Student Question
What methods did Sherlock Holmes use to solve mysteries?
Quick answer:
Sherlock Holmes uses a variety of methods to solve mysteries, including deductive and inductive reasoning, scientific experimentation, and extensive knowledge of crime. He conducts thorough investigations, sometimes in disguise, and employs acute observation skills to gather facts before making deductions. Holmes also relies on his vast memory and experience, maintaining detailed records of cases. His analytical prowess and meticulous attention to detail make him a distinguished detective, often consulted by other professionals.
When Holmes first meets Dr. Watson in the novel A Study in Scarlet , he describes himself as "a consulting detective." There are many police detectives and many private detectives, but Holmes is the only detective so distinguished and accomplished in his profession that detectives actually come to consult him. Holmes devotes his whole life to solving crimes. He uses every possible method a detective could use. He is adept in science, in so far as it applies to detection. He is constantly working with chemicals and conducting experiments. He reads all the daily newspapers and keeps in touch with everything that is going on in England. He has extensive files on criminals, criminal trials, unsolved crimes, and whatever else is related to crime and criminals. He has an extremely retentive memory. He relies heavily on his own knowledge and past experience. He even keeps records of all his own...
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cases.
Holmes is famous for his powers of deduction. But he uses both deductive and inductive reasoning. He is constantly complaining that he must have concrete facts. In other words, he accumulates facts and then uses deduction to interpret them. He is always looking for clues. He will get down on hands and knees to examine the grass or the surface of a carpet or a hardwood floor. Sometimes he will spend hours, or even days, doing nothing but smoking his pipe and thinking about what he has seen and heard. In the final analysis, it is his own superlative brain that enables him to solve most cases, even though he has to do a lot of on-the-spot investigation. He conducts some of his investigations in disguise, because he is known as a master of disguise, as shown, for instance, in "A Scandal in Bohemia" and "The Adventure of the Empty House."
As an example of Holmes' methods, the detective goes with Watson to get a look at Jabez Wilson's assistant, who calls himself Vincent Spaulding, and to explore the area around Wilson's pawnshop in Saxe-Coburg Square. Note that he tells Watson:
“My dear doctor, this is a time for observation, not for talk. We are spies in an enemy's country. We know something of Saxe-Coburg Square. Let us now explore the parts which lie behind it.”
Holmes must observe before he deduces. He is the most versatile detective in fiction and has been the model for innumerable imitators. He spends a great deal of time back at Baker Street thinking about what he has seen and what Wilson had told him in their initial interview. Holmes uses his extensive knowledge of crime and criminals to conclude that Vincent Spaulding is really the notorious and dangerous John Clay. After the case is solved, Holmes explains his thought processes to Watson.
“You see, Watson,” he explained in the early hours of the morning as we sat over a glass of whisky and soda in Baker Street, “it was perfectly obvious from the first that the only possible object of this rather fantastic business of the advertisement of the League, and the copying of the Encyclopaedia, must be to get this not over-bright pawnbroker out of the way for a number of hours every day....From the time that I heard of the assistant having come for half wages, it was obvious to me that he had some strong motive for securing the situation.”
Holmes is a real expert in his profession. It is too bad that there aren't more like him in many professions. He uses every possible method for solving the cases that are brought to him. And he enjoys an enviable lifestyle which enables him to work when he pleases only on cases that intrigue him, and to spend much time loafing at his ease in his comfortable rooms at 221B Baker Street. As time goes by he becomes more and more famous, so that he receives large fees from important people who come to him for help even from foreign lands. In "The Adventure of the Priory School," for example, Holmes receives a check from the Duke of Holdernesse for six thousand pounds, a sum which must be the equivalent in buying power of at least a million contemporary American dollars.