社会背景分析

In the 1880s, the British society entered the period of industrial revolution, where the factory replaced the originally manual workshop. Namely, many big machines replaced the manual production. The British developed from agricultural society to industrial society, which sped up the development of the heavy industry. However, death race and insecurity index were increased when there was no enough safeguard for workers, which terribly made people afraid of this new power from science at the same time of enjoying it. As Oxford University historian Charles Boyle said in 1901: "It was not by plague, famine, or war that the English people inflicted such a fatal blow on their life force by establishing a factory system without proper protection." Scholars at that time were even asking whether Britain's rapid industrial revolution was a "boom" or a "crisis". In this background, the character of Holmes was a comfort for the whole British to adjust the tense connection between people and science.