Joseph Bell

Did You Know?

• Bell was a great-grandson of Benjamin Bell, considered the first Scottish scientific surgeon.
• He received a PhD in 1859 with the thesis 'Epithelial cancer: its pathology and treatment'.
• A bronze memorial plaque was erected at 2 Melville Crescent in Edinburgh on 8 October 2011, funded by the Japan Sherlock Holmes Club.

Career

Joseph Bell taught his students that a proper diagnosis relied on close observation, urging them to "observe carefully, deduce shrewdly, and confirm with evidence." He called this approach "The Method." To demonstrate it, he brought unfamiliar out-patients into his lectures and, using only what he saw, guessed their jobs, health, and recent movements. In one case, he correctly determined that a woman had visited the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh because of red clay on her shoes, that she had left a child with a relative based on the size of a coat she carried, and that she worked at a linoleum factory in Burntisland due to dermatitis on her right hand.

In another, he deduced an elderly woman smoked a short-stemmed pipe from a small ulcer on her lower lip and a glossy scar on her cheek. These observational skills made Bell a pioneer in forensic science, especially forensic pathology, at a time when science was rarely used in criminal investigations. Bell was elected to the Harveian Society of Edinburgh in 1867 and became its president in 1897. He joined the Aesculapian Club in 1876 and served as President of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh in 1887. He also authored several medical textbooks, including the Manual of the Operations of Surgery, published in 1866.

Personal life

Bell married Edith Katherine Erskine Murray in 1865; she was the daughter of the Hon. James Erskine Murray of the Elibank family. They had five children, three of whom survived infancy: Jane (or Jean) Isabella Erskine Murray McCance (née Bell), Cecilia Craigie Stisted (née Bell), Benjamin Bell, Katherine (or Catherine) Bell, and a stillborn son. In 1883, Bell bought 2 Melville Crescent, a large townhouse previously the home of engineer John Miller of Leithen. Bell died on 4 October 1911 and was buried at the Dean Cemetery in Edinburgh alongside his wife Edith and their son Benjamin, next to his parents' and brother's plots.

Inspiration of Sherlock Holmes

In 1877, Arthur Conan Doyle became a clerk for Joseph Bell at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, observing how Bell could make diagnoses and reveal details about a patient’s life and symptoms before they said a word, simply by noticing small clues. When Doyle later created Sherlock Holmes, he credited Bell as the inspiration, describing his teacher’s sharp face, odd habits, and uncanny ability to spot details. Doyle wrote to Bell that he owed the character of Holmes “most certainly to you.” Bell was aware of this connection. He took part in several Scottish police cases, including the 1878 murder of Elizabeth Chantrelle, working alongside forensic expert Henry Littlejohn. In 1893, the pair investigated the Ardlamont mystery, and they also analyzed handwriting to help Scotland Yard with the Jack the Ripper murders.

Dramatisation

The BBC series Murder Rooms: The Dark Beginnings of Sherlock Holmes offered a fictional take on Conan Doyle’s time working as a clerk for Joseph Bell. It likely played up Bell’s real-life detective work and how much he inspired Sherlock Holmes, with Ian Richardson portraying Bell and Doyle acting as a Watson-like sidekick. The initial standalone production later came out on DVD and VHS in the US in 2003 under the title Dr. Bell and Mr. Doyle – The Dark Beginnings of Sherlock Holmes.

In the 2006 Doctor Who episode “Tooth and Claw,” the Doctor tells Queen Victoria he once studied under Bell. The comic series Les dossiers du Professeur Bell by Joann Sfar follows Bell’s fictional supernatural cases. On House M.D., in season five’s eleventh episode, Wilson gives House a copy of Bell’s Manual Of the Operations of Surgery as a Christmas present, since House is based on Holmes, who was based on Bell. In season eight’s fourteenth episode, House briefly thinks his biological father is a man named Thomas Bell, played by Billy Connolly.

Howard Engel’s 1997 novel Mr. Doyle & Dr. Bell is another fictional account of Bell’s impact on Conan Doyle. The American procedural Elementary, a modern take on Sherlock Holmes, features a detective named Marcus Bell who often works with Holmes and Watson, likely a reference to the real Joseph Bell.