00:00In late June 1882, Dr Arthur Conan Doyle landed via a steam packet from Plymouth onto here,
00:09the Town Quay in Portsmouth. He was a 23-year-old doctor with just 10 pounds in his back pocket,
00:15a trunk of his belongings and a top hat box. He dragged his things to the offices of the British
00:23and Irish Steam Packet Company, which was just over there, and then got on a tram and made his
00:28way into Portsmouth. He was immediately struck by the kindness of the locals. The conductor on the
00:34tram gave him loads of advice where to stay, and soon he found himself lodging somewhere in the
00:39back streets of Portsmouth. Once he got himself ensconced, he stepped out and decided to walk up
00:46to Victoria Park to listen to music at the bandstand, and on the way back he got himself into a spot of
00:52bother. He found in the middle of the street a man beating his wife with a huge crowd around watching,
00:59and he was not happy with this and stepped in and tried to calm the man down, and soon Conan Doyle was
01:06embroiled in a fight with this complete stranger. So it was that Conan Doyle dusted himself down,
01:14gathered his cane and made his way back to his lodgings, having had a taste of both the good and the bad
01:21sides of Portsmouth. To get to know the town better, he bought a map and walked every street
01:27of the town to find a place where he could set up his practice. Eventually he decided on number one
01:34bush villas, Elm Grove. There he put up his plaque and waited for clients to come in. The first person
01:42who came in, he really wanted to impress, and so he tried his best to find the diagnosis for him.
01:48The man however turned out to be from the local gas company looking for payment for an outstanding
01:55charge on the on the property. Another client who came in very early on was the man he'd had the fight
02:01with. Thankfully the other guy didn't remember him. Those early days in bush villas were tough. He bought
02:09some furniture for the surgery but nothing for himself. He did get a bed but forgot to get a mattress,
02:15so ended up sleeping on the floorboards. In those early months he started to write to bring in a
02:20few extra pounds and soon he began to network. He joined the local cricket club. He also started
02:27to play bowls at the bush hotel just behind bush villas and he also joined Portsmouth football club.
02:34That's not the club we know today which was formed in 1898. His one was an amateur side that disbanded in
02:401896 but it is true to say that he definitely played footy for Portsmouth. He knew how to turn
02:48a connection to his advantage. When a wealthy person was injured by a horse outside his surgery,
02:55he took him into the surgery, looked after him, made sure that he was okay and then wrote a glowing
03:01report for the Portsmouth Evening News about how well Dr Conan Doyle had helped this guy. And so you
03:09see reports over the coming years in the papers of how Arthur Conan Doyle attended somebody who'd been
03:16stabbed in St Paul's Square, how he attended a fight victim in King Street and how he helped a guy
03:23who'd fallen down the beer hatch in the India arms just a little away from here. He also attended
03:30coroner's inquests, sudden deaths and accidents and also worked for the eye infirmary on Pembroke Street
03:36in Old Portsmouth. But all the while he continued to write and in 1886 he came up with a interesting
03:45detective. At first he was called John Reeve but then he changed his name to Holmes. Yes,
03:52Sheringford Homes. And then after a while longer he realised that his name was Sherlock.
04:02Arthur Conan Doyle's legacy in Portsmouth is massive. He was here for eight and a half years.
04:08He was instrumental in helping to set up the recreation ground at North End which later became
04:14known as the Mountbatten Centre with its Olympic standard swimming pool. That's one of the reasons
04:21that we celebrate Conan Doyle's connection and it's also amazing to think that Sherlock Holmes,
04:28the most famous man who never actually existed, was born here in this city of Portsmouth.
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