By Katherine Oswald

The nineteenth century saw many advancements in the realm of science as well as the creation of a new literary genre, the detective story. Edgar Allan Poe is credited with creating the genre with his story “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1841), published in Graham’s Magazine, as well as two other stories featuring detective C. Auguste Dupin. In 1887, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle further popularized the genre with The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, published in the Strand Magazine. Following Doyle’s success, many other authors wrote in the new genre as well. Catherine Louisa Pirkis was among these authors, writing short stories for the Ludgate Magazine in 1893, which were collected a year later in The Experiences of Loveday Brooke, Lady Detective.

Prior to the nineteenth century there were few subdivisions in the field of science.[1] This meant that what today we would call a chemist might also be working as an entomologist. The first scientific organization with a specific focus was founded in 1807 for the study of geology.[2] At this point, advancements were regularly published in popular magazines. Dr. Julius Grant noted, “It must be understood that these were the days when the advances of science were more spectacular and more easily appreciated by the interested public . . . which were of current interest and easily understood.”[3] Consequently, fiction writers were able to incorporate basic scientific concepts into their work.

The influence of scientific thought on detective fiction can be seen in Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1841), which features C. Auguste Dupin, the analytical investigator who outwits the “incompetent police”[4] using mind games and puzzles. Early on in the story, the narrator remarks that phrenologists have “assigned a separate organ, supposing it a primitive faculty, has been so frequently seen in those whose intellect bordered otherwise upon idiocy, as to have attracted general observation among writers on morals.”[5] Here Poe is referring to Franz Joseph Gall’s theory from the 1830s postulating that the shape of a person’s skull can indicate their mental strengths. While Gall’s findings have since been disproven, they highlight the Victorian belief (in science and fiction) that people could be profiled solely by appearance.

Poe’s fascination with popular science is evident later in the story when Dupin mentions “nebular cosmogony,”[6] Pierre-Simon Laplace’s theory on the origin of the galaxy first proposed in 1796. This illustrates Poe’s interest in scientific progress and analytical method. He also uses observation and note-taking to structure the analytical dialogue between Dupin and the narrator about the solution to the case. At one point, Dupin discusses witness testimony about the voice of the supposed murderer: “While an Italian, and Englishman, a Spaniard, a Hollander, and a Frenchman attempted to describe it, each one spoke of it as that of a foreigner.”[7] Through analytical reasoning, Dupin concludes that since everyone assumes a different nationality, the murderer is not human and is in fact an Ourang-Outang. Dupin’s description of his investigative method follows a quasi-scientific method: questioning, observing, organizing information, and interpreting the information into a conclusion.

After Poe, the most popular detective fiction author is perhaps Arthur Conan Doyle, who created Sherlock Holmes and his assistant Dr. Watson. In his novella, The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902), Conan Doyle uses his scientific training as a doctor to construct the plot. Doyle may have been inspired by Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, published in 1859, which described the process of natural selection through a study of finches in the Galapagos Islands. Darwin wrote, “It occurred to me . . . that something might perhaps be made out of this question by patiently accumulating and reflecting on all sorts of facts.”[8] As Lawrence Frank points out, Conan Doyle uses Dr. Watson as “a fictionalized ‘man in the street’ responding to the unsettling religious skepticism and philosophical materialism of Darwin.”[9] In The Hound of the Baskervilles, there seems to be a supernatural dog terrorizing a family. but it is revealed to be a real animal covered in phosphorus. Holmes explains the chemical rationally as a “cunning preparation” that leaves “no smell which might have interfered with his power of scent.”[10] Holmes’s description highlights Doyle’s knowledge on the topic of chemistry as well as his Darwinist-materialist explanation of what seems like a supernatural phenomenon. Conan Doyle shows how improvement in the scientific understanding removes religious fear and instead promotes reason.

The influence of science is also evident in Catherine Louisa Pirkis’s collection of short stories The Experiences of Loveday Brooke, Lady Detective. Detective Loveday Brooke’s use of deductive methodology is parallel to how Charles Darwin operated his inquiry on evolution: collecting information, reviewing, and then reaching a conclusion. This analytical strategy is shown in “A Princess’s Vengeance” (1893) when Loveday is investigating the disappearance of Lucie Cunier, a foreigner working in London. Major Druce, the man who enlisted Loveday’s help, brings Loveday to a party in hopes that Loveday will locate Lucie. Upon arrival, Loveday states, “Get me into some quiet corner, where I can see without being seen.”[11] While at the party, Loveday observes a key piece of information that she reveals to the reader at the end of the story: a peculiar ring on the butler’s finger. By reading this clue, she is able to accumulate other evidence that she presents to Major Druce at the end of the story. Loveday Brooke approached the case scientifically, observing everyone with neutrality and ignoring Major Druce’s prejudicial opinions.

In the detective stories of Edgar Allan Poe, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and Catherine Louisa Pirkis, the importance of observation and analysis without bias is key to an effective investigation. This method was used by Victorian scientists as modern fields of scientific study were first taking shape, and it is still taught in schools today. The influence of scientific advancements on the detective genre during the nineteenth-century is undeniable. Detective writers absorbed the culture and environment in which they are immersed, including scientific methods and discoveries, which were accessible to the general public and were thus ideal material for fiction writing.

Notes

[1] Iwan Morus, A Companion to Nineteenth-Century Britain (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2004), 460.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Julius Grant, “The Century of the British Association: A Hundred Years of Science, 1831–1931,” Sphere 126 (September 26, 1931): 461.

[4] Edgar Allan Poe, The Murders in the Rue Morgue: The Dupin Stories (New York: Modern Library, 2006), ix.

[5] Ibid., 5.

[6] Ibid., 9.

[7] Poe, The Murders in the Rue Morgue, 20.

[8] Charles Darwin. On the Origin of Species (London: Penguin, 2009), 11.

[9] Lawrence Frank, “The Hound of the Baskervilles, the Man on the Tor, and a Metaphor for the Mind,” Nineteenth Century Literature 54, no. 3 (1999): 338.

[10] Arthur Conan Doyle, The Greatest Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (New York: Fall River Press, 2012), 722.

[11] Catherine Louisa Pirkis, The Experiences of Loveday Brooke, Lady Detective (New York: Dover, 2020), 105.