SIR CONAN DOYLE, NOVELIST, DIES.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 19116, 8 July 1930, Page 6

SIR CONAN DOYLE, NOVELIST, DIES.

CRE '.TOR OF SHERLOCK HOLMES PASSES,

(United Press Assn.—By Electric Telegraph Copyright > LONDON, July 7. The death has occurred of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Kt.. M.D., LL.D., at the age of seventy-one years.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the novelist, was born at Edinburgh in May. 1859, and educated at Stonyhurst College. After studying medicine at Edinburgh he practised as a doctor at Southsea from 1882 to 1800. He then went to the Arctic in a whaler as a ship s doctor and visited the west coast of Africa. During the South African War he was physician of a field hospital. He stood twice for Parliament as a Unionist and a Tariff Reformer. He began to write in the eighties, some of his work appearing in the “Boy’s Own Paper.” The first of his Sherlock Holmes detective stories came out in 1887. .The. remarkable deductions of the crime investigator were based on those of the Edinburgh doctor, James Bell, whose clinics Doyle attended, and who, by observation of what seemed to be trifles, arrived at accurate conclusions about the out-patients on whom he lectured Conan Doyle has also written some excellent historical novels. also compiled two books in defence of the South African war He was knighted in 1902. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was one of the originators of the Volunteer Corps during the world war, the first unit, .in which he served for four years, being formed bv him at Crowborough in August, 1914. He did much propaganda work, issuing pamphlets on war topics, and a six-volume history of the war. After losing his son in the war he became an ardent Spiritualist, and since 1918 he had devoted his life to writing and lecturing on behalf of his new faith, his books including “A New Revelation." “The Vital Message,” “The Wanderings of a Spiritualist, a novel, “The Land of Mist.' and a “History of Spiritualist.”