Who was the real Dr. Joseph Bell, the man behind Sherlock Holmes… and did he solve the Jack the Ripper murders? Most fans of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s legendary detective don’t realize Holmes was based on a real Victorian physician: Dr. Joseph Bell of Edinburgh. Bell was a forensic pioneer, skilled surgeon, and medical professor whose razor-sharp deductive methods inspired Conan Doyle’s most famous character. This article explores Bell’s real-life contributions to criminal forensics, his rumored involvement in the Jack the Ripper case, and his unforgettable fictional cameo in The Giftsnatcher, a novel set in the 1880s Edinburgh full of mystery, myth, and a girl who can steal pieces of your soul.

In The Giftsnatcher, a novel of Jack the Ripper, 1880s Edinburgh, and a gifted young woman who can steal away pieces of your soul, I have her meet and work alongside Dr. Joseph Bell, the literary inspiration for Sherlock Holmes. But who was the real Dr. Bell? Let’s explore!

Sherlock Holmes has always been my favorite fictional hero. The creation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, he set the standard for all detectives to come. Most know his name, but few know of his remarkable source of inspiration: Dr. Joseph Bell, a renowned physician, professor, editor, and writer famed for his deductive reasoning and his skills as an early forensic pathologist. Conan Doyle studied medicine under him in Edinburgh and was so impressed by his ability to observe minute details about a person’s appearance and deduce information from it that Doyle forever embodied him in the immortal character of Sherlock Holmes.

Among his contemporaries in the Victorian era, Dr. Bell was truly remarkable. He achieved tremendous success at a relatively young age by becoming a professor and a senior surgeon in the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh; he was involved in establishing the first nursing school system in Scotland, and responsible for writing some of the first college medical textbooks; he was a prolific writer of lectures, monographs, and medical essays, as well as the editor of the Edinburgh Medical Journal, one of the world’s leading medical magazines.

He got educated alongside Robert Louis Stevenson, mentored Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, corresponded with Florence Nightingale, and served Queen Victoria whenever she came to her castle in Scotland. Contemporaries called him a peacemaker, a voice of calm reason among the flaring tempers of his colleagues, advocated for allowing women to attend medical school, and proudly declared his faith. Though devastated by the loss of his wife (his hair turned white overnight), Bell wrote “The blow is such a fearful one in its suddenness and intensity that I cannot realize it in the least, but I would honestly take it as sent by God for a good purpose in His infinite wisdom and love and would not rebel. Indeed, I love my Savior because he has been so good to my darling… and as I believe, giving her an entrance into His kingdom.” People revered him for his forthright but compassionate bedside manner and praised him for his generosity.

Then there’s his help to the Crown in criminal cases. Bell solved what Scottish papers called “the biggest crime of the decade” in 1893. It revolved around a tutor who insured his student for a large sum of money and twice tried to kill him in an “accident.” At the request of the court, Bell and his associate, Dr. Littlejohn, exhumed and autopsied the body and revealed the fatal injury did not match the witness’s testimony. The papers dubbed Bell “the original Sherlock Holmes.”

Bell’s keen instincts and attention to detail made him invaluable in criminal cases. In 1888, a series of brutal attacks on prostitutes left London stunned. The newspapers called this murderer Jack the Ripper. Desperate to find the culprit, Scotland Yard elicited the advice and conclusions of notable specialists across the United Kingdom. Bell and an associate were sent the information the police had gathered, studied the case separately, and when they exchanged their findings, were gratified to see they reached the same conclusion independently. While officially the murders were never solved, it is notable that within a week of Bell submitting his hypothesis, the Ripper killings ended. (Did he actually solve the case and lead to the arrest or death of the Ripper? We may never know! … but I worked off this hypothesis in my novel, and the series Murder Rooms begins with Dr. Bell and a green Arthur Conan Doyle crossing foils with the Ripper.)