

This allows him to quickly deduce that the Cunninghams, father and son, are the guilty parties.

In The Reigate Squires, Holmes observes that two related people wrote the incriminating note jointly. Handwritten documents figure in nine stories. This is another area where Holmes has written a monograph (on the dating of documents). Holmes is able to tell gender, make deductions about the character of the writer, and even compare two samples of writing and deduce whether the persons are related. Holmes’s work preceded this by forty years.Ĭonan Doyle, a true believer in handwriting analysis, exaggerates Holmes’s abilities to interpret documents. In the United States, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) started a Document Section soon after its crime lab opened in 1932. By obtaining a typewritten note from his suspect, Holmes brilliantly analyses the idiosyncrasies of the man’s typewriter. This observation leads Holmes to the culprit. In the one case involving a typewriter, A Case of Identity (1891), only Holmes realized the importance of the fact that all the letters received by Mary Sutherland from Hosmer Angel were typewritten - even his name is typed and no signature is applied. Image Credit: Sherlock Holmes in “The Red-Headed League”, which appeared in The Strand Magazine in August, 1891 Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.Īs the author of a monograph entitled “The Typewriter and its Relation to Crime,” Holmes was of course an innovator in the analysis of typewritten documents. The astute Conan Doyle picked the eventual winner. The two methods competed for forensic ascendancy for many years. That system was originated by Alphonse Bertillon in Paris. It is interesting to note that Conan Doyle chose to have Holmes use fingerprints but not bertillonage (also called anthropometry), the system of identification by measuring twelve characteristics of the body. Scotland Yard did not begin to use fingerprints until 1901. The first case in which fingerprints are mentioned is The Sign of Four, published in 1890, and he’s still using them 36 years later in the 55th story, The Three Gables (1926). Sherlock Holmes was quick to realize the value of fingerprint evidence. The result was 60 stories in which logic, deduction, and science dominate the scene. In most cases the well-read Conan Doyle has Holmes use methods years before the official police forces in both Britain and America get around to them. Holmes is so much at the forefront of detection that he has authored several monographs on crime-solving techniques. He modeled Holmes on Poe’s Dupin and made Sherlock Holmes a man of science and an innovator of forensic methods. Nevertheless, Conan Doyle resolved that his detective would solve his cases using reason. Our staff are experienced private investigators and process servers and have an understanding of both criminal and civil litigation.Between Edgar Allan Poe’s invention of the detective story with The Murders in the Rue Morgue in 1841 and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s first Sherlock Holmes story A Study in Scarlet in 1887, chance and coincidence played a large part in crime fiction. TSD have been working with and assisting Solicitors and Law Firms for over 40 years. Our Investigators can be deployed in numerous situations such … Family Law Investigations We have experienced Investigators working at Dukeries who have an insurance / fraud background. TSD is an undisputed leader in the Fraud Investigation Industry. If you need assistance, contact me and we’ll discuss its potential. When I’ve eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how mad it might seem, must be the truth. From what I observe, I deduce everything. If you’ve got a problem that you want me to solve, then contact me. I’m not going to go into detail about how I do what I do because chances are you wouldn’t understand. I’m Sherlock Holmes, the world’s only consulting detective. Here we try and solves legal cases by using our investigation skills and our knowledge of the law
