Information
Dr. Freeman was one of the first successful crime writers to use scientific fact as a basis for detection. After his medical training he worked in the colonies for a while, which gave some of his stories a certain exoticism. He lived in Gravesend for much of his life, first at 2 Woodville Terrace (now the site of the Woodville Halls) from 1902-21. From 1930 until his death he lived at 94 Windmill Street. He is buried in Gravesend cemetery. Unlike his near-contemporary. Sherlock Holmes, Doctor Thorndyke, the hero of most of Freeman’s detective novels, did not rely on intuitive deduction but on the collection of forensic evidence to solve his cases. The first Thorndyke story ‘The Red Thumb Mark’ (1907) featured the fairly new science of fingerprinting. Freeman even prepared microscopic slides of ‘evidence’ which he included as photographs in his early books. He also used the innovatory technique of the ‘inverted story’ as in ‘The Singing Bone’ (1912) where the crime is shown being committed at the beginning of the story, so the reader has the advantage of the detective, whose efforts to solve the case are the focus of the book, rather than the identity of the criminal. Freeman occasionally used locations in the Gravesend area in his stories, as in ‘The Green Check Jacket’, where a corpse is discovered near Watling Street.
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Place | Extract |
| Gravesend | He is buried in Gravesend cemetery... |
