Arthur Conan Doyle vs. Mormons?

Great Debates
1

In Doyle’s book * A Study in Scarlet,* he includes several chapters about the Mormons in 19th-cenury Utah, and their closed, regimented society, including their pronouncement of death against anyone who dared try to leave. As the story develops, a man named Jefferson Hope has trailed two men to London, and kills them, avenging a hapless young woman apparently forced to marry one of them, a Mormon drunkard.
So I’d like to know:

  1. Did Doyle have a severe vendetta against Mormons?
  2. Are the Sherlock Holmes books available in Mormon country?
    For the record, I am NOT a Mormon.
2

This is from memory from a class I had about 20 years ago, so if others have better dope, it would not surprise me. At the time the book was written, Doyle knew nothing about the Mormons, and little about Utah. Mormons were in the news quite a bit at that time, as they had started to send missionarys to Europe. It was also around the time that Utah was being considered for statehood. So Doyle picked up a few clues from the sensational press, a few clues from Americans he had talked to, and made everything else up from whole cloth (and used the whole 9 yards.) Doyle considered the Holmes books to be light garbage that he really didn’t need to spend much time on. His lack of continuity is legendary to the true fans. Poor Watson, he was usually John, but his wife (or is it one of his wives?) called him James at one point. Of course that could be why he later ended up not married and back at Baker Street. He also was hit by a bullet that could travel, sometimes causing shoulder, hip, lower leg or back problems.
I am sure that the Holmes stories are available in Utah and other places where there are many Mormons, but I have no idea what the Elders of the LDS have to say about them.

A hat with bells on is not funny, it is the jester underneath.

3

Any true Sherlockian know that there are no continuity problems! You see, Watson had two wives and he was loathe to bring up that he had remarried; the second called him James because John’s middle name was “Hamish” which she translated to “James”. Anything in the Canon can be explained, requiring only the intervention of a minor deity and wildly improbable speculation.

I used to be a big Sherlock fan, but I never liked the Mormon stuff in SiS; too dull. So I can’t help out, and my copy of The Annotated Sherlock Holmes is fifty miles away.

4

Well…to be fair about it, I have also noted that Jan Harold Brunvand–not a Mormon–lives in Utah and Mormons have figured in some of his urban legend stories. If the religion were as bad as portrayed in A Study in Scarlet, the elders in Utah might have suppressed Brunvand’s books or threatened him; obviously nobody is going to disregard the First Amendment here…

5

In Baring-Gould’s wonderful ANNOTATED SHERLOCK HOLMES, a note references Michael Harrison’s The Footsteps of Sherlock Holmes, citing that the British reading public of 1887 was "quite willing to believe these slanders on the Mormons. Mid Victorian England was convinced that the Mormons ‘stole English servant girls, to spirit them out of the country and make them White Slaves in a Mormon harem.’ Harrison writes, “There were riots over the Mormons, especially when the servant-girls [compared] their lot below-stairs with the prospects offered of life in a state which has never known unemployment…”

6

Happens that I was reading James Randi’s “Flim Flam!” last night. Chapter 2 deals with Doyle’s espousal of the existance of Fairies. Makes you wonder about his views on other subjects.

7

<Well…to be fair about it, I have also noted that Jan Harold Brunvand–not a Mormon–lives in Utah and Mormons have figured in
some of his urban legend stories.> Actually I am a Mormon and JHB’s books are a favorite of mine. Mormons have their own version of Urban Legends that parallel “The Vanishing Hitchhiker” and others. Although they are not church doctrine, they are still repeated as happening to a friend of a friend. Mark Twain writes about the Mormons in his book Roughing It. I don’t take offense at a little sarcasm. I found it quite funny myself.

8

I can’t figure out why whenever I have posted to this board, portions of my post are missing even though I had cut and pasted them from my word processor. The last post should have started out with this sentence: “Well…to be fair about it, I have also noted that Jan Harold Brunvand–not a Mormon–lives in Utah and Mormons have figured in
some of his urban legend stories.”

9

B. Hamilton – My guess is that you are using the symbols < and > in your posts, with no spaces around them. The < symbol is used as a code (for example < i > with no spaces between the < and the i indicated italics.)

If you’re going to use the > and < symbols, be sure to have a blank spaces surrounding them. That will solve the disappearance prob, I think.

10

Gaudere said:

And this differs how from reality? :wink:

11

On behalf of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, there are some historical events about the beginnings of the LDS church that were known in his time.
An account of some of these actions is found at: http://www.utlm.org/onlinebooks/meadowscontents.htm

This account includes copies of documents of the period including the words of Joseph Smith, Brigham Young and testimony of those involved in the Mountains Meadows Massacre.

Here is a brief snoposis of what is covered:

It is not necessary to give the details of the blood atonement murder of William R. Parrish and his son Beason for “apostasy,”
at Springville, in 1856; of the murder of Rosmos Anderson by the leading priesthood of the Parowan “stake of Zion” in 1856,
because Philip Klingensmith, bishop of Cedar City, Utah, coveted the buxom Scandinavian stepdaughter of Anderson as his plural wife, and whom Anderson also wanted as his plural, and with whom, as alleged, he had committed adultery as the last and surest effort to secure a “recommend” to enter the “holy order of celestial marriage”; of the castration of Tom Lewis, at Manti, Utah, in 1856, because Bishop Warren Snow was lecherously ambitious to polygamously marry the girl with whom
Lewis was keeping company; of the inexpressibly cowardly murder of William Hatton at Fillmore, 1856, by a man who could
be named, and who was the agent of the “prophets, seers and revelators” at Salt Lake City, and whose handsome widow the
unspeakable “Prophet” Heber C. Kimball soon after added to his celestial harem; of the murder, by prophetic instructions, at
Farmington, during the spring of 1858, of four of the Aiken party, and while “Johnston’s” army at Ham’s Fork was preparing to enter Utah, and of the cowardly assassination of two others of the Aiken party by a present high churchman and his companion, who, under pretense of conducting them from Utah by the southern route to California, shot them in the back at a point some four or five miles south of Nephi, about 110 miles south of Salt Lake City; of the midnight murder, later on, of King, Brassfield and others who became obnoxious to the Mormon leaders. This is an abbreviated history of the Mountain Meadows massacre

  • not of the entire diabolical results of the teaching of unquestioning obedience and blood atonement by the vicegerents of the Mormon god.

I am posting this in the interest of truth and full disclosure. I am not trying to malign the LDS church in any way.

For a nice list of books about the LDS church and its origins (both Mormon approved and nonapproved works) see: http://www.california.com/~rpcman/MO3.HTM

12

Mountain Meadows Massacre

Monument to be restored

13

Oops. Let me try that again:
http://www.sltrib.com/1999/jan/01021999/utah/71508.htm

14

Thanks, Snark–It’s nice to see people being honest and open about the past–nice remarks by all.

15

To 647: I think it’s in The Straight Dope Tells All that Cecil printed a letter from an attorney representing Uri Geller (whose antics I will not discuss here). It seems James “The Amazing” Randi wound up getting sued by Uri Geller regarding something Randi had written; Geller won, presumably in a libel suit. I won’t go into Doyle’s discussion of fairies; if we’re going to discuss impeaching Doyle because of his writings about fairies, or Mormons, or whatever, perhaps we should also impeach Mr. Randi, inasmuch as he wound up getting sued (successfuly, at that) for libel by Mr. Geller.
Furthermore, I found a quotation by Brigham Young that appeared in Volume 55 of Journal of Discourse:
“I have many a time dared the world to produce as mean devils as we can…we can deal the cards with the smartest shavers, can cut and shuffle the cards, and take their money from them. We can beat the world at any game.”
One religious commentator followed this quotation with, "In direct contrast Jesus admonished us to remain separate from the world and cautioned us about following blind leaders [“the blind leading the blind”]. (Scripture quotations followed.)
Who knows? Conan Doyle may have had copies of Journal of Discourse to refer to.

16

On the subject of Brigham Young’s fallibility:

Are Prophets Infallible?

17

Sorry, I meant to provide the following quotation from that web site. And remember, Jesus himself was accused of being a “winebibber” and consorting with sinners, and thus condemned by some of the Jews.

18

It irked me to find an item in *Pearl of Great Price–*Mormon Scripture–that sounded so out of line it inspires my negative appraisal of the religion. Articles of Faith, Verse 8:
“We accept the Bible as the Word of God so far as it is translated correctly. We also believe the Book of Mormon to be the Word of God.”
Forgive me for being blunt, but that passage sounds more like something from a “nut journal” than Holy Scripture. It suggests a convenient lever for Mormons to reject any Scripture–the Bible, that is–that runs counter to Mormon doctrine, and I can produce plenty of that, believe me.
As for the negative passages in the Bible, some commentators have said “No other book [than the Bible] vibrates with such agonizing honesty.” Yes, Jesus was not believed in, hated without cause–but even this was prophesied. I would not expect any book that professes to be divine revelation to distort or hide the truth. :slight_smile:
And remember–Journal of Discourse is not part of the Book of Mormon. Young’s statement I quoted sounds like an arrogant boast. Neither God Almighty nor Jesus Christ makes such boasts in Scripture.

19

dougie_monty wrote:

Well, Mormons do believe that the Bible has had many “plain and precious truths” removed from it through the course of time, either through scribal error or as the work of designing, corrupt men. The Book of Mormon had no such history of being copied, re-copied, etc. and therefore was preserved in its original state, unadulterated.

And it’s not scripture, either.

I refer you to the link I provided above about prophets not being infallible. If Brigham Young boasted inappropriately, does that mean the LDS church isn’t true? Hardly, IMHO. Not everything that came out of his mouth was scripture, after all.

20

I must point out that the consensus of Bible textual critics is that, and I quote, “the last foundation for doubt that the Scriptures have come down to us substantially as they were written has now been removed.” This conclusion was reached after the finding of a fragment of the Gospel of John dating from A.D. 150–some 50 years after the original was written. There are many thousands of manuscripts of the Bible, in Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Syriac, etc.–how many for the Book of Mormon? If it was produced from golden plates, where are they? Jesus told us not to hide our light under a bushel basket.
If you have manuscripts from which the Book of Mormon was produced, by all means show me.