Dr. James Mortimer—Sir Charles Baskerville

The relationship between Dr. James Mortimer and Sir Charles Baskerville was both professional and personal: Mortimer attended Sir Charles as his doctor, became his friend, and was entrusted with information about the family legend that shaped Sir Charles’s final months. Their bond gave Mortimer knowledge of Sir Charles’s fears and health, and made him an important witness after his death.

Physician and Friend

Mortimer’s connection with Sir Charles began through medical attendance and grew into friendship. The two lived in a sparsely inhabited part of Dartmoor, where, as Mortimer explained, educated company was scarce. Sir Charles was retiring, but his illness brought doctor and patient together; their shared interest in science turned that proximity into a lasting intellectual companionship.

Sir Charles entrusted Mortimer with a family manuscript recording the Baskerville legend. Mortimer later brought the document to Sherlock Holmes, explaining that Sir Charles had committed it to his care. The trust was significant: Sir Charles took the family story seriously, and Mortimer was among the few people to whom he disclosed how deeply it affected him.

A Shared Scientific Life

The friendship was sustained by scientific conversation as well as medical need. Sir Charles had returned from South Africa with scientific knowledge, and the two spent many evenings discussing the comparative anatomy of the Bushman and the Hottentot. Mortimer recalled these meetings as a genuine community of interests, an intellectual life made possible by their unusual isolation on the moor.

That scientific outlook did not prevent Sir Charles from believing the family legend. Mortimer, himself a medical man, described Sir Charles as practical and unimaginative, yet said that he had become convinced a dreadful fate hung over his family. In their conversations, Mortimer thus occupied two roles at once: the scientific companion who knew Sir Charles’s habits of thought and the doctor who could see how fear was affecting him.

Confidence and Concealment

As Sir Charles’s confidence in the legend intensified, he repeatedly asked Mortimer whether he had ever encountered a strange creature or heard a hound baying during his night journeys. Mortimer also witnessed an episode that sharpened his understanding of Sir Charles’s terror: about three weeks before the death, Sir Charles stared past him in horror, and Mortimer glimpsed what appeared to be a large black calf near the head of the drive. Mortimer initially regarded the incident as trivial, but later recognized its importance in light of the tragedy.

After Sir Charles died, Mortimer revealed that he had withheld some of what he knew from the coroner’s inquiry. He feared that, as a man of science, he would appear to endorse popular superstition, and he believed that adding to the Hall’s grim reputation might leave it unoccupied. His decision shows both the discretion he exercised around his friend’s private fears and the limits of that discretion: when speaking privately to Holmes, he chose to disclose the fuller account.

Final Advice and Medical Witness

Concerned that Sir Charles’s heart was affected and that constant anxiety was worsening his health, Mortimer advised him to go to London for several months. He hoped the change and its distractions would help Sir Charles return in better condition. Sir Charles died before the plan could be carried out.

On the night of the death, Barrymore sent the groom Perkins on horseback to summon Mortimer. Mortimer reached Baskerville Hall within an hour. He retraced the marks along Yew Alley, inspected the place at the moor-gate where Sir Charles appeared to have waited, noted a change in the prints beyond it, and examined the body before it had been touched. His medical attendance and personal knowledge made him more than a formal investigator: he could compare the physical evidence with what he knew of Sir Charles’s health, fears, and recent behavior. The friendship therefore links the private history of Sir Charles’s dread to the evidence that sets the investigation in motion.