Doyle's inspiration for his stories was always based in his own experiences and people he knew. Hound of the Baskervilles was written after Doyle visited Devons

Doyle's inspiration for his stories was always based in his own experiences and people he knew. Hound of the Baskervilles was written after Doyle visited Devonshire. He admitted in his later years that the most glaring mistakes were when he wrote about places or occupations which he had no real history with - for example his geography in describing the United States is wildly incorrect (forgivable in the sense that at the time, the US was a backwater nation and England was the center of Western civilization) or in Silver Blaze, where he learned later that some key plot points were not accurate because he knew so little of horse husbandry. It's really not much of a reach to assume that he based his most notable characters on people he was very familiar with in his own life. The character of Watson is clearly based on himself, reacting to the genius of Homes and even Moriarty.