According to the popular legend, the creator of Sherlock Holmes once involuntarily became the reason for the flight from the country of influential businessmen who were previously considered honest people. We checked whether everything was really.

Here is what is said in the history of history popular in the network: “Sir Arthur Conan Doyle for the sake of chose the address of the 12 largest London bankers who enjoy the reputation of extremely honest and respectable people, and sent a telegram of the following content to each of them:“ Everything has come out. Hide. ” The next day, all 12 bankers disappeared from London. The fact of their flight all of them recognized the criminal and antisocial nature of their activity. ”

This text practically unchanged resources such as Who is who, Sports.ru, "YaPlakal", you can read about it in the book “The right reading. 1000 new interesting facts for mind and entertainment ". History is popular on West.

Arthur Conan Doyle created the image of the great detective Sherlock Holmes, not only for the sake of reader's taste. He himself adored detective novels, and also experienced a deep interest in real crimes. As reported Sources, “Documentary books about crimes and clippings from newspapers and magazines made up a whole library, which was undoubtedly not as erratic as Holmes on Baker Street, but probably almost as extensive.”

However, the writer was not enough for this - he took an active part in several high -profile criminal cases. Thus, Conan Doyle's own investigation in the end helped to free Oscar Slaterfound guilty of the murder of a wealthy lady. Sentenced to the death penalty, which was then replaced by lifelong hard labor, Slater conducted for 18 years in prison, until journalist William Park came to the same conclusions as Arthur Conan Doyle a year earlier in his published investigation. Initially, the writer did not listen to the arguments of the writer, but his active social position, faded by a prayer for help from the Slater himself (a note for a writer on waterproof paper, the released cellmate of Oscar carried under his tongue), later moved the matter from a dead point. In another similar situations Conan Doyle helped to free George Edalji, who allegedly secretly tortured and killed alien cattle. The last thing was the impetus for the appearance In the country of the Court of Appeal for Criminal Cases.

Thus, there is some reason to assume that here Sir Arthur Conan Doyle could deal with real crimes. However, references to this out of the number of people who could not leave his mark, you will not find in the journalism of Arthur Conan Doyle, nor in numerous authoritative biographies, nor in the rich Online archiveWhich contains, in fact, the entire personal correspondence of the writer, many interviews, lectures and even a collection of gift inscriptions. Despite this, the bike about the telegram is difficult to call the new one - the researchers discovered its earliest mention in one of the numbers of the British magazine TIT-BITSpublished already on September 18, 1897:

Here's what is said there: “This story is attributed to Mr. Conan Doyle. One of his acquaintances has repeatedly heard that there is a skeleton in the closet in every house, no matter how respectable it may be. A friend decided to test this opinion in practice. Choosing for his experience of one venerable archdeacon of the Church of the Anglican Church, in respect of which even the most strict critic would not say a word, he went to the nearest mail and sent a telegram to a respectable gentleman: "Everything is open! Run!" The archdeacon has disappeared, and since then nothing is heard about him. ”

As you can see, here we are not talking about Conan Doyle himself, but about his acquaintance, and instead of 12 bankers, one archdeacon is mentioned. Judging by all the signs, we are dealing with a bike, a comic story. It should be noted that such jokes adorn the entire first lane of the publication, and about this humorous specificity of Tit-Byts magazine in due time He wrote The famous writer Gilbert Kit Chesteron. In the newspaper The Washington Post On June 16, 1901, this bike was already mentioned in a changed version - supposedly the skeletons in the closet were announced by Doyle himself during one dinner party, and the decision to send such a telegram was the result of a public discussion, which ensued after that. Nevertheless, the story does not become more believable, even if we assume that Conan Doyle himself later told it.

In addition, one cannot but say that such a plot at least more than a century ago has become vague: Redyard Kipling In one of his works, he described such a psychological experiment, only in connection with betrayal, and not exposure. A similar telegram (only with friends instead of bankers) is attributed and Mark Twain.

Thus, with a high degree of confidence, it can be argued that the story of 12 bankers is the development of a popular but invented story about Arthur Conan Doyle.