14 DAY TRIAL // A new biography of the well-known Victorian detective Jerome Caminada suggests that he inspired Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's infamous detective, Sherlock Holmes.
Jerome Caminada is considered to be the father of the Manchester Criminal Investigation Department. He was a 19th-century police officer and private detective and impressed his contemporaries with his logical reasoning, eccentric disguises and impressive crime figures.
The book, titled “The Real Sherlock Holmes: the Hidden Story of Jerome Caminada,” was written by Angela Buckley and published this month. It reveals a series of striking similarities between the Victorian detective and the fictional character imagined by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
“Caminada became a national figure at just the time that Holmes was being created. There are so many parallels that it is clear Doyle was using parts of this real character for his,” Buckley said, as reported by Daily Mail.
Caminada worked as a police officer in Manchester, and became famous nationally in the mid-1880s, shortly before Holmes made his debut in "A Study in Scarlet."
His policing style was eccentric and often involved using disguise to gather evidence on suspects. He used a large array of unorthodox methods to capture criminals and maintained a large network of informers. However, his methods proved to be effective and gained him a reputation as the most successful detective of the Victorian period.
Just like his fictional counterpart, Caminada was very skilled at solving crime cases. It is said that over his career he apprehended no less than 1,225 criminals.
Mrs. Buckley points out that one of the most remarkable similarities between Caminada and Holmes was their fascination with an attractive female criminal – Irene Adler in Holmes's case and Alicia Ormonde, a well-educated, aristocratic woman who was also an expert forger and crook, in Caminada's case.
Moreover, both detectives have a nemesis in their lives. Bob Horridge was a violent criminal with whom Caminada had a long feud, while the fictional character had an Arch-enemy in the person of former mathematics Professor James Moriarty.
Caminada wrote the first volume of his autobiography anonymously in 1895 and published the second volume after retirement using his own name. He died in 1914, the year in which the last Sherlock Holmes story was set.
In a past interview, Doyle said he had been inspired by Dr. Joseph Bell, a surgeon at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, who had an incredible power of deduction.