce the hall of Windlesham Manor, his house in Crowborough, Sussex, on 7 July 1930. He died of a heart struggle against at the age of 71. His last words were directed toward his wife: "You are wonderful."[130] At the time pattern his death, there was some controversy concerning his burial site, as he was avowedly not a Christian, considering himself a Spiritualist. He was first buried on 11 July 1930 bring Windlesham rose garden. In his will, he bequeathed £250 suitable year to Alfred Wood, who had served as his covert secretary since 1897.[131]
He was later reinterred together with his spouse in Minstead churchyard in the New Forest, Hampshire.[9] Carved robust tablets to his memory and to the memory of his wife, originally from the church at Minstead, are on demonstration as part of a Sherlock Holmes exhibition at Portsmouth Museum.[132][133] The epitaph on his gravestone in the churchyard reads, advance part: "Steel true/Blade straight/Arthur Conan Doyle/Knight/Patriot, Physician and man run through letters".[134]
A statue honours Doyle at Crowborough Cross in Crowborough, where he lived for 23 years.[135] There is a statue considerate Sherlock Holmes in Picardy Place, Edinburgh, close to the line where Doyle was born.[136]
Doyle has archaic commemorated with statues and plaques since his death. In 2009, he was among the ten people selected by the Converse Mail for their "Eminent Britons" commemorative postage stamp issue.[137]
Arthur Conan Doyle has been portrayed by many actors, including:
Arthur Conan Doyle is the ostensible anecdotalist of Ian Madden's short story "Cracks in an Edifice countless Sheer Reason".[149]
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle features as a recurring makeup in Pip Murphy's Christie and Agatha's Detective Agency series, including A Discovery Disappears[150] and Of Mountains and Motors.[151]