To sign up for Meridian’s free newsletter, CLICK HERE.
The church recently published a commentary titled “When Entertainment Media Distorts Faith,” which said that in media produced by others about the church, “some portrayals are fair and accurate, but others resort to stereotypes or gross misrepresentations that are in poor taste and have consequences in the real lives of believers.” One that took aim at the church was a popular 19th Author of the century.
Arthur Conan Doyle was a 26-year-old doctor in Portsmouth, England, struggling to make ends meet when he created the character for which he would forever be remembered. Sherlock Holmes, with his cunning ability to deduce clues from the smallest piece of evidence, was brought to life in Doyle’s novel. A Study in Scarlet where Brigham Young, church-sanctioned murders and kidnappings were at the center of the story.
Sherlock Holmes was loosely based on Doyle’s university professor Joe Bell. Doyle wrote to Bell: “I certainly owe Sherlock Holmes to you. Around the kernel of deduction and reasoning which you taught me I have tried to build a man.”
Doyle built the rest of this first story from other sources – from the lurid and inaccurate media reports about Mormons that were very popular at the time. Thus, Holmes’ first foray into detective work revolved around Mormon kidnappings, murder, polygamy and white slavery. He became involved in the rumor mill that spawned films like Captured by the Mormons and other false images of the Latter-day Saints in Europe at that time.
Most of them have long since died a welcome death. Who rents Captured by the Mormons on Amazon Prime? But Sherlock Holmes is something else. Doyle’s character became popular in a way he could never have predicted – he became one of the most well-known fictional characters, appearing in countless films and performances. Everyone loves the quirky, brilliant detective in a deer hunter’s suit who lives at 221B Baker Street.
Doyle’s attitude toward Holmes was ambivalent. He believed that his famous creation distracted him from more important things. To dissuade his publishers from their demand for more Holmes stories, he raised his price exorbitantly. Publishers were willing to pay to appease the hungry market that loved Holmes. As a result, he became extremely wealthy.
Eventually, Doyle wrote to his mother, “I am thinking of killing Holmes… and destroying him forever.” She replied, “You will not! You cannot! You must not!” But he did. Hoping to have more time for historical novels, Doyle plunged Holmes and Professor Moriarty to their deaths in the 1893 story “The Final Problem.”
The outcry was so great that Doyle had to resurrect Holmes in 1903’s The Hound of the Baskervilles. He explained that although Professor Moriarty had fallen, Holmes had faked his death in order to shake off his other dangerous enemies.
You wouldn’t want a character like Sherlock Holmes with that kind of influence to shape the European continent’s view of Mormonism, but with Doyle’s inaccurate research into Mormons, that’s exactly what happened. The story only seemed to confirm what people had suspected and what annoyed Mormon missionaries – that Mormons murdered apostates and were a dangerous, shady group that could not be trusted in any way.
Arthur Conan Doyle was not popular with Latter-day Saints, and his first Sherlock Holmes novel was just one in a long list of anti-Mormon books that delighted audiences.
In May 1923, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who had since been knighted for his literary achievements, came to Salt Lake City on a lecture tour, where he spoke about spiritualism and his long-standing efforts to obtain tangible evidence of his communications with “those who have departed this mortal sphere.”
Michael W. Homer, a lawyer from Salt Lake City, spoke to Dame Jean Conan Doyle, Sir Arthur’s daughter, about this visit 70 years earlier.
She told him, “You know, Father would be the first to admit that his first Sherlock Holmes novel was full of errors about the Mormons. My brothers Denis, Adrian and I were all very worried when we got near Utah. We thought we were going to be kidnapped or something.
“We were so relieved when we realized how friendly the people really were.” She was ten at the time.
She told Homer that her father had “relied on anti-Mormon works by former Mormons because he believed those reports to be true.”
If Doyle had changed his mind about Mormons, why were his children so afraid to visit Utah? It was because of the governess – Miss French.
“On our way to Salt Lake City, she told us the most horrible satires about the Mormons and that the city was not safe and that we should not leave the hotel or we would be kidnapped… When our parents found out, they were absolutely furious with the governess. Even if the stories were true, which they were not, it was not right to scare children.”
The governess was immediately dismissed.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was permitted to speak at the Tabernacle under the auspices of the Extension Division of the University of Utah. He was introduced by Levi Edward Young, a professor at the University of Utah, who later said, “He apologized for it, you know. He said he had been misled by the writings about the church at that time.”
The day after his speech, Sir Arthur was received at the Alta Club in Salt Lake, where he expressed his gratitude for the way he and his family had been received in the city. He said, “We are deeply grateful for the tolerance and warmth with which we have been received. To tell the truth, I did not expect to be allowed to speak at the Mormon Tabernacle.”
He mentioned that while touring the church museum and viewing the pioneer relics, he “remembered a group photograph of many of the early pioneers. I knew then that I had seen them before – I finally remembered – it was during the Boer War in South Africa. The same types, the rugged, hardened men, the brave and honest women who look as if they had seen much suffering and hardship – these are the pioneer types in Utah and in South Africa and I suppose anywhere… they go out and build a state or an empire…”
Although a Dr. G. Hodgson Higgins Doyle wrote that his first view of Mormonism as a non-Mormon was clouded by A Study in Scarlet, His praise for the pioneers came closest to an apology.
Nevertheless, after his own experiences with the Latter-day Saints, he never again wrote unkindly about them.
The research for this article is based on a 1994 article by Harold Schindler, which appeared in the The Salt Lake Tribune.
