Sherlock Holmes
...(wrapped in a napkin ), but gave himself away when he payed double the fare when he was told that it was 'sixpence a head'. This was also about the time of the Jack the Ripper murders in which people were afraid to step out of their homes. The Jack the Ripper case was never solved and there was much controversy associated with the police investigation. The public had lost some of its faith in the police force and was looking for a figure of hope and inspiration. The selection criteria were short: Someone who always got his man. The only one who fitted this description was Sherlock Holmes. Sherlock Holmes was not only the world's greatest detective, but he also lived in London. He was someone close to home and a man well steeped in Victorian traditions. Holmes was just like any other Englishman at the time. He read their newspapers, travelled in their carriages and even experimented with some of the drugs of the time. It is not hard to see why the Victorian public adopted him as one of their own. The Victorian public had fallen in love with Holmes and his great mysteries and it was no wonder that they were upset in the summer of 1892 when Sir Auther Conan Doyle decided to kill off what he called "a lower stratum of literary achievement". City gentlemen wore black arm bands and Doyle received threats and letters of abuse. This was an indication that the people no longer regarded Holmes as just a character but much more. He was a reflection of the hopes of a generation. It was not until 1901 that Doyle had a change of heart and decided to write more Holmes mysteries. The initial result of Doyle's change of heart was one of the greatest Holmes mysteries ever written, "The Hound of the Baskervilles". It was here that the Holmes phenomenon reached its early peak. Queues of fans would wait outside the Strand Magazine office in London on a monthly basis to get their next dose of Holmes. It was like a drug people could not get enough of. In America alone, the print run of the magazine was increased by nearly 200,000 copies. Doyle not only captured a generation's imagination but also transformed the way people thought. At the turn of the century, people began to look ...