Dr Grimesby Roylott is a violent, aggressive and intimidating character-
he is a man of immense strength, and absolutely uncontrollable in his anger.
He was very antisocial and unpopular
He had no friends at all save the wandering gipsies.
Roylott was also known to be physically violent towards his stepdaughters -
Holmes pushed back the frill of black lace which fringed the hand that lay upon our visitor's knee. Five little livid spots, the marks of four fingers and a thumb, were printed upon the white wrist.
"You have been cruelly used," said Holmes.
The lady coloured deeply and covered over her injured wrist. "He is a hard man," she said, "and perhaps he hardly knows his own strength."
Physically, Roylott is intimidating and threatening as his first encounter with Holmes testifies –
A large face, seared with a thousand wrinkles, burned yellow with the sun, and marked with every evil passion, was turned from one to the other of us, while his deep-set, bile-shot eyes, and his high, thin, fleshless nose, gave him somewhat the resemblance to a fierce old bird of prey.
Roylott is verbally contemptuous of those around him, particularly Holmes
"Holmes, the Scotland Yard Jack-in-office!"
He is not afraid to assert his own strength, even in front of as estimable a man as Holmes -
He stepped swiftly forward, seized the poker, and bent it into a curve with his huge brown hands.
The manner of Roylott’s death – a plan of his own design – is unpleasant and finally fells the formidable character
His chin was cocked upward and his eyes were fixed in a dreadful, rigid stare at the corner of the ceiling.
Holmes feels ‘indirectly responsible’ for Roylott’s death but is not aggrieved –
'I cannot say that it is likely to weigh very heavily upon my conscience.'
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