Dr. Lancelot Priestley

Dr. Lancelot Priestley is a fictional investigator in a series of books by John Rhode. After 1924, Dr. Priestley took over from Dr. Thorndyke as the leading fictional forensic investigator in Britain and featured in 72 novels written over 40 years, solving many ingenious and misleading murders.

For other uses, see Priestley (disambiguation).
Dr. Lancelot Priestley
First appearanceThe Paddington Mystery
Last appearanceThe Vanishing Diary
Created byJohn Rhode
In-universe information
GenderMale
OccupationForensic investigator
NationalityBritish

Character overview

Background

Priestley was born in July 1869.[1]

Dr. Priestley had previously held the chair of Applied Mathematics at a leading Midlands University until he abandoned his chair and retired to the house in Westbourne Terrace which he had inherited from his father. He is described as an independent researcher who delights in scientific controversy. Described in The Ellerby Case, Dr. Priestley's book "Fact and Fallacy":

..contained in every one of its two hundred odd pages a direct and trenchant attack upon those whom the author was apt to allude to as "The Orthodox Scientific School".[2] and "So the reviews poured in by every post: denunciatory, indignant, sometimes distinctly abusive. And Dr Priestley would sit and gloat over them, as a primitive warrior might gloat over the blood of his adversaries"[3]

Method and process

Dr. Priestley's involvement is usually at the request of the police, but only if the case piques his scientific curiosity; having little, or no, interest in criminal justice:

"Hanslet had brought many problems which confronted him in the course of his duties to Dr. Priestley's notice, usually with results highly satisfactory to himself. But in nearly every case Dr. Priestley's interest in the problem ceased when he had solved it to his own satisfaction. The fate of the criminal was a matter of complete unconcern to him. He treated detection much as he would have treated a game of chess. The pieces in the game had no more than a passing interest to him. Not that he was unsympathetic by nature, as many people had good cause to know. But, in the problems which Hanslet set before him, he purposely took a detached and impersonal attitude. Only in this way, as he more than once remarked, was it possible to maintain an impartial judgement"[4]

Associates and family

In the early books, Dr. Priestley provides assistance mainly to his friend Chief Inspector Hanslet. In later books, Dr. Priestley becomes an armchair detective and the bulk of the legwork is done by Superintendent Jimmy Waghorn of Scotland Yard and Priestley's secretary and companion, Harold Merefield. Merefield, whom Dr. Priestley cleared of a murder charge in the first book, The Paddington Mystery, is engaged to Dr. Priestley's daughter April. Superintendent Hanslet (now retired) appears in several later works as a dinner guest of Dr. Priestley, passing on his professional wisdom to Waghorn. Lastly, an old friend of Priestley's, Dr. Oldland, in later novels frequently joins the conclave at the professor's Saturday evening dinners and provides the medical viewpoint attendant on the various cases.

Novels

Radio plays
  • Dr. Priestley, BBC Empire Service, talk as part of the series 'Meet the Detective', 1935
  • The Strange Affair at the Old Dutch Mill, play featuring Inspector Jimmy Waghorn, BBC National Programme, 7 October 1938, as part of the series 'What Happened at 8:20?"
  • Death Travels First, two-part play featuring Inspector Jimmy Waghorn, BBC Home Service, 2 and 9 July 1940 as part of a series of plays by members of the Detection Club

References
  1. Rhode, John (1927). The Ellerby Case. Geoffrey Bles. p. 206.
  2. Rhode, John (1927). The Ellerby Case. Geoffrey Bles. p. 7.
  3. Rhode, John (1927). The Ellerby Case. Geoffrey Bles. p. 8.
  4. Rhode, John (1986). The Claverton Affair. Harper&Row. pp. 52–53. ISBN 0-06-080808-X.


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