By the 1890s Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had tired of his most famous creation. He had actually killed Sherlock Holmes off in his 1891 story, the Final Problem, in which Holmes apparently plunged to his death over a waterfall during a struggle with his arch- enemy, Professor Moriarty. However, such was the public clamour for the fictional detective's return that Doyle capitulated and revived Holmes for another story, the Adventure of the Empty House, in 1901. As Holmes himself explained his apparently miraculous survival:
Why did Holmes refer to "baritsu" rather than Bartitsu? No-one knows. It is possible that Doyle, who, like Barton-Wright, was writing for Pearson's Magazine during the late 1890s, was vaguely aware of Bartitsu and simply mis-remembered the term; it may even have been a typographical error. In any case, as Holmes became established as an expert boxer, fencer and singlestick player, the addition of a Japanese martial art to his repertoire actually brought him close to the Bartitsu ideal!
I'm a bit of a single-stick expert, as you know. I took most of them on my guard. It was the second man that was too much for me.
On his sporting interests while at University:
Bar fencing and boxing I had few athletic tastes, and then my line of study was quite distinct from that of the other fellows, so that we had no points of contact at all. - Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes
In all, though, Holmes remains a master detective whose best weapon is his mind; Doyle seldom makes more than passing reference to Holmes' fighting prowess.
