R. Austin Freeman

For other uses, see Austin Freeman.

Richard Austin Freeman
Born	(1862-04-11)11 April 1862 Soho, London, England
Died	28 September 1943(1943-09-28) (aged 81) Gravesend, Kent, England
Nationality	English
Other names	R. Austin Freeman
Occupation(s)	Medical Doctor and fiction writer
Years active	1887 – 1943
Known for	His fictional detective, Dr. John Thorndyke
Notable work	Mr Pottermack's Oversight

Dr. Richard Austin Freeman MRCS LSA (11 April 1862 – 28 September 1943) was a British writer of detective stories, mostly featuring the medico-legal forensic investigator Dr. Thorndyke. He invented the inverted detective story (a crime fiction in which the commission of the crime is described at the beginning, usually including the identity of the perpetrator, with the story then describing the detective's attempt to solve the mystery). This invention has been described as Freeman's most notable contribution to detective fiction. Freeman used some of his early experiences as a colonial surgeon in his novels. Many of the Dr. Thorndyke stories involve genuine, but sometimes arcane, points of scientific knowledge, from areas such as tropical medicine, metallurgy and toxicology.

Early life

Austin Freeman was the youngest of the five children of tailor Richard Freeman and Ann Maria Dunn. At the age of 18 he entered the medical school of the Middlesex Hospital and qualified MRCS and LSA in 1886.

After qualifying, Freeman spent a year as a house physician at the hospital. He married his childhood sweetheart Annie Elizabeth Edwards in London on 15 April 1887, and the couple later had two sons. He then entered the Colonial Service in 1887 as an assistant surgeon. He served for a time in Keta, Ghana, in 1887 during which time he dealt with an epidemic of black water fever which killed forty per cent of the European population at that port. He had six months of leave from mid 1888 and returned to Accra on the Gold Coast just in time to volunteer for the post of medical officer on the planned expedition to Ashanti and Jaman.

Freeman was the doctor, naturalist and surveyor for the expedition to Ashanti and Jaman, two independent states in the Gold Coast. The expedition set out from Accra on 8 December 1888, with a band consisting of a band-master and six boys playing two side drums and five fifes, three European officers (the Commissioner, Freeman and the Officer in Charge of the Constables), one Native officer, 100 Hausa constables, a gunners' party with a rocket trough, an apothecary, apothecary's assistant, a hospital orderly, and 200 bearers. The expedition went first to Kumasi (or Coolmassie as it appears in older accounts), the capital of the then independent kingdom of Ashanti. Their second port of call was Bondoukou, Ivory Coast, where they arrived only to find that the king had just signed a protectorate treaty with the French.

However, the expedition was a political failure as the British spokesman blurted out in front of the chiefs that the British were willing to supply a loan of £400 which the king had requested. However the King had requested this loan with the proviso that it be kept secret from his chiefs. He therefore denied any knowledge of it and the expedition moved on to Bontúku, the capital of Jaman. Here they were left cooling their heels while the King there finalised a treaty with the French, who had been quicker off the mark. The expedition was recalled after five months. Bleiler asserts, without any supporting evidence, that "It was mostly through Freeman's intelligence and tact that the expedition was not massacred". Although the mission overall was a failure, the collection of data by Freeman was a success, and his future in the colonial service seemed assured. Unfortunately, he became ill with blackwater fever and was invalided home in 1891, being discharged from the service two months before the minimum qualification period for a pension.

Career

Thus, he returned to London in 1891, and around 1892 served as temporary Acting Surgeon in Charge of the Throat and Ear Department at Middlesex Hospital. He was in general practice in London for about five years. He was appointed acting Deputy Medical Officer of Holloway Prison in about 1901, and Acting Assistant Medical Officer of the Port of London in 1904. A year later he suffered a complete breakdown in his health and gave up medicine for writing.

His first successful stories were the Romney Pringle rogue stories written in collaboration with John James Pitcairn (1860–1936), medical officer at Holloway Prison. Some were published first in Australia, under the joint pen name of Ralph J. Jay, and all of them were serialised under another pseudonym, "Clifford Ashdown" in Cassell's Magazine in 1902 and 1903.

In 1905 Freeman published his first solo novel, The Golden Pool, with the background drawn from his own time in West Africa. The protagonist is a young Englishman who steals a fetish treasure. Barzun and Taylor make the point that while this is a crime, the book was not regarded as crime fiction as "according to old notions" stealing things from Africans "is no crime". Bleiler wrote that "it is a colorful, thrilling story, all the more unusual in being ethnographically accurate" and that "it used to be required reading for members of the British colonial services in Africa."

Freeman's first Thorndyke story, The Red Thumb Mark, was published in 1907, and shortly afterwards he pioneered the inverted detective story, in which the identity of the criminal is shown from the beginning. Some short stories with this feature were collected in The Singing Bone in 1912. During the First World War, he served as an induction physician and a captain in the Royal Army Medical Corps and afterwards produced a Thorndyke novel almost every year until his death in 1943.

Later life

Freeman briefly stopped writing at the outbreak of the Second World War, but then resumed writing in an air-raid shelter he had built in his garden. Freeman was plagued by Parkinson's disease in his later years. This makes his achievement all the more remarkable, as in his declining years he wrote both Mr. Polton Explains, which Bleiler says "... is in some ways his best novel", and The Jacob Street Mystery (1942) in which Roberts considers that Thorndyke "is at his analytical best." He was living at 94, Windmill Street, Gravesend, Kent when he died on 28 September 1943. His estate was valued at £6,471 5s 11d. Freeman was buried in the old Gravesend and Milton Cemetery at Gravesend. The Thorndyke File started a funding drive to erect a granite marker for Freeman's grave, and this was erected in September 1979, with the text: Richard Austin Freeman, 1862 – 1943, Physician and Author, Erected by the friends of "Dr. Thorndyke", 1979.

Political views

The Uttermost Farthing cover, illustrated by H. Weston Taylor

Freeman held conservative political views. In his 1921 book Social Decay and Regeneration Freeman put forth the view that mechanization had flooded Britain with poor-quality goods and created a "homogenized, restless, unionized working class". Freeman supported the eugenics movement and argued that people with "undesirable" biological traits should be prevented from breeding through "segregation, marriage restriction, and sterilization". The book also attacked the British Labour movement and criticised the British government for permitting immigrants (whom Freeman referred to as "Sub-Man") to settle in Britain. Social Decay and Regeneration referred to the Russian Revolution as "the Russian catastrophe" and argued that society needed to protected from "degenerates of the destructive or "Bolshevik type." Sections of Social Decay and Regeneration were reprinted in Eugenics Review, the journal of the British Eugenics Society.

Anti-Semitism

Freeman's views on Jewish people were complex stereotypes. They are clearly set out in his eugenicist book Social Decay and Regeneration (1921). Here Freeman states that of vulgarity "the only ancient peoples who exhibited it on an appreciable scale were the Jews and especially the Phoenician." Freeman notes that a large proportion of the "Alien Unfit" crowding the East End of London, "largely natives of Eastern Europe" are Jews. However, the criticism is of the poor rather than of Jews overall as these unfit aliens were "far from being the elect of their respective races". Freeman regards that, through restricting marriage with non-Jews, Jews as having practised racial segregation "for thousands of years with the greatest success and with very evident benefit to the race". Not surprisingly, some of these views spill over into his fiction.

Grost states that Helen Vardon's Confession (1922) "is another bad Freeman novel suffering from offensive racial stereotypes". Helen Vardon is blackmailed into marrying the fat, old, money-lender Otway, who was "distinctly Semitic in appearance", and is surrounded by Jews, to save her father from prison. Otway acts in bad faith, and is grasping, keeping only one servant despite his great wealth. The whole plot is a gratuitously offensive anti-Semitic stereotype. Grost also states that the use of racial stereotypes in The D'Arblay Mystery (1926) "marks it as a low point in Freeman's fiction". However, the villain is not Jewish at all, and the only question of stereotypes comes up in the questions about whether the villain's (false) hooked nose is "a curved Jewish type, or a squarer Roman nose?" There are no anti-Semitic tropes in the book, no grasping money-lender etc. Grost describes Pontifex, Son and Thorndyke (1931), as degenerating into "another of Freeman's anti-Semitic diatribes". In this novel the villains are largely Jewish, and come from the community of "unfit aliens" that Freeman lambastes in Social Decay and Regeneration.

Such offensive representations of Jews in fiction were typical of the time. Rubinstein and Jolles note that while the work of many of the leading detective story writers, such as Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, and Freeman, featured many gratuitously negative depictions of stereotyped Jewish characters, this ended with the rise of Hitler, and they then portrayed Jews and Jewish refugees in a sympathetic light. Thus with Freeman, the later novels no longer present such gratuitously offensive racial stereotypes, but present Jews much more positively.

In When Rogues Fall Out (1932) Mr. Toke describes the Jewish cabinetmaker Levy as "A most excellent workman and a thoroughly honest man", high praise from Freeman's pen. The counsel for Dolby the burglar, "a good-looking Jew named Lyon" executes a particularly brilliant defence of his client which Thorndyke admires. In Felo de Se; or Death at the Inn (1937) the croupier is described as "a pleasant-faced Jew, calm, impassive and courteous, though obviously very much 'on the spot'". In The Stoneware Monkey (1938), Thorndyke is using a young Jewish man as his messenger. In Mr Polton Explains (1938), Polton is assisted first by the Jewish watchmaker Abraham and then by the Jewish solicitor Cohen, who comes to Polton's aid not once but twice, not only representing him without cost, but feeding him and lending him money without interest or term.

Critical assessment

Freeman was a significant author of detective fiction in his day. He was most famous for his creation of Dr. Thorndyke, and many of the obituaries recording his death referred to this in the headlines. Thus the Birmingham Daily Gazette announced "'Dr. Thorndyke' Creator Dead", the Belfast News-Letter announced "Obituary Dr. R. A. Freeman, Creator of 'Dr. Thorndyke'", and the Evening Star (Dunedin) announced "Obituary: Creator of Dr. Thorndyke".

Critical comment has tended to concentrate on four aspects of Thorndyke: Freeman's quality as a writer; the close attention to logic, scientific accuracy and methods in his stories; the invention of the inverted detective story, and comparisons with Sherlock Holmes. The Times considered that the second and third of these were what singled Freeman "out from the ruck".

Writing

In Bloody Murder, Julian Symons wrote that Freeman's "... talents as a writer were negligible. Reading a Freeman story is very much like chewing dry straw." Symons then went on to criticise the way in which Thorndyke spoke. De Blacam also noted Thorndyke's "ponderous legal phraseology". However, that pedantic ponderousness is the nature of Thorndyke's character. He is a barrister and used to weighing his words carefully. He never discusses his analysis until he has built the whole picture. Others do not agree with his assessment of Freeman's writing skills. Raymond Chandler, in a 13 December 1949 letter to Hamish Hamilton said: "This man Austin Freeman is a wonderful performer. He has no equal in his genre and he is also a much better writer than you might think, if you were superficially inclined, because in spite of the immense leisure of his writing he accomplishes an even suspense which is quite unexpected."

Binyon also rates Freeman's writing as inferior to Doyle saying "Thorndyke might be the superior detective, Conan Doyle is undeniably the better writer." The Birmingham Daily Post considered that "Mr. Austin Freeman was not, perhaps, among the finer artists of the short story, and his longer stories could limp, sometimes" but that his approach was very effective.

However, de Blacam makes the point that, quite apart from the description of the investigation, each of the descriptions of the crimes in the inverted stories "was a fine piece of descriptive writing". Grost agrees that "Freeman's descriptive writing is excellent" Adey finds that: "Freeman's writing, though lacking Doyle's atmospheric touch, was clear and concise, with dry humor and a keen eye for deductive detail." Adams agreed that Freeman had considerable powers of narrative description when he stated that "Nothing but the author's remarkable skill in character delineation and graphic narrative" could save his stories from being regarded as technical studies for a course on forensic medicine.

The proof of the pudding is in the eating, and Bleiler noted in 1973 that Freeman "... is one of the very few Edwardian detective story writers who are still read".

The inverted story

Nowadays, the inverted detective story, where we first witness the crime and then watch the attempt to solve it, is commonplace. For example, this is the format of almost every episode of the television detective series Columbo starring Peter Falk. However, this approach was an innovation in November 1910 when Freeman's "Oscar Brodski" appeared in Pearson's Magazine. and immediately attracted attention. The Northern Whig said that "Oscar Brodski" was "one of the most powerful detective stories we have ever read". Bleiler said that this story "has always been considered one of the landmarks in the history of the detective story".

In his essay The Art of the Detective Story Freeman wrote that in the inverted story: "The reader had seen the crime committed, knew all about the criminal, and was in possession of all the facts. It would have seemed that there was nothing left to tell, but I calculated that the reader would be so occupied with the crime that he would overlook the evidence. And so it turned out. The second part, which described the investigation of the crime, had to most readers the effect of new matter." However, Binyon notes that Freeman is being too modest here, and that it was Freeman's art that kept the reader's attention in the second part.

Reviewers approved of Freeman's inverted tales. The Scotsman said that Freeman had "... proved that a tale which tells the story of the crime first, leaving us to follow the sleuth as he tracks the criminal down, may be at least as absorbing as the old yarns which left us in the dark until the end". Rodgers noted that "Great narrative skill is needed in order to keep the reader's interest" in a story where the crime if revealed at that start and that there have been imitators "Freeman alone stands as not only the originator, but as the most successful proponent of this form of detective fiction".

Precision of logic, facts, and method

Freeman paid a great deal of attention to details, and carried out the experiments described in his books to ensure that they worked and would give the expected results. He also went to the trouble of visiting the places he wrote about so that the details in his descriptions were correct. De Balcam says that "Freeman displays a mastery of craftsmanship" in every story, and that he always used the language of the trade concerned. Freeman is "a man who writes of things that he has seen, handled and understood, and not of things that he has met only in print, or in a hazy, inattentive observation". This is a critical aspect of Freeman - he tested the methods he used. The top floor of his house was a workshop and laboratory, and his books sometimes included drawings or micrographs illustrating the evidence.

One instance that shows that the methods and approaches described by Freeman were practicable lies in the prosecution of an apprentice from Barrow for coining. The apprentice had followed a method described in one of the Danby Croker stories by Freeman, and had produced a number of sovereigns that he had successfully passed.

The Birmingham Post noted that his attention to forensic science was fuller and "certainly more systematically than any other writer of detective stories" and that the accuracy of his stories gained him "an exceptionally large proportion of readers of the more exacting and less easily satisfied type".

On logic Adams stated that to read Freeman's cases intelligently "... implies a definite exercise in the use of 'Mill's Canons of Inductive Logic'" and the books offered a very practical means of testing students' understanding of the canons. Herbert notes that Thorndyke's reasoning "... is distinguished by its rigorous logic". Thorndyke, like his creator, was a medical man and also a barrister, and "combined his legal and medical training into a personage of willful dominance, impeccable logic, and scholarly and comprehensive inductive reasoning".

Comparisons with Sherlock Holmes

Inevitably, commentators compared Thorndyke with Holmes. Binyon says that Thorndyke stands out from the other late Victorian and early Edwardian detectives in being a rival to Sherlock Holmes, rather than just owing their existence to his success. "Thorndyke is the most impressive and the most intellectually powerful of fictional detectives." Poupard notes that "In critical comparisons with Holmes, Dr. Thorndyke is deemed the more accurate thinker and ranked superior as a scientific authority, whereas Holmes is considered the superior literary creation". One immediate clue to the difference between Thorndyke and Holmes, is that Holmes calls his inductive reasoning deduction, a mistake that Thorndyke would never make. Binyon notes that Holmes often makes factual errors, referring to the blue carbuncle as crystallised charcoal, when it contains no carbon, and referring to non-existent species or martial arts.

Ward compares how Holmes deals with a hat as a clue in Doyle's short story The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle (1892) with how Thorndyke treats a similar clue in Freeman's short story The Anthropologist at Large (1909). After examining the hat, Holmes declares that:

1. The man is intellectual – as he has a large head size.
2. That he was once well to do, but is no longer – as the hat was an expensive style from three years ago that is now shabby.
3. That he was a man of foresight, but has suffered moral retrogression, probably due to drink – as the hat has had a safety guard fitted to it, but the owner has failed to renew the elastic.
4. That he is middle-aged, has grizzled hair which had recently been cut and that he used lime cream – from an examination of the lining
5. That his wife has ceased to love him – as the hat has not been brushed for weeks (there is other evidence that he is married).
6. That he probably does not have town-gas in his house – as there are several tallow stains, presumably from guttering candles, on the hat.

For his part, the first observation that Thorndyke makes is that hats often change owners over their lives, so one needs to interpret the evidence with caution. This immediately explodes at least the second and third of Holmes's conclusions. Thorndyke then induces that:

1. The man is Japanese – from the shape of the head, as the hat has clearly been steamed to fit a particular head, and from a hair sample, which matches Japanese rather than European or African hair.
2. That he works at a mother of pearl factory – due to the large amount of pearl shell dust inside the hat. At the time, this business was largely carried out by Japanese and Chinese immigrants.
3. That he is a decent orderly man – as there is no accumulation of dust on the outside of his hat.

Ward notes that Thorndyke's conclusions are sound, less capricious, and more practical, and allow Thorndyke to track his man down, whereas Holmes has to advertise to find his.

Herbert notes that in comparison to Holmes, "Thorndyke has no eccentricities, and his reasoning, unlike that of his contemporary, is distinguished by its rigorous logic – considered purely as a detective, he is perhaps the most impressive of all fictional sleuths".

Bibliography

Longer works by Freeman including collaborations

The following list is based on:

• The entries for Freeman, and the pseudonym, Clifford Ashdown, for his collaboration with John James Pitcairn in the Jisc Library Hub Discover catalogue.
• The list of Freeman titles in Make Mine a Mystery by G. W. Neibuhr
• The list of Freeman and Ashdown titles in A Catalogue of Crime by Barzun and Taylor.
• The list provided in the Dictionary of Literary Biography by John McAleer.
• The list in the Crime Fiction 1749-1980: A Bibliography, by Hubin.

Longer works written by Freeman including short story collections and non-fiction.

Ser	UK Pub		Thorndyke	Other Author	Pages	First publication	Other Publication	Notes
1	1893	A Journey to Bontúku : In the Interior of West Africa			p. [117]-146, illus., fold. Map, 25 cm.	Lon: Royal Geographical Society
2	1898	Travels and Life in Ashanti and Jaman			xx, 559p., fs., ill., maps (1 fold.), 24 cm.	Lon: Constable	NY: Stokes
3	1902	The Adventures of Romney Pringle, etc.	Romney Pringle	J. J. Pitcairn	198 p, 1pl., 8º	Lon: Ward Lock	Phil.: Train (1968)
4	1905	The Golden Pool: A Story of a Forgotten Mine			vii, 341, 8, 8 p., 8º	Lon: Cassell	NY: Cassell
5	1907	The Red Thumb Mark	Yes		232 p., 8º	Lon: Collingwood	NY: Newton (1911)
6	1909	John Thorndyke's Cases (Dr. Thorndyke's Cases in US)	Yes		246p., ill., plan, 8vo.	Lon: Chatto & Windus	NY: Dodd, Mead (1931)
7	1911	The Eye of Osiris (The Vanishing Man in US)	Yes		viii, 304, 8 p., 8º	Lon: Hodder & Stoughton	NY: Dodd, Mead
8	1912	The Mystery of 31, New Inn	Yes		xii, 311 p., 8º	Lon: Hodder & Stoughton	Phil.: Winston (1913)
9	1912	The Singing Bone	Yes		312 p., 8º	Lon: Hodder & Stoughton	NY: Hodder and Stoughton
10	1913	The Unwilling Adventurer			389 p., 8º	Lon: Hodder & Stoughton	NY: Hodder and Stoughton
11	1914	The Uttermost Farthing: A Savant's Vendetta			296 p., 8º	Phil.: Winston	Lon: Pearson (1920)
12	1914	A Silent Witness	Yes		(6), 316 p., 8º	Lon: Hodder & Stoughton	Phil.: Winston (1915)
13	1916	The Exploits of Danby Croker			307 p., 8º	Lon: Duckworth
14	1918	The Great Portrait Mystery	Yes		318 p., 8º	Lon: Hodder & Stoughton
15	1921	Social Decay and Regeneration			xx, 345 p; 24 cm.	Lon: Constable	Boston & NY: Houghton Mifflin
16	1922	Helen Vardon's Confession	Yes		335 p., 8º	Lon: Hodder & Stoughton
17	1923	Dr. Thorndyke's Case-Book (The Blue Scarab in the US)	Yes		317 p., 8º	NY: Dodd Mead, (1924)
18	1923	The Cat's Eye	Yes		304 p., 8º	Lon: Hodder & Stoughton	NY: Dodd, Mead (1927)
19	1924	The Mystery of Angelina Frood	Yes		320 p., 8º	Lon: Hodder & Stoughton	NY: Dodd, Mead (1925)
20	1925	The Puzzle Lock	Yes		320 p., 8º	Lon: Hodder & Stoughton	NY: Dodd, Mead (1926)
21	1925	The Shadow of the Wolf	Yes		320 p., 8º	Lon: Hodder & Stoughton	NY: Dodd, Mead
22	1926	The D'Arblay Mystery	Yes		312 p., 8º	Lon: Hodder & Stoughton	NY: Dodd, Mead
23	1927	The Magic Casket	Yes		309 p., 8º	Lon: Hodder & Stoughton	NY: Dodd, Mead
24	1927	A Certain Dr. Thorndyke	Yes		310 p., 8º	Lon: Hodder & Stoughton	NY: Dodd, Mead (1927)
25	1927	The Surprising Experiences of Mr. Shuttlebury Cobb			281 p., 8º	Lon: Hodder & Stoughton
26	1928	As a Thief in the Night	Yes		320 p., 8º	Lon: Hodder & Stoughton	NY: Dodd, Mead
27	1928	Flighty Phyllis			315 p., 8º	Lon: Hodder & Stoughton
28	1929	The Famous Cases of Dr. Thorndyke	Yes		viii, 1080 p., 8º	Lon: Hodder & Stoughton
29	1930	Dr. Thorndyke Investigates	Yes		159 p., 8º	Lon: Univ. of Lon. Press
30	1930	Mr. Pottermack's Oversight	Yes		319 p., 8º	Lon: Hodder & Stoughton	NY: Dodd, Mead
31	1931	Pontifex, Son and Thorndyke	Yes		320 p., 8º	Lon: Hodder & Stoughton	NY: Dodd, Mead
32	1932	When Rogues Fall Out (Dr. Thorndyke's Discovery in US)	Yes		320 p., 8º	Lon: Hodder & Stoughton	NY: Dodd, Mead
33	1933	Dr. Thorndyke Intervenes	Yes		317 p., 8º	Lon: Hodder & Stoughton
34	1934	For the Defence: Dr. Thorndyke	Yes		319 p., 8º	Lon: Hodder & Stoughton	NY: Dodd, Mead
35	1936	The Penrose Mystery	Yes		317 p., 8º	Lon: Hodder & Stoughton	NY: Dodd, Mead
36	1937	Felo De Se? (Death at the Inn in the US)	Yes		315 p., 8º	Lon: Hodder & Stoughton	NY: Dodd, Mead
37	1938	The Stoneware Monkey	Yes		288 p., 2pl.: ill., 8º	Lon: Hodder & Stoughton	NY: Dodd, Mead (1939)
38	1940	Mr. Polton Explains	Yes		285 p., 8º	Lon: Hodder & Stoughton	NY: Dodd, Mead
39	1941	Dr. Thorndyke's Crime File: A Selection of His Most Celebrated Cases	Yes		xv p., 344 p., 16 p., 312 p., 18 p., 338 p., 8º	NY: Dodd, Mead
40	1942	The Jacob Street Mystery (The Unconscious Witness in the US)	Yes		286 p., 8º	Lon: Hodder & Stoughton	NY: Dodd, Mead
41	1969	The Further Adventures of Romney Pringle	Romney Pringle	J. J. Pitcairn	216 p., 8º	Phil.: Train
42	1973	The Best Dr. Thorndyke Detective Stories, with an introduction by E. F. Bleiler	Yes		ix, 274 p., 8º	NY: Dover
43	1973	The Stoneware Monkey & The Penrose Mystery: Two Dr.Thorndyke Novels by R. Austin Freeman, with a new Introduction by E. F. Bleiler	Yes		viii, 440, 15, 8º	NY: Dover
44	1975	From a Surgeon's Diary	Romney Pringle	J. J. Pitcairn	56 p., 8º	Lon: Ferret Fantasy	Phil.: Train (1977)
45	1975	The Queen's Treasure		J. J. Pitcairn	238 p., 8º	Phil.: Train
46	1999	The Other Eye of Osiris	Yes		x, 253 p. : ill., 1 port., 8º	Shelburne: Battered Box

Detailed content of short-story collections

• John Thorndyke's Cases (1909) (published in the United States as Dr. Thorndyke's Cases)

1. The Man with the Nailed Shoes
2. The Stranger's Latchkey
3. The Anthropologist at Large
4. The Blue Sequin
5. The Moabite Cipher
6. The Mandarin's Pearl
7. The Aluminum Dagger
8. A Message from the Deep Sea

• The Singing Bone (1912) (published in the United States as The Adventures of Dr. Thorndyke)

1. The Case of Oscar Brodski (an inverted short story)
   1. Part I. The Mechanism of Crime
   2. Part II. The Mechanism of Detection
2. A Case of Premeditation (an inverted short story)
   1. Part I. The Elimination of Mr. Pratt
   2. Part II. Rival Sleuth-Hounds
3. The Echo of a Mutiny (an inverted short story)
   1. Part I. Death on the Girdler
   2. Part II. "The Singing Bone"
4. A Wastrel's Romance (an inverted short story)
   1. Part I. The Spinster's Guest
   2. Part II. Munera Pulveris
5. The Old Lag
   1. Part I. The Changed Immutable
   2. Part II. The Ship of the Desert

• The Great Portrait Mystery and other Stories (1918)

1. The Great Portrait Mystery (not a Thorndyke story)
2. The Bronze Parrot (not a Thorndyke story)
3. The Missing Mortgagee (an inverted Thorndyke short story)
4. Powder Blue and Hawthorne (not a Thorndyke story)
5. Percival Bland's Proxy (an inverted Thorndyke short story)
6. The Attorney's Conscience (not a Thorndyke story)
7. The Luck of Barnabas Mudge (not a Thorndyke story)

• Dr. Thorndyke's Casebook (1923) (published in the United States as The Blue Scarab)

1. The Case of the White Footprints
2. The Blue Scarab
3. The New Jersey Sphinx
4. The Touchstone
5. A Fisher of Men
6. The Stolen Ingots
7. The Funeral Pyre

• The Puzzle Lock (1925)

1. The Puzzle Lock
2. The Green Check Jacket
3. The Seal of Nebuchadnezzar
4. Phyllis Annesley's Peril
5. A Sower of Pestilence
6. Rex v. Burnaby
7. A Mystery of the Sand-hills
8. The Apparition of Burling Court
9. The Mysterious Visitor

• The Magic Casket (1927)

1. The Magic Casket
2. The Contents of a Mare's Nest
3. The Stalking Horse
4. The Naturalist at Law
5. Mr. Ponting's Alibi
6. Pandora's Box
7. The Trail of Behemoth
8. The Pathologist to the Rescue
9. Gleanings from the Wreckage

• The Famous Cases of Dr. Thorndyke (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1929 and later reprintings) -- an omnibus of previously published stories

1. The Case of Oscar Brodski (an inverted short story)
   1. Part I. The Mechanism of Crime
   2. Part II. The Mechanism of Detection
2. A Case of Premeditation (an inverted short story)
   1. Part I. The Elimination of Mr. Pratt
   2. Part II. Rival Sleuth-Hounds
3. The Echo of a Mutiny (an inverted short story)
   1. Part I. Death on the Girdler
   2. Part II. "The Singing Bone"
4. A Wastrel's Romance (an inverted short story)
   1. Part I. The Spinster's Guest
   2. Part II. Munera Pulveris
5. The Missing Mortgagee (an inverted Thorndyke short story)
6. Percival Bland's Proxy (an inverted Thorndyke short story)
7. The Old Lag
   1. Part I. The Changed Immutable
   2. Part II. The Ship of the Desert
8. Stranger's Latchkey
9. The Anthropologist at Large
10. The Blue Sequin
11. The Moabite Cipher
12. The Aluminum Dagger
13. The Magic Casket
14. The Contents of a Mare's Nest
15. The Stalking Horse
16. The Naturalist at Law
17. Mr. Ponting's Alibi
18. Pandora's Box
19. The Trail of Behemoth
20. The Pathologist to the Rescue
21. Gleanings from the Wreckage
22. The Puzzle Lock
23. The Green Check Jacket
24. The Seal of Nebuchadnezzar
25. Phyllis Annesley's Peril
26. A Sower of Pestilence
27. Rex v. Burnaby
28. A Mystery of the Sand-hills
29. The Apparition of Burling Court
30. The Mysterious Visitor
31. The Case of the White Footprints
32. The Blue Scarab
33. The New Jersey Sphinx
34. The Touchstone
35. A Fisher of Men
36. The Stolen Ingots
37. The Funeral Pyre

The American edition of this is R. Austin Freeman, The Dr. Thorndyke Omnibus: 38 of His Criminal Investigations as set down by R. Austin Freeman (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1932 and later reprintings). The American edition includes one story, "The Mandarin's Pearl," printed in the first Thorndyke short-story collection, John Thorndyke's Cases, but omitted from the British omnibus. Two other stories, though also appearing in the first Dr. Thorndyke short-story collection, John Thorndyke's Cases, were omitted from the British and American editions of the omnibus collection: "The Man with the Nailed Shoes" and "A Message from the Deep Sea."

• The Best Dr. Thorndyke Detective Stories (1973), edited by E.F. Bleiler.

1. The Case of Oscar Broski (an inverted short story)
   1. Part I. The Mechanism of Crime
   2. Part II. The Mechanism of Detection
2. A Case of Premeditation (an inverted short story)
   1. Part I. The Elimination of Mr. Pratt
   2. Part II. Rival Sleuth-Hounds
3. The Echo of a Mutiny (an inverted short story)
   1. Part I. Death on the Girdler
   2. Part II. "The Singing Bone"
4. The Mandarin's Pearl
5. The Blue Sequin
6. The Moabite Cipher
7. The Aluminum Dagger
8. 31 New Inn (believed to have been written about 1905 and later expanded to novel length), which was also published in volume I of the Freeman omnibus, published by Battered Silicon Dispatch Box

• The Dead Hand and Other Uncollected Stories, edited by Douglas G. Greene and Tony Medawar (Shelburne, Ontario: The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 1999).

1. The Dead Hand. (This story was believed to have been written in 1912 and later expanded to novel length as The Shadow of the Wolf; the short story was also published in Detection by Gaslight, 14 Victorian detective stories, an anthology by Douglas G. Greene (Dover. 1997).
2. The Sign of the Ram
3. The Mystery of Hoo Marsh
4. The Mystery of the Seven Banana Skins
5. Caveat Emptor: The Story of a Pram
6. Victims of Circumstance
7. The Great Tobacco "Plant"
8. Beyond the Dreams of Avarice
9. A Bird of Passage: A Story of the Thames
10. The Sleuth-Hounds
11. The Free Trip
12. The Comedy of the Artemis
13. The Resurrection of Matthew Jephson
14. A Signal Success
15. The Ebb Tide
16. By the Black Deep
17. A Question of Salvage
18. Under the Clock
19. The Costume Model
20. Ye Olde Spotted Dogge
21. A Suburban Autolycus
22. A Woman's Vengeance
23. Ruth
24. The Great Slump
25. The Art of the Detective Story
26. The Cleverest Murder - In Fact or Fiction
27. The Peasenhall Mystery
28. Meet Dr Thorndyke

Short stories written with John James Pitcairn

• "The Assyrian Rejuvenator". Australian Town & Country Journal, 13 and 20 July 1901, as by "Ralph J Jay". Reprinted Cassell's Magazine, June 1902, as by "Clifford Ashdown". Collected in The Adventures of Romney Pringle.
• "The Foreign Office Despatch". Australian Town & Country Journal, 20 and 27 July 1901, as by "Ralph J Jay". Reprinted Cassell's Magazine, July 1902, as by "Clifford Ashdown". Collected in The Adventures of Romney Pringle
• "The Chicago Heiress". Australian Town & Country Journal, 27 July and 3 August 1901, as by "Ralph J Jay". Reprinted Cassell's Magazine, August 1902, as by "Clifford Ashdown". Collected in The Adventures of Romney Pringle
• "The Lizard's Scale". Australian Town & Country Journal, 10 August 1901, as by "Ralph J Jay". Reprinted Cassell's Magazine, September 1902, as by "Clifford Ashdown". Collected in The Adventures of Romney Pringle
• "The Paste Diamonds". Australian Town & Country Journal, 17 August 1901, as by "Ralph J Jay". Reprinted Cassell's Magazine, October 1902, as by "Clifford Ashdown". Collected in The Adventures of Romney Pringle
• "The Kailyard Novel". Australian Town & Country Journal, 24 August 1901, as by "Ralph J Jay". Reprinted Cassell's Magazine, November 1902, as by "Clifford Ashdown". Collected in The Adventures of Romney Pringle
• "The Submarine Boat". Cassell's Magazine, June 1903, as by "Clifford Ashdown". Collected in The Further Adventures of Romney Pringle
• "The Kimberley Fugitive". Cassell's Magazine, July 1903, as by "Clifford Ashdown". Collected in The Further Adventures of Romney Pringle
• "The Silk Worms of Florence". Cassell's Magazine, August 1903, as by "Clifford Ashdown". Collected in The Further Adventures of Romney Pringle
• "The Box of Specie". Cassell's Magazine, September 1903, as by "Clifford Ashdown". Collected in The Further Adventures of Romney Pringle
• "The Silver Ingots". Cassell's Magazine, October 1903, as by "Clifford Ashdown". Collected in The Further Adventures of Romney Pringle
• "The House of Detention". Cassell's Magazine, November 1903, as by "Clifford Ashdown". Collected in The Further Adventures of Romney Pringle
• "The Adventure at Heath Crest". Cassell's Magazine, December 1904, as by "Clifford Ashdown". Collected in From a Surgeon's Diary
• "How I Acted for an Invalid Doctor". Cassell's Magazine, January 1905, as by "Clifford Ashdown". Collected in From a Surgeon's Diary
• "How I Attended a Nervous Patient". Cassell's Magazine, February 1905, as by "Clifford Ashdown". Collected in From a Surgeon's Diary
• "How I Met a Very Ignorant Practitioner". Cassell's Magazine, March 1905, as by "Clifford Ashdown". Collected in From a Surgeon's Diary
• "How I Cured a Hopeless Paralytic". Cassell's Magazine, April 1905, as by "Clifford Ashdown". Collected in From a Surgeon's Diary
• "How I Helped to Lay a Ghost". Cassell's Magazine, May 1905, as by "Clifford Ashdown". Collected in From a Surgeon's Diary

Uncollected short stories

The short stories from Cassell's Family Magazine are from the index of fiction prepared for the Victorian Fiction Research Unit, Department of English, University of Queensland by Sue Thomas."

• The Mutiny on the Speedwell. Novel Magazine, May 1914 (Jack Osmond). See also A Certain Dr Thorndyke
• The Gun Runner. Novel Magazine, June 1914 (Jack Osmond). See also A Certain Dr Thorndyke

Non-fiction

• The Interior of the Gold Coast. Macmillan's Magazine, June 1899
• In the London Docks. Living London, January 1902
• Hospital London. Living London, June 1902. Reprinted Living London, December 1902
• Afflicted London. Living London, September 1902. Reprinted Living London, October 1905
• The Coastwise Lights of England. Cassell's Magazine, November 1902
• London below Bridge. Living London, December 1902. Reprinted Living London, January 1906
• The Royal Yacht. Cassell's Magazine, April 1903
• A Thames Sailing Barge Match. Cassell's Magazine, September 1903
• Small Yacht Racing. Cassell's Magazine, May 1904
• The Sentinels of the Port of London. Cassell's Magazine, October 1905
• Down the River. Cassell's Magazine, January 1906
• The Tightening Grip. Straits Times, 5 November 1917
• The Art of the Detective Story. The Nineteenth Century and After, May 1924
• The Pendulum. Todmorden Advertiser and Hebden Bridge Newsletter, 23 March 1928
• Hot Boiled Beans. Newark Advertiser, 7 November 1928
• An Englishman's Rights. Nottingham Evening Post, 28 February 1929
• The Two Aspects of Liberty. Hartlepool Northern Daily Mail, 10 April 1933
• Democracy to Dictatorship. Hartlepool Northern Daily Mail, 3 March 1934 (Freeman's original title was "From Democracy to Dictatorship")
• Liberty and Property. Nottingham Evening Post, 29 November 1934
• The Return of the Autocrat - Orders in Council. Linlithgow Gazette, 3 April 1936
• What Has become of Democracy?. Mid-Sussex Times, 28 April 1936
• Liberty and Intelligence. Portsmouth Evening News, 16 October 1936
• Does Dullness Create Dictatorship?. Hartlepool Northern Daily Mail, 17 October 1936
• Preservation of Liberty. Portsmouth Evening News, 18 June 1937
• Liberty and Reciprocity. Linlithgowshire Gazette, 18 June 1937
• On Being a Good Neighbour. Kirkintilloch Herald, 23 June 1937
• Liberty and Physique. Hartlepool Northern Daily Mail, 29 January 1938
• Enemies of Liberty. West London Observer, 2 December 1938
• War is Destructive of Liberty. Sunderland Daily Echo & Shipping Gazette, 14 July 1939
• Liberty and Peace. West London Observer, 21 July 1939
• Individualism and War. Falkirk Herald, 18 October 1939
• War Sacrifices for a Purpose. Grimsby Daily Telegraph, 23 November 1939
• Hard Cases and Bad Law. Hartlepool Northern Daily Mail, 4 April 1940
• Liberties Surrendered for Future Freedom. Portsmouth Evening News, 12 September 1940 [Also published as Hitlerism 'On Appro.', Freeman's original title, Motherwell Times, 13 September 1940]
• Freedom of the Citizen. Hartlepool Northern Daily Mail, 13 September 1940
• Good Breeding - The Importance of Eugenics. Thanet Advertiser, 25 April 1941
• Eugenics and Liberty. Falkirk Herald, 23 April 1941; also published as ‘'Good Breeding; The Importance of Eugenics'’. Thanet Adviser, 25 April 1941
• What of the Future?. Falkirk Herald, 29 October 1941
• The Passing of Personal Liberty. Hartlepool Northern Daily Mail, 24 April 1942; also published as The Passing of Personal Liberty towards the Human Ant-Hill. West London Observer, 1 May 1942. (Freeman's original title was The Passing of Freedom)
• Liberty and Equality. Falkirk Herald, 9 September 1942
• Medical Profession: Dangers of State Service. 25 November 1942. Also published as Medical Profession and Socialization of the Medical Profession (Freeman's original title)
• The Doppelganger. Publication unknown
• The Economics of Liberty. Publication unknown
• The Militant's Strategy. Publication unknown
• Is Fingerprint Evidence Fallible?. Publication unknown
• His Majesty's Savings. Publication unknown
• The Renegades. Publication unknown
• The Three Wishes. Publication unknown
• The Unauthorised Raiders. Publication unknown

Unconfirmed stories

[From the records of Freeman's agent, A P Watt, Tony Medawar identified that Freeman had been paid for the following items.]

• The Adventures of Jack Osmond Publication unknown. See also A Certain Dr Thorndyke
• The Auchtermuchtie Burglary Publication unknown
• The Automatic Boat Publication unknown
• La Belle Anglaise Publication unknown
• The Cavern Publication unknown
• A Corpse in the Case Publication unknown. This may be a reference to "Corpse in the Case", an adaptation of Dr Thorndyke Intervenes by Mollie Hardwick, broadcast on the BBC Home Service on 9 June 1962 and starring Cyril Luckham as Thorndyke.
• A Crusader's Misadventures Publication unknown
• The Haarschneide Machine Publication unknown
• Mr Pordle's Homecoming Publication unknown

Adaptations

Television adaptations

A short series featuring Dr Thorndyke was produced by the BBC in 1964, entitled Thorndyke. The title character was played by veteran British actor Peter Copley.

Based on the stories written by R Austin Freeman, the episodes, all of which except the pilot are missing from the BBC archive, were as follows:

• The Case of Oscar Brodski (Pilot – as part of BBC series "Detective')
• The Old Lag
• A Case of Premeditation
• The Mysterious Visitor
• The Case of Phyllis Annesley
• Percival Bland's Brother
• The Puzzle Lock

Three stories were also adapted as part of the Thames TV series The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes in 1971–3. These were:

• A Message From The Deep Sea (from the 1st series and starring John Neville as Thorndyke)
• The Assyrian Rejuvenator (1st series, starring Donald Sinden as Romney Pringle)
• The Moabite Cipher (2nd series, starring Barrie Ingham as Thorndyke)

Both series are available on DVD – in the UK from Network Video and in the United States from Acornmedia.

Radio adaptation

Starting in 2011 the BBC aired radio adaptations of some of the Thorndyke short stories, Thorndyke: Forensic Investigator on BBC Radio 4 Extra.

Series 1

November 2011 read by Jim Norton

1. A Mysterious Visitor
2. The Puzzle Lock
3. A Mystery of the Sand Hills
4. Pathologist to the Rescue
5. The Secret of the Urn
6. Pandora's Box

Series 2

March 2013 read by William Gaminara

1. The Stolen Ingots
2. Rex v Burnaby
3. The Stalking Horse

In popular culture

Literature

• In Donna Andrews's Owl's Well That Ends Well, a near-mint first-edition copy of The Uttermost Farthing provides the motive for the murder.

Biographies and studies

• R. Austin Freeman: The Anthropologist at Large, Oliver Mayo, Hawthornedene, South Australia: Investigator Press, (1980). This biography, in addition to reviewing Freeman's fiction gives special attention to the African and sociological works. It was reprinted in Volume 11 of the Freeman Edition by Battered Silicon Dispatch Box in 1998.
• In Search of Doctor Thorndyke, Norman Donaldson (Bowling Green, Ohio, 1971). A second expanded edition was published in 1998 as Volume 10 of the Battered Silicon Dispatch Box edition of Freeman.
• The Thorndyke File was started by Philip T. Asdell of Maryland in Spring 1976, and published articles of scholarship on Freeman twice a year. John McAleer took over in 1980 and the journal ran on until 1988. Half of the subscribers were medical doctors.
• John Thorndyke's Journal was published in England from 1991 to 1998 by David Ian Chapman of Aldershot, Hampshire.
• Collecting R. Austin Freeman, David Ian Chapman (Highfield Press, Aldershot, 2022) Revised Second Edition.
• R. Austin Freeman and The Adventures of Romney Pringle: An Investigation, David Ian Chapman (Highfield Press, Aldershot, 2023).

External links

• Works by R. Austin Freeman at Project Gutenberg
• Works by Richard Austin Freeman at Faded Page (Canada)
• Works by or about R. Austin Freeman at the Internet Archive
• Works by R. Austin Freeman at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
• Works by R. Austin Freeman at Project Gutenberg Australia
• 94 Windmill Street, Gravesend on Google Street View.