# Was James Moriarty really based on Adam Worth? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [July 31, 2005, 10:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-james-moriarty-really-based-on-adam-worth/315042 "2005-07-31T22:01:02Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 2\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![MadderMitch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8e7dd6/32.png) [@MadderMitch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MadderMitch)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2005, 10:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-james-moriarty-really-based-on-adam-worth/315042/1 "2005-07-31T22:01:02Z")
It says [here](http://www.powells.com/biblio?isbn=0385319932) in this book that Sherlock Holmes great adversary was based on the real-life antics of one Adam Worth. Is this really the case? I know authors have this tendency to sometimes over-embellish things, so what’s the SD here? Why did A.C. Doyle pick Worth to base his character on? Did he think of the character _first_ and then base it on Worth or did he base it exclusively on Worth himself? And Moriarty was a mathematician??? ---
**Author:** ![Whack-a-Mole](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whack-a-mole/32/141_2.png) [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2005, 10:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-james-moriarty-really-based-on-adam-worth/315042/2 "2005-07-31T22:15:24Z")
I do not know what Doyle was thinking when he created Professor Moriarty but it seems others share the view that Moriarty was based at least in part on Worth. Perhaps Doyle, in order to create or more fully realized character, sought around for someone to use as a template. This is a common thing for writers to do and in this case Worth seems to fit what Doyle was after to an extent. > [@](#): > > Adam Worth became what the world-famous Pinkerton Detective Agency called “the most remarkable criminal of them all”. Scotland Yard commissioned him “the Napoleon of Crime” and mystery writer Arthur Conan Doyle used him as a model for the fictional consummate of evil, Professor Moriarty in his Sherlock Holmes stories. > > SOURCE: [http://www.crimelibrary.com/classics/worth/](http://www.crimelibrary.com/classics/worth/)